Can You Use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Beat a Casino?

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People are always interested in seeing how new trends affect the gaming world. From a casino accepting crypto to online gaming sessions, the industry has come a long way. It’s no surprise then that artificial intelligence (AI) has now made its way into the conversation.

Wherever you look these days, it seems like you can’t escape the machines. Whether it’s content creation, jobs being modernized, or automation, AI is everywhere.

It was only a matter of time before enthusiastic casino gamers started to wonder if they could use machine learning to get an advantage. What if the house didn’t always win?

After all, AI seems to be so helpful in other areas, so why not use it here? Below, you’ll get all the information you need to understand the role of AI in casino gaming.

Designing Better Luck Would Be Tough

This is the biggest hurdle to AI use in casino games. If you think about it, much of the gaming experience is based on luck, which is completely random. Sure, machines are great at calculating and making accurate predictions. What do you do, though, for the pieces of the puzzle you can’t account for?

Think of it this way. As a human being, you can calculate things easily up to a point. If you bring AI into things, those calculations get faster. That’s because there are specific answers based on specific calculations.

If you’re playing cards with your friends, though, once the deck is shuffled, there is no way for you to ensure that you get the cards you want. If you bring an AI into the mix, it won’t make your odds any better because of the randomization.

As you can see, the big problem is that of analysis or data collection, which are two of the biggest strengths of any AI, no longer matter.

Slight Improvements Where Skill Levels Matter

Even with what was said above, there are a few games where you could see a slight improvement with AI. Blackjack and poker come to mind. 

Poker is about 95% luck, so you would still rarely see the difference. Nevertheless, experts believe that there is about 5% skill that goes into it, which is where a machine would be strongest. In the past, AI has shown that it can beat a human in poker, though not necessarily a professional.

Blackjack is probably a little more favorable to AI since it’s a game where you count numbers. You can see people in casinos doing it all the time. Of course, machines can count much faster and will likely do it with no mistakes.

Don’t think for a moment, though, that casinos didn’t think about this and put measures in place to keep the house on top.

The Random Number Generator Problem

Here’s the thing, luck is programmed into casino games. Hearing that might be a bit confusing since the whole narrative here is that luck is random. How would it be possible to program that?

Well, that comes down to a Random Number Generator (RNG), which is a part of the code used. Depending on the game, the way RNG is brought in and where it’s used will differ. You might even find that some games use it more than once in the same round.

This is where AI has the biggest problem. By definition, RNG is random, and even the AI on the casino’s side that uses it doesn’t necessarily know what the result may be.

Imagine that there are 50 different ways a specific casino game can play out. The house’s AI will use RNG, which is like picking a number out of a hat.

Your AI would be guessing at best since no pattern could be used. The best it could probably do is collect information on where the RNG lands the most.

Even so, these percentages are all by chance, so collecting that kind of past data would be all but useless.

It comes back to the shuffling example used before. Here’s another one. A real dealer would shuffle cards and deal them in a poker game. Maybe, it would have been possible to pay attention to human patterns and to get some kind of edge.

Nowadays, though, whether virtual or real-life games, computers are the ones handling all the shuffling.

Did You Know There’s Already an AI and Casino Connection?

If you’re just thinking about using AI in casino games, the house has already beaten you to the punch. That’s one of the biggest reasons you can’t use machine learning to achieve any kind of consistent result.

You probably wouldn’t believe how much of a role machines are already playing in casino applications. Sure, it’s obvious in the online gambling world, but the same goes for brick-and-mortar stores too.

A good example is your behavior. You and other players are being analyzed by AI. Based on the choices you make, the machine could decide to influence things in your favor temporarily, which would motivate you to keep spending.

Additionally, it could catch you counting cards. Legally, there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but if you’ve been in the casino world long enough, you know that the house always discourages it.

The Bottom Line

If you were hoping that you would find the secret to how you can use AI to get one up on a casino, the short answer is that’s not going to happen. You would likely have already heard about people consistently winning with AI if that were the case.

Remember that casino owners are smart too. This kind of business is risky since they stand to lose a lot if players start to win a lot. That’s one of the reasons why they rely on the RNG and luck so much.

How can anybody gain an advantage over something they can’t even anticipate? Machines aren’t going to do much better than humans in guessing outcomes when that’s the case.

While there is some advantage to using AI for games of skill, overall, it’s not going to be doing you any favors anytime soon.

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