I agree, this is a tough one. I do think that sometimes there are some fishy things going on.
Incidentally I saw this little tidbit on littlewoods casino (using the cryptologic engine) - one of the bits of information I have found how the casino software actually operates:
1. How do you determine which cards are drawn (dice thrown, numbers selected, etc.) for the games?
The most important part of an online casino is a specially designed program called the random number generator. This is the program that generates a sequence of numbers which correspond to various card types, dice throws, etc. A good random number generator will produce numbers that are:
* evenly distributed and not correlated
* unpredictable
If a random number generator is evenly distributed and not correlated, each number will be hit approximately the same number of times after a large number of runs. If a random number generator is unpredictable, you will not be able to predict the next number in a series no matter how many previously generated numbers you have studied.
In the Online mode of Littlewoods Casino, the random numbers are generated by our Unix gaming server while in Practice Mode they are generated using the standard Windows random number generator on your computer.
2. What is the seed?
The seed of a random number generator is the initial point from which a sequence of numbers start. To ensure that a sequence or numbers will not repeat itself if we restart the gaming server, the seed is calculated using as many external factors as possible (e.g. the time of day, system settings, network activity, and many more).
3. How do you prove your random number generator is unbiased?
The randomness of our random number generator is tested by comparing a very long sequence of generated numbers to various statistical distributions. If any of these tests are found to be outside theoretical limits, the random number generator is not used. The current version of the random number generator was tested (and is continually tested) using a sequence of 300,000,000 (three hundred million) numbers to verify its randomness.
4. Can Littlewoodscasino.com benefit from a biased random number generator?
Absolutely not. If our random number generator is biased in any way, players may be able to track it and use it to their advantage. Almost any casino game can be turned against the house if the numbers are biased. With such excellent communication tools as the Internet, expert players could discover the bias and spread the word which would bankrupt the casino. Therefore, it is in our best interest to make our random number generator as unbiased as possible.
I especially pondered over this part:
"In the Online mode of Littlewoods Casino, the random numbers are generated by our Unix gaming server while in Practice Mode they are generated using the standard Windows random number generator on your computer."
What the consequences are for actual gameplay is, one can only speculate - me anyway, since I don't have the needed knowledge to have any useful insights into this matter. But I think we can conclude that since the RNG is being run on 2 different machines and in 2 entirly different enviroments it goes without saying that something just has to be different!
Does this constitute riggedness? I don't know - maybe that is just a question of semantics but the way I see it is, that fun play has more to do with simulating/emulating the real casino instead of actually mirroring it. Again this may just be a matter of semantics...
However, whatever the case may be. Fun play and real play is different (atleast for Littlewoods and maybe all other cryptologic casino engines).
How (and maybe why) it is different remains to be answered by the software makers.