Possessing a certain skill set learned in one specific area of life may ultimately prove to be useful in many others. Take, for example, coding, the skill of creating instructions for computers, and used for developing software, apps and websites.
Because of an inherent understanding of the workings of computer language, it could potentially give a player with coding skills a unique way to look at the mechanics of an online casino game.
The skills learned from coding could help players partly unravel the mysteries of how the top UK online casinos or casinos in other countries work and how user interfaces for platforms are designed and built for the best experience. While coding skills can’t actually help someone manipulate casino games, here we look at what coding skills can reveal about them.
A Look Behind the Curtains
Part of the skill involved with coding is problem-solving and using carefully constructed strategies to get things perfectly aligned. That ability to process, analyse and strategise can go a long way in understanding how casino games work.
Someone with coding knowledge can look at the HTML and CSS of any casino website within a browser. The specific language of the site can give insights about how the page is set up, and possibly reveal some clues about a game’s layout and its operational interface.
Javascript is typically involved as well, often used for interactive elements within a casino game’s interface. The buttons to set the stake amount and to spin the reels are prime examples, but Javascript can also control the in-game animations and sounds.
Understanding Game Elements
So what can be learned about casino games? One of the main things that casino players look for is the Return To Player percentage and volatility, which doesn’t need any special skills to grasp the basic understanding of.
Those are average game metrics that indicate how much a slot is expected to pay out from every 100 units of stake placed on it (like 96 or 98%) and how often it’s expected to pay out. It’s information that can easily give a better understanding of the value of playing that game.
But the understanding doesn’t have to stop there. Someone with an analytical code-minded approach could take the game data, and push on through to strategy about how much stake and how many pay lines to utilise. This is really where deeper analysis skills, typically adopted by people who learn to code, can come in handy.
Getting Deeper
The ability to break down complex problems into more manageable ones is a good skill to have for understanding how game mechanics work. By knowing the RTP of a game, for example, that can be linked back to game features, pay table and number of reels to see how it all comes together.
Critical thinking is another key skill developed through coding. Evaluating information and unlocking patterns, coupled with a high attention to detail can make looking at the inner workings of things like casino games, a lot clearer.
Nothing is independent within the mechanics of a casino game, everything is linked, and grasping the entire picture of a system allows for a deeper look to happen. The same methodical approach of systematically looking at the HTML can even translate over into playing games.
The skills learned in coding can help to understand what the actual probabilities of game outcomes are, along with the optimal strategies to then apply to them. It is always worth remembering that the casino still always holds the advantage because of luck-based games and their house edge.
Client-Side vs Server-Side
It’s worth stating that the actual code of games cannot be seen. All of that runs server-side and is hidden and protected so it can’t be tinkered with.
Everything important is handled server side and the code, which is often proprietary, isn’t accessible. It’s heavily encrypted which protects the integrity of it, so it can’t be reverse-engineered either.
What the Skills Can’t Do
Coding knowledge is not going to provide any significant advantage in predicting the results of casino games. No skill set is going to do that because slot machines are run by Random Number Generators (RNG).
For fair play, games are specifically built to be random and one spin has nothing to do with a number because that creates a chance, which players need the help of luck to crack. So there are no set patterns of gameplay that can be revealed. But having a love for computer language could at least make it easier to understand the nuances and complexity of Random Number Generators and therefore a deeper joy of playing, too.