The online gambling industry's leading player protection body, eCommerce and Online Gambling Regulation and Assurance (eCOGRA), has once again raised the standard for online gambling fairness verification and player trust. Online Casino Conditions is pleased to announce that eCOGRA has expanded their gaming fairness test facility to include the Total Gaming Transaction Review (TGTR), which has already been appointed with a dedicated team of qualified experts.

TGTR was developed to continually monitor and analyze gaming software data, including online casino and poker game results, which in effect, will be used to foster a heightened degree of player trust. It is a "Gold Standard" of gaming fairness verification, if you will, which eCOGRA recently concluded there was a greater need of awareness for, following the informative 2006 Global Online Gambler Survey.

eCOGRA's fully vamped online casino and poker room testing facility now provides individual payout percentage reports for online slots, table games, and poker, as well as overall payout reports for all games offered, monthly card shuffling reviews for poker rooms and bi-annual RNG certifications for games of blackjack, roulette and online video poker.

Online casinos that seek to be awarded eCOGRA's Play it Safe Seal must first be powered by a software developer that has already been accredited by eCOGRA according to their best practice eGAP requirements. Part of the software accreditation is the verification of safeguards in place which prevent casino operators from changing software source code or RNG functioning. Not only does this ensure that games are inherently fair to begin with, it shows a willingness and obligation on the casino operators part to run a fair operation. The idea that casino operators can change source code and payout percentages, and get away with it, is nothing more than urban legend - That is, only if the casino is subjected to proper payout audits and/or is eCOGRA certified.

In regards to software data logs, which are used to determine payout percentages, there is absolutely no way for casino operators to manipulate these logs. Since eCOGRA reconciles all movement in player balances per each casino being audited, any alteration of the data file logs would not allow fund balances to be reconciled. If an operator was to omit or insert fallacious logs, they would be identified because the funds of players accounts would not be reconciled with the manipulated data. Furthermore, eCOGRA has systems in place that generate reports on the ongoing betting results - all of which are not handled by the operator.

To monitor the ongoing functionality of the TGTR and report findings to eCOGRA's independent Board of Directors, eCOGRA has appointed London-based KPMG . In addition to reviewing the processes used to generate fairness reports on online casinos and poker rooms, KPMG will be reviewing the people preparing these reports, Random Number Generator Methodology, RNG review processing, as well as the process for conducting payout reconciliation reviews.

Please see our selection of eCOGRA Casinos