RTP is a crucial statistic in slot games. It lets the player see how generous a title is and how much it pays out.
Slot gaming has taken the world by storm. It is now a staple of online casinos, with estimates stating that the vertical makes between 50% and 80% of revenue for operators. With so many about, players have become more sophisticated, looking for those that provide the most value. Return to player ratings are the key to this, yet they are not understood by everyone.
Return to Player
A return-to-player rating is now a well-used statistic in slot gaming. Log onto a major operator to play casino games, such as Betway, and you will find it in the documentation provided with the game. Generally, it tells you how generous a game is with its payouts. However, this is a very simplified way to understand it. In fact, many players don’t understand it at all and have misinterpreted it.
RTP is always given as a percentage. It shows the amount a casino gives back to players from their wager, if they play over a sustained period of time, and the probability averages this out. The remainder is known as the house edge and is the amount of profit they make.
An Example of RTP
Imagine you play a slot game with an RTP of 96%. You decide that you will use a bankroll of $100 and break it down into $2 bets. This gives you fifty attempts at playing and spinning the reels. At the end of the fifty attempts, probability states that you will get $96 back in winnings, with $4 going to the house.
The concept behind this is simple. Imagine you decide to toss a coin. You may get heads four, five, or even six times in a row. Yet if you did this 100 times, the average would be around 50/50 give or take. It is the same with slots. A person may get lucky and drop $2 into the machine, win $100, and give up and go home. Yet if they kept playing, eventually their wins and losses would average out to 96%.
Confusing RTP and Volatility
Volatility is a very different measure. This states the manner in which a game decides to pay out. These are broken down into low volatility and high volatility, with others on a sliding scale between them.
A low volatility game pays out regularly. Yet it does so in small increments. A high volatility game will pay out less frequently, but in larger amounts. This is very different from RTP, which is a measure of exactly how much a game pays out.
Consider a game that has a 96% RTP. In low-volatility stakes, it may pay this out regularly in increments of $2, $4, $5, and similar amounts until it pays out $96 overall. Yet a high volatility game could make a player go for many spins without a win, then pay out $50 and $46. They still have the same RTP, but different methods by which they are delivered.
Misconceptions About RTP
Several misconceptions about RTP are worth clearing up. Firstly, this is a measure of probability. While the example above gave statistics as being based on 50 spins, games are tested over hundreds and hundreds of spins. This makes them slightly less accurate than people think, and you definitely won’t get back 96% on a game exactly unless you play for a long time.
Another misconception is that the percentage amount given signals your chance of winning. So, for example, a 94% RTP would mean you have a 94% chance of winning on every spin. This is far from the truth, and your chance of winning on each spin is totally down to the developers.
Other people believe that one event can have a bearing on another, even if they are not linked. For example, if a slot game has not given out a payout for some time, then it must be ready to do so in the near future. This is called gambler’s fallacy, and it came from an incident in Monte Carlo on the roulette tables. In 1913, in the main casino, black fell 26 times in succession on the roulette wheel.
The result was that people began to bet big, and thus lost, all because they made decisions based on the notion that red had to be next simply because black had been so many times. Yet nothing changes. The toss of a coin is still 50/50, no matter how many times heads or tails have landed before. It is the same when you play games, and what has gone before has no impact on what will come next.
Thus, RTP can give you a rough impression of what to expect from a game. Yet it must also be combined with other factors, such as volatility, and removed from myths and misconceptions. By doing so, you should be able to find the right game for your tastes.
