What he means is that unless every player and makes the absolute correct mathematical decision on every hand (according to the odds present which can affected by the amount of cards in the shoe etc.) then the game will always vary from the exact RTP, even in the long term. Unlike the dealer, no rules restrict the player to maintaining fixed actions on whether to stand or draw.
It’s not the greatest of comparisons though really. The key difference is that in Blackjack the rules are very specifically laid out. You know exactly what you need to do, what the dealer is alowed to do and the general repercussions if you deviate from that.
Slots are far more cloak and dagger. They can present “best strategy” but this can be both wide ranging and potentially far more impactful. Best examples I guess are the ability to gamble wins, gamble the feature buys and gamble to potentially lose mid-feature on the new Blueprint “pub” range.
Gamble wins: not much to say here. Generally an ability to gamble your wins on anything from 60/40 or smaller odds. You have your money, you know the odds, you know possible outcomes. I’d like to see the option to switch them off although I personally don’t generally use them.
Gamble feature: here is where the waters start to get muddied. I’ll ignore any talk of supposedly rigged gambles as I personally do not believe them to be and this has been discussed to death. Also, the likes of Extra Chilli do show the TRTP based on both gambling and not gambling the feature which are pretty much the same so you are just increasing the variance although it does say “best strategy” is to gamble (only makes a fraction of a %age difference but technically correct, ethically, meh). Blueprint do not appear to say anything on Vikings Unleashed so can only conclude the TRTP is the same gamble or not. Fair enough. The impact on this variance however, unlike blackjack, isn’t really clear and outside of the theoretical 50000x max it’s quite a bit of guess work.
Those “pub” slots. These I have a real issue with. The examples above are at least largely transparent with the potential long term impact to your TRTP. Blueprints pub slots make no such concessions. The TRTP is something like 96.5% and can only be achieved by gambling everything. There is no indication whatsoever as to what impact not following this has and the player potentially has no idea either. Irrespective of how we work out how best to play these (not at all?!) there really is not enough information in this instance. As has been discussed elsewhere if you collect a modest amount every time you get the feature what is your TRTP likely to be? With a top award of 1000x just saying effectively gamble everything it’ll be alright is irresponsible programming. I’m a little surprised this got through the Gaming Commission or whoever clears this as it seems to go out of its way to say gamble or you’ll get proper screwed.
You could look at it as a fun inoffensive slot and don’t play it if you don’t like it (which is the go to response). I have pretty much bailed on it myself but the increase in more money, quicker turnover slots cannot be a good thing. Despite what some may think a lot of players want some fun with a chance to win a decent amount and, maybe once a year, land a monster. The gamble feature/within feature element coupled with Ultra HV is a seriously toxic mix.
How many normal gamblers will be able to stomach their 200x session rolls going in less than an hour on a fairly regular basis?
One last thing. I realise there are other slots out there and it is horses for courses but with the increase in releases of this nature plus some gradual removal of others, the landscape is changing dramatically.