General questions about RTP

[Paimonah]

I have general questions about the so-called RTP.

I've been playing in online casinos for a long time (with moderate success), but if I'm honest I wasn't particularly interested in the RTP of the respective games.

Maybe someone can answer my questions and maybe it will be interesting for other players to find out more about it:
- Does it differ from game provider to game provider?
- Does it just vary from game to game?
- Is it really relevant how much RTP a game has in order to achieve the best winnings?
(I mean, you can achieve higher winnings on a slot with “only” 94% RTP than, for example, on a slot with 96.5% RTP)?
Is it really relevant or is it all just nonsense?

 

[jasonuk]

RTP is the core value that determines in the long run how quickly the casino makes money from players.

Historically, the majority of online slots would have a single RTP (if they wanted a second RTP, they would release a different theme of the same game). Now-a-days one slot can have a dozen different configurations and it's important that you check - assuming the information is available to you (some jurisdictions like the UKGC require RTP to be shown in the help file, others are more ignorant).

In terms of the "best winnings", that is more the realm of volatility and variance - and is a different axis to RTP. Volatility is a measure of how boom or bust a slot is, so a high volatility game is likely to have bigger pays, but more likely to drain your balance faster. If you look at some of the offerings from providers like No Limit City, these are considered extreme volatility - not only for the possible 100,000x or more wins, but also the base games are insanely dull because they focus on bonus buys.

So you could have:

Good RTP, Higher Volatility e.g. Danger High Voltage (BTG)	Good RTP, Lower Volatility e.g. Starburst (NetEnt, at default RTP*)
Poor RTP, Higher Volatility e.g. Bigger Bass Bonanza (Pragmatic) on William Hill*	Poor RTP, Lower Volatility e.g. Rainbow Riches Locomotion (LnW) on William Hill*

* I mention William Hill specifically because they often deploy 88%, 90% or 92% RTP models where most sites will be deploying 94% (or occasionally the default 96% model). An 88% RTP will lose 3 times as fast on average (over millions and billions of spins) than a 96% RTP will.
* The default RTP is 96.09% but NetEnt have now launched a range of different RTP models as low as 90% - so always check!

 

[Paimonah]

RTP is the core value that determines in the long run how quickly the casino makes money from players.

Historically, the majority of online slots would have a single RTP (if they wanted a second RTP, they would release a different theme of the same game). Now-a-days one slot can have a dozen different configurations and it's important that you check - assuming the information is available to you (some jurisdictions like the UKGC require RTP to be shown in the help file, others are more ignorant).

In terms of the "best winnings", that is more the realm of volatility and variance - and is a different axis to RTP. Volatility is a measure of how boom or bust a slot is, so a high volatility game is likely to have bigger pays, but more likely to drain your balance faster. If you look at some of the offerings from providers like No Limit City, these are considered extreme volatility - not only for the possible 100,000x or more wins, but also the base games are insanely dull because they focus on bonus buys.

So you could have:

Good RTP, Higher Volatility e.g. Danger High Voltage (BTG)	Good RTP, Lower Volatility e.g. Starburst (NetEnt, at default RTP*)
Poor RTP, Higher Volatility e.g. Bigger Bass Bonanza (Pragmatic) on William Hill*	Poor RTP, Lower Volatility e.g. Rainbow Riches Locomotion (LnW) on William Hill*

* I mention William Hill specifically because they often deploy 88%, 90% or 92% RTP models where most sites will be deploying 94% (or occasionally the default 96% model). An 88% RTP will lose 3 times as fast on average (over millions and billions of spins) than a 96% RTP will.
* The default RTP is 96.09% but NetEnt have now launched a range of different RTP models as low as 90% - so always check!

Many thanks for the quick response!

With the game provider PNG, for example, I can't see any RTP anywhere. Or am I just blind?

- If I can see 96% RTP and more for a slot in a casino from a game provider, can I assume that ALL slots from the same game provider have almost the same RTP? Or does it fluctuate and I really have to check each individual slot?

That would be very tedious :-( ... because the reason is with me: I always change slots after 5 spins, lol

 

[jasonuk]

With the game provider PNG, for example, I can't see any RTP anywhere. Or am I just blind?

If the casino provides the information, it'll sometimes be front and centre in the game help, but it can also be buried in the game rules... but if a regulator doesn't mandate it, a casino offering bad percentages will hardly want to advertise that fact, and so they can hide it instead.

In the case of PnG, they display it towards the bottom of the game rules (the question mark in the bottom left), for example:

- If I can see 96% RTP and more for a slot in a casino from a game provider, can I assume that ALL slots from the same game provider have almost the same RTP? Or does it fluctuate and I really have to check each individual slot?

You might have been able to make that assumption 5 to 10 years ago but there is very little consistency now-a-days - it varies by provider, by slot, and by casino - and realistically could be anything from 85% to 99% for slots (and mostly 90% to 97%) depending on the combination of the three. Sadly you have to check each time you play, it's a pain but that's the cost for not being duped by awful percentages.

In some cases you can get a vibe of what a casino is offering - e.g. they mostly offer default (often best) RTP, they mostly offer one step down, or they are William Hill. However those change over time, and we have seen casinos like WH drop RTPs by two or three steps in one update (e.g. 96% to 92%) - so easy to trap yourself with a false narrative if you are not careful.

 

[Paimonah]

If the casino provides the information, it'll sometimes be front and centre in the game help, but it can also be buried in the game rules... but if a regulator doesn't mandate it, a casino offering bad percentages will hardly want to advertise that fact, and so they can hide it instead.

In the case of PnG, they display it towards the bottom of the game rules (the question mark in the bottom left), for example:

View attachment 196554


You might have been able to make that assumption 5 to 10 years ago but there is very little consistency now-a-days - it varies by provider, by slot, and by casino - and realistically could be anything from 85% to 99% for slots (and mostly 90% to 97%) depending on the combination of the three. Sadly you have to check each time you play, it's a pain but that's the cost for not being duped by awful percentages.

In some cases you can get a vibe of what a casino is offering - e.g. they mostly offer default (often best) RTP, they mostly offer one step down, or they are William Hill. However those change over time, and we have seen casinos like WH drop RTPs by two or three steps in one update (e.g. 96% to 92%) - so easy to trap yourself with a false narrative if you are not careful.

Thank you for your meaningful answer.

Now I know that I really have to check every time I change a slot, lol.
Well, you can also look at it like this: Then you have longer playing-fun (or not)!