Theoretical RTP
I agree that every Casino should be required to publish their T-RTPs for each game, as I think I've made pretty apparent in my other mind-barfs. Having them available provides you with the ability to do
quantitative comparison shopping. No need to try out the games if you don't feel like it.
<tangent> To make a fully informed buying decision, especially regarding Slots, Keno, and even Video Pokers, there is also the importance of variance. And, to be completely accurate, there is also the issue of bonuses (that bonus money has to come from somewhere), and customer service (those salaries have to come from somewhere). But all of that is the substance for another thread. </tangent>
As has been noted in this thread, and in many others I have read, NetEnt, IGT and Rival all publish their T-RTPs. So, um, good show to them. But in even those cases, I find fault.
Having spent some time climbing around in those jungle gyms, I would like, nay!, I demand that those three suppliers make it a little bit easier to actually get the
accurate values. I will explain why I'm focusing on accuracy specifically in a bit.
1. NetEnt: To get these values you need to download the game (yes, you can do this in free play mode), and then open the game’s help file. NetEnt’s game files tend to be HUGE, and take a long time to download. (Sometimes, unfortunately not infrequently, the download fails entirely, and I have to give it another go. But again, all that is for another thread.)
I liken this to going into a grocery store to buy some ice cream. There are no prices on the packages, or on the shelves, or anywhere. In fact, the
flavor of the ice cream isn't even listed. You need to take the package up to the front of the store, show it to someone, and ask them for the price and flavor.
If that price/flavor combo is not to your liking, you bring the product back to the freezer section, get another package, bring that up to the front of the store, ask for the price and flavor, lather, rinse, repeat.
Granted, they at least tell you the price beforehand, rather than just removing the money from your wallet, which is what casinos that do not offer the T-RTP's are essentially doing. (Now there is the perfect Casino model – enter Casino, open wallet, remove money from wallet, exit Casino.)
But it would be great if they just had a nice, neat, tidy list of their games, and that game’s T-RTP. NetEnt are no fools. They know the importance of T-RTP. They can hold their heads high in saying that they publish this data. They should want to make this widely and easily available via multiple channels.
It would take a NetEnt web person maybe an hour or two to create my suggested nice, neat, tidy web page list. I thus infer, from the fact that NetEnt has not done this, that they have not done this for a reason, and I conclude that this reason is “provide but obfuscate”. I'm not sure why they would do this, since their T-RTP's are good. Again, they should want to promulgate the data.
Playing Devil's advocate, the possibility is also there that they made this choice to only put the T-RTP in the game because that provides them with good “top-down” control (i.e. they don't need to distribute new RTP tables to clients. They simply update games). But even assuming this beneficent motivation, making an easy-to-access chart with all of their T-RTP's is doable and desired, and as such, its absence must be explained. Still, Devil's advocate yet again, many NetEnt casinos make the T-RTP's available up front. But as I have said before, I demand perfection, and I demand it from the top down.
I recognize that many of criticisms of NetEnt are quibbles, and that is why they are the ones getting my money.
2. IGT: As with NetEnt, I give kudos to any company that is revealing their T-RTP's. But IGT makes it very difficult to trust their numbers, or even
find them. They provide them, and their client casinos do seem to generally make them available, but one doesn't have to dig very deep to find inconsistencies.
For example, using the list of IGT/Wagerworks casinos from Casinomeister (which is out of date, both Paddy Power and Boyle seem to have switched entirely to Playtech), I checked a variety of their casinos. Only some of them provide the list of T-RTP's, meaning there is no mandate from IGT, and some of them seem to just copy what is available on IGT's website.
For example,
At The Races casino provides the T-RTP upfront, but they provide ranges straight from IGT's brochures, as with the
The 100,000 Pyramid, where the possible range is listed as 92.78% to 95.03% at both IGT's website and the casino. How... helpful.
Virgin Casino is a major operator with all T-RTP's available, which is good. But even games for which solid numbers are available from IGT, they don't always line up. For example,
Old / Expired Link IGT lists
Battleship: Search and Destroy as being 94.48%
fixed, but Virgin Casino lists the same game as 92.06%.
Inconsistencies such as those make me doubt all information from IGT. This will further support my point about accuracy later on.
3. Rival: Rival does provide T-RTP's, but they don't even have a website. They are decentralized and I trust them about as far as I can throw them.
Current Actual RTP
When I first saw the Poll’s option, I was a bit confused. By that, I mean I didn't know when you wrote Current Actual RTP, whether you meant what are the RTP values for today, or for the past 30 days right up until now, or what?
However, when I read “publish their game RTP's on a regular basis” and “ongoing measurements of RTP over set periods” within the body of your post, I inferred that you were talking about the monthly RTP audits that are conducted by various companies like CFG, TST, and eCOGRA.
Nifty, am I correct in this inference?
Proceeding under the assumption that my inference is correct:
I agree that every Casino should be required to do this, and publish the results, for a number of different reasons.
- For those that don’t, and apparently won’t, publish their T-RTPs (Microgaming, Playtech, Cryptologic/Wagerlogic, RTG, I'm looking at you), at least these types of reports give us something to go on as far as comparison shopping.
- For those that do publish their T-RTPs, these reports allow us to verify, to a limited extent anyway, that those Theoretical RTP numbers weren’t just created out of thin air.
Two things that weren’t specifically mentioned in your original post that may have been assumed on your part:
1. The monthly RTP Audit needs to be conducted by an approved company/organization, not by the Casino itself.
2. These monthly audits need to be more than just a financial summary. They should also include a series of statistical evaluations of the game results. (I’ve read that the data submitted to the testing lab for the monthly audit can be easily manipulated if the lab just does a financial summary, but if a number (a large number?) of statistical tests of the game results are also performed, then screwing with the submitted logs is a lot harder (read: a lot harder to get away with).
And now we come to why I underlined “and publish the results” above and then reiterated the importance of accuracy: I’ve seen a number of Casinos (Liberty Slots, for example) that say that they have these audits done, and even have on their web site the graphic of one of these testing labs, but no audit results are provided. (I’ve seen the same thing with TST Certified RNG statements – they have the TST logo on the web site, but rather than pointing to the TST RNG Certificate, it just launches a window to TST’s home page.)
Something else that I would add: require that they provide links to more than just the most recent audit report. Lets say that they get a great (for the Player) RTP for June, a really bad one in July, and a better one (again, for the Player) in August. Unless you are a regular visitor to the site, and you routinely check these audit reports, the Casino can simply leave June’s up through July, and then publish August's.
I’d say that they should have a minimum of 6 contiguous months available. (I would also like to see six months of data going into the future. I understand that this would require time travel, so all casinos better get on buying Deloreans. I am an impatient man. I am undoubtedly more impatient in the future.)
Regarding my statement above: “These monthly audits need to be more than just a financial summary.” Based on what I have seen from the three labs I mentioned above, only CFG complies with this requirement. I've linked to stuff from Eliot Jacobson before, who is an employee/owner/founder, and he seems to be the only one providing this level of analysis. I'm sure that major analysis and underwriting firms would do the same, but few (if any) casinos are using these firms.
To see what I mean,
here is a typical TST Audit Report.
a typical eCOGRA audit report, which funny enough still has the PriceWaterhouseCoopers name in the link. And finally,
a typical report from Certified Fair Gambling.
This is the one area where NetEnt fails me. While I doubt that they are cheating me, I truly have no way of telling. I am, essentially, taking their numbers on faith. Again, I am relatively confident that NetEnt is completely on the up-and-up, and they should proudly broadcast that.
This doesn't specifically have to do with the thread subject, but I think that it is important to note that including statistical analysis in the monthly audits also provides for catching errors or bugs in the software. This can include new games, but it can also include old games. (As it did
here. Yes, this particular bug was caught before the audit, but if it hadn’t been then it most certainly would have been caught by the impending audit.)
Looking back to the inconsistency at IGT and Virgin; is that a bug? Is it a lie?
What's correct? A proper audit would help to determine this.
Theoretical RTP versus Current Actual RTP
As I’ve said, I want Theoretical RTP for comparison shopping, and I want Monthly RTP Audits, with statistical analysis, as proof that all is on the up-and-up. In other words, I want both, but for different reasons.
However, what if you could only choose one?
In that case, I would choose Monthly RTP Audits with statistical testing. Theoretical RTP gives me one thing: claimed T-RTP. A proper monthly audit gives me so much more.
P.S.
I'm very disappointed in the casinos' time machine performance. They should have read this post in the future and had it all done last week. Tsk tsk.
But as every spin is an independent and totally random event, even if the RTP yesterday was 1% and today was 200%, each spin you'd have had would still be no less or more likely to win today than it would have been yesterday.
