Regardless if you’re just starting out as a beginner or if you’re a veteran in the online gambling space, there are bound to be a few terms and words that you encounter and have no understanding of. At first, you might have wondered about concepts like wager requirements, match bonuses, payouts, and others. It can be a very overwhelming world to get into, but the deeper you get into things, the easier it becomes. For this article, in particular, we will be focusing on learning more about one specific term: RTP.
You might haven’t encountered this word if you’re not an avid player of online slots. However, if you have vast experience playing in slot games from different casino websites, then you might have already encountered this term a lot. This is because RTP’s can be found in practically every slot game in the world. Don’t worry if you don’t know what RTP is just yet. That doesn’t mean that you’re not a legit gambler. But this article is going to help you understand what RTP’s are and how they can factor into your overall gaming experience.
What is an RTP and How Does It Work?
If you haven’t already guessed, RTP is an acronym. And it stands for Return to Player. It’s a term that is used to refer to the balance between the total bet amount on a specific slot machine and the total amount that has been paid back. It’s typically conveyed in the form of a percentage. So, if you’re going through different slot game platforms online, you will find that each of them will have a specific RTP. The higher the percentage of a particular slot, then the more money it has paid out to a player relative to how much they’ve spent. To truly simplify it, an RTP is essentially a player’s perceived chances of winning based on the history of a particular machine.
Again, the RTP is expressed in the form of a percentage. However, you shouldn’t take that to mean that this is going to be a direct indicator for how likely you are to win with a specific machine. Again, it’s all about your perceived chances of winning. Keep in mind that these RTPs are typically computed over very large samples. This means that even though it disguises itself as a vital stat that could potentially improve your chances of winning while playing slots, that isn’t always necessarily the case.
How Do You Calculate RTP?
The way that an RTP is calculated isn’t always so cut and dry. Again, it isn’t always as it seems. The basic formula is calculating the total amount of returned money to the total amount of bets. It’s that simple. But even though the equation is so clear cut, the implications tend to be rather ambiguous. Again, the sample size tends to be a very big one. Some RTP calculations can cover a range of weeks’ worth of player data. Sometimes, it can even range to months’ worth of data. So, you could be on a hot streak or a cold streak, and it could have very little impact on the RTP. Whatever results you get on the game isn’t necessarily going to make a dramatic impact on the RTP as a whole.
There’s another aspect to RTP that you need to keep in mind when you’re analyzing these calculations. You might think that an RTP is essentially your probability of winning, but it’s not. The RTP is calculated based on the overall amount of cash. It doesn’t necessarily compute how often you’re going to win. So, it’s not a matter of number of wins and losses. It’s a matter of how much money goes in and goes out. That’s why it doesn’t necessarily serve as a good rubric for how often you might win at playing slots.
A Final Word on RTP
So, whether or not you choose to believe in the power of RTP is up to you. Some people will swear by their accuracy whereas others might have a different experience. Whatever the case, it’s important that you do your own research into the matter and just try to see whatever will work for you. It’s all about the gaming experience after all.
