Return To Player (RTP) and Hit Frequency: What Do These mean?

What do the terms "Return to Player" and "Hit Frequency" mean?

RETURN TO PLAYER (RTP)

Casinos employ the term Return to Player (RTP) to explain how much money a VLT (or slot machine) will pay back to players. If, for instance, you make a hundred dollar bet on a machine where the RTP is 90%, you can expect to get back about $90 in wins. Both RTP and house advantage are calculated over the longer term. Never bet funds that you might lose.

RTP is in fact the reverse of the house advantage. A machine that has an advantage of 20% will have an average RTP of 80 percent. This means that the machine will retain around 20% of the money , and will return the remaining to the players as wins.

Hit Frequency

Hit frequency refers to the amount of times a machine will stop when it finds a winning combination. A hit frequency of 8% means that the machine will cease whenever it comes across an winning combination around 8% of the times. return to player percentage forget that some VLTs and slot machines allow players to bet on multiple lines at once. The result is that, during a single spin the player can get several winning combinations, as well as several losing combinations. To the player, it may appear as if he's winning more frequently, but as is the case with all games in time, the winning combinations will outnumber the winning ones.

The hit frequency of slots and VLTs can differ greatly. Certain slots can have a frequency of that is as low as 3% however other games, like video poker with a hit frequency of nearly 45%. The hit rate of video poker may sound appealing, but bear in mind that in more than half of those "hits," the player is just able to win back his original bet. Even though a machine with an average hit rate of 3 percent may not sound appealing, it might offer players the chance to win a substantial jackpot. (Machines that offer large progressive jackpots typically have a lower frequency of hitting, but offer larger jackpots.)

People often see games with low hit frequency as tight , because they are difficult to win. Games with high hit frequency are seen as looser since they are filled with small wins.

Remember, the frequency of a hit is the average number of times a winning combination occurs. "Return-to-player" is the percentage or amount that a machine returns over time.