RTP (Return To Player)

When playing slots and video lottery terminals, you may have come across the term ‘RTP’ before. This stands for ‘return to player’ and refers to the percentage of a player’s wagered bet the player can expect to get back over time.

Only Play With What You Can Afford

If you play on a slot or video lottery terminal that as an RTP of 70%, for example, over time you will get back roughly 70% of your money. If you wager £100, there’s no guarantee you will get back 70% of your money: you might well get less or you could get more. When playing at slots or video lottery terminals, you should therefore only gamble with money that you can afford to lose because of the fact that there’s no guarantee you’ll get even part of your money back.

RTP is the opposite of house advantage. If a slot or video lottery terminal has an RTP of 70%, it will have a house advantage of 30% as an average of 70% of the money will go back to the player and an average of 30% of the money will be kept.

Hit Frequency

Hit frequency is another important term that you will find associated with slots and video lottery terminals. This term refers to how often you can expect to land a winning combination. If, for example, a slot or video lottery terminal has a hit frequency of 6%, then over time you will land a winning combination an average of 6% of the time. As with RTP and house advantage, this is an average calculated over a long period of time and isn’t a guarantee. If you play for a significant period of time, you may well get winning combinations more or less than 6% of the time. In other words, if you spin 100 spins and the hit frequency is 6%, this doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to get winning combinations six times.

Hit frequencies can vary greatly: they can be as high as 45% or as low as 3%. You’ll find that the games with lower hit frequencies don’t pay out as often because you don’t land winning combinations as often, but when the game does pay out, cash prizes tend to be quite large. If you’re playing a game with a high hit frequency, you will land winning combinations quite often, though the cash prizes tend to be smaller. Video poker games usually have very high hit frequencies, though it’s worth bearing in mind that most of the time that you win, what you actually win is your original bet back.