Return To Player (RTP) And Hit Frequency: What Are These Define?
What exactly does Return to Play (RTP) and Hit Frequency?
RETURN TO PLAYER
The term "Return to Player" (RTP) is used by casinos to refer to the percentage of wagered money that a slot machine or VLT will pay out to players over time. If, for instance, you make a hundred $1 bets on a machine that the RTP is 90%, you might be expecting to earn around $90 in wins. RTP and the house benefit can be calculated over a longer time. There is a lot that can occur in the short-term (see the section on Short-Term Volatility versus Long Predictability), so you should only bet on money you're prepared to lose.
RTP is actually the opposite of house advantage. A machine that has a 20% advantage in house will have an RTP average of 80%. It means that the machine will take 20 percent of the bets and will return the rest of 80 percent to players who win.
Hit Frequency
Hit frequency is the number of times that a machine will stop when it finds a winning combination. Hit frequency of 8% indicates that the machine will stop whenever it comes across an winning combination around 8% of the times. You should also know that VLTs, along with many slot machines allow players to bet multiple times on every spin. Players can have up to three winning combinations on just one spin. There may also be RTP % losing combinations. For the player, it may appear that he's winning more frequently, but as is the case with all games it is the case that over time, winning combinations will outnumber the winning ones.
In the case of VLTs and slots, there can be great variation in the hit frequency. While certain slots might have a rate of just 3%, other slots, like video poker, can have a hit rate of up to 45%. While the high frequency of hits in video poker might sound appealing, bear in mind that nearly 50% of these "hits" are just the result of a wager. Even though a machine with an average hit rate of 3% may not sound appealing, it can allow players to win a substantial jackpot. Machines that offer large progressive jackpots come with a lower hit rate but have higher jackpots.
Low hit frequency games are often perceived as unwieldy by players due to the tiny wins. High frequency games can be perceived as loose because there are many wins.
Remember that the frequency of a hit is the average amount of times a winning combination is seen. "Return-to-player" is the percent or the amount the machine makes over time.