Return to Player (RTP) and Hit Frequency: What Are These Mean?
RETURN to the player
Casinos employ the term Return to Player (RTP) to explain how much of the wagered money a VLT (or slot machine) will return to players. For example, if make a hundred dollar bet on a machine on which the RTP is 90%, you may expect to receive around $90 in winnings. The two factors, RTP as well as house edge are typically determined over the long-term. Never bet return to player rate could lose.
RTP is the reverse side of house advantage, as you might have noticed. A machine that has an advantage of 20% will be able to achieve an average RTP of 80 percent. This means that the machine can keep roughly 20% of cash and pay the rest to the winners as winnings.
Hit Frequency
Hit frequency refers to the frequency at which a machine will stop when it finds a winning combination. For example, if the machine is able to hit a frequency of 8percent, that means that it will stop after a winning sequence about 8percent of the time. Not to be overlooked, the majority of VLTs and slots offer players the ability to wager on several lines at the same time. It means that players could win one or more winning combinations and numerous losing combinations on a single spin. It may seem that the player wins more often, but like everything else eventually, the winning combinations will become more frequent than the winning.
In the case of VLTs and slots, There can be a huge variations in the frequency of hits. Certain slots can come with a hit frequency as low as 3% as opposed to others, like video poker has a hit rate of nearly 45%. While the rate of hit for video poker may seem appealing but keep in mind that the majority of "hits" result with the player winning his initial bet. A machine with a 3% hit frequency might sound unappealing however, it could offer players the chance of winning a very large jackpot. Progressive jackpot machines with large payouts have a lower hit rate and larger jackpots.
Many players perceive games that have lower hit frequency as loose because they are challenging to win. Games with high hit frequencies are perceived as less loose since they're filled with tiny wins.
Remember, hit frequency is the mean amount of times a winning combination is seen. "Return-to-player" is the percent or the amount that a machine returns over time.