RTP stands for ‘Return To Player’ and applies to all games found at a casino.
Each game will have an RTP displayed as a percentage and this percentage is a measure of how much the game returns to players compared to how much is staked on that game.
Generally, the higher the RTP, the more the game will pay out on average to players.
For example:
If a casino game has an RTP of 95%, it means that it will return 95% of the amount that is staked on it. So, for every £1 that is staked, the game will pay out an average of £0.95. For every £10 that is staked, the game will pay out £9.50 and so on.
So, if a game has an RTP of 100% or less (which every casino game does), it means that you can’t win on it, right?
Actually, no. The RTP is the average percentage it will pay out and doesn’t apply to every bet made on it. For example, if you wagered £100 on a slot with an RTP of 95%, you wouldn’t be guaranteed £95 back. It could be more or it could be less. However, over time, if you played an infinite number of spins, the game would average a payout of 95% of whatever you wagered on it.
All casino games have an RTP of less than 100% to give the casino a long-term edge. The house edge on a game which has an RTP of 95% would be 5% and the casino can expect to make 5% profit over time on whatever is staked on that game.
How to find the RTP of a game
You will be able to find the RTP of games at all licensed casino sites in the UK. That’s because the Gambling Commission requires it to be displayed on gaming machines. Casinos have different ways of displaying the RTP of games and sometimes they can be hard to find. A lot of the time, a casino will provide information about each slot via an icon. This is true on William Hill casino as shown in the images below.
Some other online casinos make it slightly more difficult to find the RTP of a game. Ladbrokes Casino, for example, requires you to load the game and click on the ‘Game Rules’ icon in order to view the game details and RTP as shown below.
A much easier way to find the RTP of a casino game is to use the Slot finder tool on Profit Squad. This tool allows you to search and filter hundreds of slots available online and displays their associated RTP along with their level of variance and the software provider.
How does RTP affect the Expected Value of a casino offer?
Games with a higher RTP pay out more and so are generally the better choice when it comes to choosing a game to wager your casino bonus on. However, there are a lot more factors which affect the EV of a casino offer such as:
Game Variance: Games with high variance can pay out massive wins every so often but less smaller wins. When wagering with your cash which you may do to qualify for a casino offer, you may wish to choose a low-variance game in order to minimise risk.
Cash/Bonus Stakes: The stakes you use for your cash and bonus bets can have an effect on the overall EV of an offer. Profit Squad provides members with in-depth advanced casino training which covers this topic in detail.
Profit Squad members have access to our Advanced Casino Calculator which can determine the EV of almost any casino bonus or free spin offer based on a number of variables. Sometimes it’s not possible to use an EV formula to accurately calculate the EV of an offer due to the possibility of busting out and so you must simulate playing the offer hundreds of thousands of times in order to do so. This would be near impossible to do manually which is why the casino calculator is a must-have tool for anyone taking advantage of casino offers.
