The only slot machines players should be playing are those that have been designed to return over the long term, more of their stakes as winning payouts.
As such it will always be the slots that do boast the higher RTP’s that savvy slot players will be making a beeline to play. For reference the majority of slot players do tend to class any slots offering payout percentages of over 97% as being above average paying slots.
It is very important for players to make the effort required to find out just how low or high the RTP’s are on any slots being offered to them in any playing environment, as slots that are identical can be set to return different payout percentages dependent on where they are located.
The pay table of any slot game is often the first place a player will look to get an idea of just what the payout percentage is on any slots they are thinking about playing.
If that all important payout information is not found on the pay table, then the attached help files are another place to look.
Land based casinos that are licensed in places such as the UK are legally required to display the RTP information on the slots or in the case of online or mobile casino sites somewhere on their respective websites, so that is another place to look.
As long as players do stick to playing only the higher paying slots they will, over their long term play get more winning spins and more of their stake money returned to them as winning payouts.
Single Session Paybacks Will Vary
Now, to understand the way in which slot machines have been designed to play and pay players must always keep in mind that they are games of chance and completely random.
As such, even though the number of reel symbols attached to each reel and the payouts awarded for each winning combination will give each slot an expected long term payout percentage, that RTP as it is also known will not be achieved on every single session played on any one single slot.
Therefore, even though you may have been lucky enough to find a slot machine offering a payout percentage of let’s say 98%, when you play it the chance of you getting 98% of your stake money back on any one single session are low.
So you will have to take the rough with the smooth so to speak, for some session playing slot machines will be losing ones, and some of them will be winning ones.
However, over the very long term that is when any slot game is expected to at some point achieve its expected RTP, so those winning and losing session should balance out.
There is a way that you can work out just how much a slot game has awarded you by way of a single session RTP, and below is an overview of how you do just that.
How to Work Out Single Session RTP’s
The first thing you will need to do if you are interested in finding out just how much of your stake money was returned to you as winning payouts is to keep track of the stake money you wagered on that session.
So, if for example you have chosen to play a slot machine at stakes of 0.50, and you then played off lets says 150 spins in total you wagered 75.00 playing that slot.
If at any point in time you were awarded a set of free spins as a bonus game, do not count those as part of your total stakes wagered, as those were free spins and didn’t physically cost you anything, the base game spin that did trigger such a feature did require you to wager 0.50 on that slot so the base game spin does need to be added to your total stakes wagers tally.
You are also going to need to keep track of every single winning payout you achieved when playing a slot, so each time a winning combination spins in add that amount to your winning payout total.
You must also include in that total all winnings achieved by any bonus game feature rounds that were awarded to you, if you spun in a winning combination and choose to gamble it, then only include the cash paid out via that optional gamble game and not any winnings you gambled and lost.
Once you have those two figures, that being the total amount you won and the total amount staked you divide the winnings by the stakes to discover the RTP of that session, below is an example:
Losing Session
Total Winnings 178.40
Total Stakes 209.80
A/B = 0.85
RTP = 85%
In the example above, a player had a losing session as their winnings were less than their stakes, to work out the final figures as shown above players need to remove the zero and decimal point and the first two digits left are the payout percentage for that session.
Winning Session
Total Winnings 248.60
Total Stakes 197.20
A/B = 1.26
D RTP = 126%
As you can see in the example above, a player had a winning session, as their winnings were higher in value than their stakes they wagered on one single slot playing session.
After dividing the total winnings by the total stakes on the example above the figure achieved is 1.26 and whenever there is anything other than a zero before the decimal point players simply need to remove the decimal points and the digit, or digits, before the decimal point and the two that were after is the RTP for that session.
So, in the example of a winning session above the player achieved a single session RTP of 126% and will have left the casino with more than they started with, unless they lost their winnings on another slot machine of course.
