What RTP measures
Return to player is the share of total wager a game returns across a very large number of rounds. A 96 percent RTP game returns $96 for every $100 wagered in theory, meaning $4 is the theoretical cost.
The number describes millions of rounds, not your session. Over a few hundred spins the outcome can land far above or far below RTP, and that spread is variance rather than the game behaving differently.
Reading RTP correctly
RTP applies to total wager, not to deposits. Cycling a $100 balance twenty times is $2,000 of wager, so the theoretical cost is twenty times larger than a single pass suggests. This is why turnover matters more than deposit size when estimating cost.
- RTP is a long run average, never a session forecast.
- House edge is simply 100 percent minus RTP.
- Some games ship in several RTP versions, so check the info panel.
Frequently asked questions
- Does a high RTP game pay more often?
- Not necessarily. RTP describes total return, while volatility describes how that return is distributed across rounds.