How To Find Slot Machine Payout Percentage
If you are a keen slots player then you will know that one of the most useful pieces of information about a slot that you can discover is the payout percentage for the game.
- Amaya slots are by far and away the worst slot machines for payouts with a 92% RTP average (more on that later). NetEnt make the most player friendly slot games averaging a 96.51% payout percentage. The majority of companies are within 1% of each other setting an online industry standard of about 95% for slot payouts.
- Gaming machine payouts: return-to-player. Gaming machines, also called fruit machines, slots machines or FOBTs, are required to clearly display the percentage return-to-player figure (% RTP), or the odds of winning a prize. Gaming machines offer different prize amounts depending on their category.
- The casino hold percent for each commercial casino is WIN divided by COIN IN. Subtraction from 100% gives the player win percent. Calculate annual win% from p. 43 of the FY 2020 Annual Report. Beginning in 2020, this annual report no longer offers annual win% by slot machine denomination.
Unfortunately, the term is ripe for misunderstanding and novice slot players often misunderstand what the term actually means, which can lead to them having totally unrealistic expectations of how much they can expect to win on a slot from any given session.
This can then lead to them feeling frustrated, cheated even and less inclined to play the slot again, which is a shame as it is their misunderstanding that is the issue, not the slot or casino in question.
The problem often stems from misunderstanding what the term 'payout percentage' actually means and how it is applied on the slot.
Many people enjoy slot machines for their ease of use and exciting possibilities. If you love playing slot machines and want to get serious about winning, you need to find a loose slot machine. A loose slot machine is a machine that has a higher than average payout. With a little cleverness and planning you can be winning large amounts in no time!
So in this article, we'll attempt to explain clearly what this means.
What is a payout percentage?
A payout percentage is simply the percentage of the total amount of money that the slot will take in over a typical amount of time, that it will pay out back to players in the form of winnings.
That percentage can range from as little as 75 percent up to around 98 percent.
In essence, that is what payout percentage is. There is nothing more to it, but unfortunately, many people choose to think that this means that out of all the money they spend, they will expect to receive back between 75 and 98 percent back in winnings.
That is indubitably not the case and this misunderstanding occurs because people do not understand how the payout percentage is worked out, nor how the winnings used to calculate that amount, are paid out to players.
Suffice to say that a payout percentage is absolutely NOT a statement of how much of your wagering money you can expect to receive back in payouts on average.
Here's why:
Payout percentage - The number of spins
The first thing to note is that when an organisation such as eCOGRA tests the veracity of the claim that a slot has a payout percentage of X per cent, then they run a series of tests to authenticate that claim.
This involves spinning the reels of the slot millions of times in order to generate what the actual payout percentage is of the slot.
It is only when the reels of the slot are spun a huge amount of times that the payout percentage shows any meaning. As such, it is a statistic which is only meaningful for the casino, rather than the player who is unlikely to have the funds or time to spin a slot the many hundreds of thousands of times needed in order to generate payouts of the percentage levels of the slot.
On fewer spins, numbering 10,000, 1,000 or less, there can be a huge difference to the stated payout percentage. A slot may seem to run 'hot' and payout considerably more than the payout percentage (even run at a loss over that period of spins), whereas at other times it may seem to run 'cold' and pay out considerably less than the stated payout percentage.
The key thing to note here is that for a player, the number of spins they play is usually so small, that payout percentage is almost irrelevant. The more spins you play the more relevant the payout percentage becomes, but only if you spin the reels thousands of times over a sustained period.
Even then the payout percentage is still only an average mark. Sometimes the slot will pay out more over one million spins than the stated percentage, other times less, but usually these measures will average out to give a mean percentage level.
Therefore, it is best to view the payout percentage as simply a measure of how much the machine pays out over millions of spins and not really relevant to your chances of success.
Payout percentage - Structure of payouts
The other key aspect to the payout percentage to understand is how the payouts of a machine are structured and that this is equally important to understanding why you are not likely to earn back 75 to 98 percent of what you spend.
The best way to do this is via a hypothetical example. So let's say I developed a slots machine that has a payout percentage of 95% and let's say that in a typical month, this machine generates 1,000,000 in revenue from players playing 1,000,000 spins in that period.
If my hypothetical machine then followed the payout percentages exactly, then 5 percent of that 1,000,000 (50,000) is the casino's operating profit from the machine. That leaves 950,000 to be shared between all the players.
However, slot machines are designed to offer a range of awards, paying out smaller rewards more often and the big jackpot prizes less frequently. Let's say that my machine has paid out one large jackpot prize of 500,000 in the last month, plus three other smaller jackpot prizes of 100,000 apiece.
That means just four lucky players have accounted for 800,000 of the payout percentage. Out of 1,000,000 spins, that means just 0.0004 percent of players have accounted for 84.2 percent of the total payout percentage.
That means the remaining 99.9996 percent of players have just 150,000 in winnings to share amongst them from 9,999,996 spins. You don't need to be a mathematics genius to realise that therefore the vast majority of players of this hypothetical slot would receive a payout that is nowhere near the stated payout percentage.
However, four lucky players have receive a payout well in excess of the payout percentage! Sounds a bit like a lottery, right?
The structure of how your slot pays out is key to understanding that payout percentage is not a figure of how much you will win on average, but simply how much the machine pays out on average over a massive number of spins. Furthermore, how often a machine pays out top prizes, will also mean that the vast majority of players will not experience a payout percentage anywhere near what is stated.
That isn't an error, or misleading, simply a fact that over small sample sizes, the averages stated in the payout percentage are irrelevant.
So while payout percentages may not be useful in letting a player understand how much of their stakes they'll win back, where they are useful to punters is in giving them a comparative measure to judge which machines are most likely to offer them a return.
In theory, you are more likely to win playing a slot with a 95 percent payout percentage than you are a slot with a 75 percent payout percentage.
However, once again, because the number of spins you play will be so small, the chances of you noticing a difference between the slots is negligible. It is entirely plausible that you will play the 75 percent pay out slot and win more than the 95 percent payout percentage slot.
So the key lesson to learn about payout percentages is not to think they are stating how much you will win back on average in your session, but that they are a simple, general tool to assess how profitable the machine is for the casino.
Playing games of chance, which includes lotto, keno, scratch cards, slots, and many other games, can bring massive wins for the lucky. Take these games for what they are. And remember, there's no harm in trying your luck!
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There was a time and not too long ago that if you tried to find out the long term expected payout percentages attached to the slot games of certain online and mobile casino sites you would have to spend hours hunting around for that information.
The RTP’s which stands for return to player payout percentages of many online and mobile slot games was once a closely guarded secret that many slot game designers were very hesitant in letting slot players know.
However with the advent of many different gaming jurisdictions, the Gaming Commissions and Gaming Authorities who license and regulate many online and mobile casino sites now demand any license holder to make available such information, and as such you will readily be able to find the payout percent information of any slot game you do play in either the mobile or online gaming environments.
Another thing that is demanding by the Gambling Commission and Gaming Authorities is that both the free play and real money slots available at sites they license much be the same, so as to give free play slot feels a true and very real feel for the way in which the slot games available at any casino site work, play and pay.
Below you will find out how you can work out your own single slot playing session payout percentages on any slot game you play, and we will also give you information on regards to how diverse the RTP’s on many different slot games can and will be set.
Online and Mobile Slot Game RTP’s
Whilst there can be some ever so slight differences in regards to the RTP’s attached to online and mobile slot games which are the same slots, what you will tend to find is that when a slot is being offered in both playing environments the RTP’s will be identical on both gaming platforms.
The one general rule of thumb that you should always keep in the forefront of you mind is that the higher the payout percentages on offer on any slot game you play, the more winning payouts you are going to be rewarded with when playing those higher paying slots over the long term.
Best Slot Machines For Payouts
Slots with high payout percentages are going to be found in many online casino sites, and as such you will always have plenty of different types of those slot games available to you. Some of the very best slots with high payout percentages you can play online are those that have been designed by Quickspin and some of our top rated featured casino sites have their range of games on offer, so have a look round and give those slot games a much play time as you can do!
Slot Machine Payout Chart
When have spent quite a while taking a look at various different online slot games from lots of different categories and have found that both three reel and video slot games can offer quite a varied range of RTP’s which could be as low as 93% or even lower, whilst some slots can be set to return RTP’s as high as 99% or even higher!
However, progressive slot games do tend to offer some of the very lowest possible RTP’s and that is usually due to the fact that a small percentage of your stakes are feeding the jackpot pools, and as such you should try and avoid playing such slots unless the progressive jackpot is way higher than the amount it is usually won at.
Another category of both online, mobile and land based slot machines that you may be interested in playing are Fruit Machines, now one very bad aspect of choosing to play those type of slot machines in land based venues is that the payout percentages could be as low as 72%, and as such they offer no real value and will often very quickly swallow up your slot playing bankroll.
However, when you make the much wiser decision of playing the all action and bonus game packed online and mobile versions of Fruit Machines you will find the RTP’s those games have been designed to return to players can be ay higher than their online equivalents.
Slot Machine Payouts By Casino
Those RTP’s can be in the mid to high nineties ranges and as such you are always going to be best advised to play Fruit Machines online or via a mobile casino site if you want more play time from your bankroll and more of your stakes returned to you as winning payouts over your long term play.
One final thing to always keep in mind however is that all online slot games are completely random, and as such your single slot playing session will return an RTP that can wildly fluctuate depending on just how lucky you have been.
So even if a slot offer a payout percentage of for example 96% you will not always have session which return such a payout percentage, they could be higher paying ones or much lower paying ones!
Learn How to Play High RTP Slot Games
Huge RTP online slot machines are going to be readily available to you at any of our approved and fully reviewed online and mobile casino sites, and for you to get the best idea of just what type of slot games to play please watch the following video to see a real slot being played which we think you are going to love playing.
NetEnt are the company who have deigned and released this slot which does come with a high payout percentage and as such you are going to find plenty of casino sites with that slot on offer and you are also going to find plenty of bonus offers available if you sign up to any casino we have listed offering that slot game, so make sure you sign up to one of them and give this slot a whirl as it is one of the best ones available!