Online Pokies: Turning RTP Into a Cost Per Hour

RTP is the only published number on a pokie and it is routinely read as a promise about a session, which it is not. What it can do is give you an expected cost per hour, which is a far more useful figure and takes about fifteen seconds to calculate. This page shows where RTP comes from, how to convert it, and what volatility does to the number in between.

Where the RTP number comes from

Return to player is a designed property of the game, not a measurement of it. The mathematician who builds a pokie defines every reel strip, every symbol weight and every feature trigger, and from that definition the long-run return falls out as arithmetic: the sum of every possible outcome multiplied by its probability. The figure is then usually confirmed by simulating an enormous number of rounds. It is exact, and it describes the full cycle of the game, which is vastly longer than any session a person will ever play.

What that makes it, and what it does not

An RTP of ninety-six per cent means that across the whole designed cycle, ninety-six cents of every dollar staked is returned as prizes. It does not mean ninety-six cents of every dollar you stake tonight, this week, or over your entire life as a player. The average is computed over a number of rounds you could not reach if you spun continuously for years, and the variance around it over a few hundred spins is enormous.

• RTP is designed, then verified by simulation — it is not a record of what players received.
• It describes the full cycle of outcomes, not a session.
• Published RTP sometimes varies between configurations of the same game, so the figure on the game itself is the one that counts.
• Nothing about RTP changes with time of day, bet size or how long you have been losing.

From RTP to house edge to dollars per hour

The house edge is just the other side of the same number: an RTP of ninety-six per cent is a house edge of four per cent. Edge is the useful form, because expected cost is edge multiplied by turnover, and turnover on a pokie is simply spins multiplied by stake. That gives you a one-line formula: spins per hour, times stake per spin, times the edge.

Three worked examples

A deliberate, slow session at six hundred spins an hour and a dollar a spin is six hundred dollars of turnover an hour; at a four per cent edge, an expected cost of twenty-four dollars an hour. Raise the stake to two dollars and the expected cost doubles to forty-eight. Turn on a fast spin setting so you are putting through nine hundred spins an hour at two dollars, and it is seventy-two dollars an hour. The game did not change. Your rate of play did, and expected cost is strictly proportional to it.

Why this is the number worth knowing

Expected cost per hour is the only figure that lets you compare a pokie session to anything else you spend money on, and it is the figure a session limit should be set against. If your budget for an evening is fifty dollars, then the arithmetic above tells you which combination of stake and spin speed fits inside it on average — and it also tells you that average is not a guarantee, because the spread around it is wide.

Volatility: the same average, a different evening

Two games with identical RTP can feel nothing alike, because RTP says nothing about how the return is distributed. A low volatility game returns small amounts often; a high volatility game returns almost nothing most of the time and occasionally a great deal. The long-run average is the same by construction. What differs is the shape of the short run, which is the only run you will ever experience.

What high volatility does to a bankroll

On a high volatility game the expected hourly cost is unchanged, but the chance of losing far more than that in a single hour goes up sharply, and so does the chance of a large win. A bankroll that comfortably survives a low volatility session can be gone in twenty minutes on a high volatility one at the same stake. Volatility is not a measure of generosity; it is a measure of how wrong the average will be in any given hour.

• RTP sets the average, volatility sets the spread around it.
• Hit frequency and average win size trade off against each other at constant RTP.
• A longer session does not pull your own result towards RTP in any useful timeframe.
• A win on a high volatility game is not evidence the game is loose, and a long drought is not evidence it is tight.

The settings that multiply your turnover

Because expected cost is proportional to turnover, every feature that raises rounds per hour raises your cost per hour by the same proportion. Fast or turbo spin, skipping animations, autoplay, and playing multiple games at once all do exactly that. None of them change the odds of a single spin, and all of them change how many spins an hour contains.

1. Turbo or fast spin: more rounds per hour, proportionally higher expected cost.
2. Autoplay: removes the natural pause that was limiting your rate.
3. Multiple games open: adds turnover streams that are easy to lose track of.
4. A higher stake: raises cost linearly, and raises variance faster than that.

Feature buys change the sum, not the structure

Where a game lets you pay directly for a bonus round, the price is set against the expected return of that round, and the published RTP for the bought feature may differ from the base game. The arithmetic is the same in form: you are converting a fixed amount of money into one draw from a distribution with a known average and a very wide spread. The practical effect is a large amount of turnover compressed into a few seconds, which is the fastest way to reach a session loss limit that exists on a pokie.

What RTP will never tell you

It will not tell you whether the next spin will pay, because spins are independent and the game holds no memory of what came before. It will not tell you whether a game is "due", because nothing is ever due. It will not tell you your result over an evening, a month or a year, because the averaging window is far longer than any of those. And it will not tell you anything about an operator's payout behaviour, which is a separate question handled by the cashier rather than the game.

The one use it has for you

Convert it to an edge, multiply by the turnover you intend to generate, and you have a budget figure that is honest about the average. Then set the deposit limit to something you have already decided you can lose, because the average is not what any single evening will deliver. No online casino holds an Australian licence and BetStop does not cover offshore casinos, so the limit you set yourself is the one that will be there.

Where to read on

Each of these covers one part of the same arithmetic in more detail, so you can check a figure rather than take it on trust.

Read next

• Pricing a wagering requirement
• Round rate on a phone
• Online casino and the law
• Payment rails
• Limit tools
• Deposit limits

The small print that actually matters

18+ and where to get help

Everything on this page is information about how money moves, not advice to gamble and not a promise that any bet or spin returns anything. Wagering is for adults over 18 only. If the amounts, the chasing or the hours have stopped feeling like a choice, Gambling Help Online is free, confidential and open at any hour on 1800 858 858, and BetStop is the national self-exclusion register for licensed Australian wagering operators — it does not reach offshore online casinos, which is one more reason to decide the limit before the deposit rather than after it.