The Difference Between High RTP and High Variance Slots

Online slots come in all themes and designs; there’s no rulebook for designing them. They can take any appearance from your typical slot machine in your local casino to something from your favourite fantasy movie. One amazing difference, though, between playing at your local slot machine and playing online, is that online casinos offer free spins to use on slot games.

What is the Difference Between High RTP and High Variance Slots?

The fundamental differences in online slots are in the algorithms determining how often and how much they payout. These differ from slot to slot and cater to a variety of player preferences, like risk tolerance.

Slot variance is a spectrum with two variables: variance and RTP (return to player). The former determines the volatility of the game, meaning the frequency of wins. The latter determines how many spins you will have to play to achieve a payout closer to the machine’s average RTP.

Our team have taken the time to compile a comparison guide to help determine which type of slot game is the best to try. But before we dive in and explore the key differences between high variance slots and high Return to Player slots, let’s make sure we’re on the same page with the terminology used in this article.

Online Slots Terminology

Variance

Variance is the measure of how frequent the wins of a slot are. If you’re playing high variance slots, expect to win less often than low variance slots but bigger payouts. The opposite is true for low variance slots; these offer a steadier trickle of small but frequent wins than the bursts of winnings provided by their higher variance slots counterparts. Low variance slots are arguably better for more chill sessions, whereas the best high variance slots are for those seeking an adrenaline rush and to win big.

Volatility

Volatility is similar to variance but is used in slightly different contexts to express almost the same concept. Whereas variance is commonly used in discussions involving statistics and probability, volatility is more often used when describing the price behaviour of securities such as stock and crypto.

For the sake of keeping things simple, we’ll stick to using the term variance for this article as its common contextual use is more relevant to gambling.

RTP

A slot’s RTP or Return to Player is the payout ratio, given as a percentage, that slot machines reward you based on how much you spend on them.

A slot with a high RTP is considered more generous than a slot with a low RTP. There’s no advantage or logical reason you would want to pick a lower RTP machine over a higher RTP machine. The more spins you do on a machine, the closer you will get to reaching that machine’s RTP.

How do I find out the RTP of a slot machine?

A return-to-player percentage is a significant number that tells you how much money the game will pay back to the player over time. This is usually expressed as a percentage — for example, 95% RTP means that, on average, players can expect to get $0.95 in winnings for every $1 they bet.

The exact number you see on a slot will vary from game to game and may be labelled differently depending on where you play: for example, some online casinos may list it as “payback” while others use terms such as “return-to-player” (RTP). In general, a game with an RTP of 95% is considered very good. Anything above 90% is usually decent, and most machines will be somewhere between those two figures.

It’s also worth noting that RTPs aren’t 100% accurate because they’re just estimates based on the machine’s statistical data. The numbers you see listed are usually averages that have been calculated over a long period of play and don’t consider things like bonuses or special features. In other words, while we can use these figures to compare games (because they are consistent), you should never rely solely on them when deciding whether to gamble!

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