Slots online have been growing in popularity as a quick and easy way for entertainment and gambling content to be delivered to fans. Engagement and usage of online slot games have been rising every year, and there are thousands of online gambling websites which offer some form of online slot game to their visitors. With this rise in acceptance and popularity, however, there have often been questions raised about the integrity of online slots, and there are some who believe that these slot games are rigged against the player.
What Is RTP And How It Works?
This could not be further from the truth. Online slots, or any slot game for that matter, is inherently random, with no program or pre-set algorithm determining which symbols show up on the reels. However, slot games are designed with certain payback percentages in mind, which is known as the Return-To-Player or RTP.
Put simply, RTP describes the average return a player can expect from a slot game over a period of time. So, for example, if a particular slot game has an RTP of 95%, one can reasonably expect that a series of $1 bets, made 100 times, will return $95 to the player on most occasions. Of course, this percentage is calculated over the long-term, with hundreds and thousands of runs, and it may not apply to a particular player’s time spent playing that slot game.
Variance and volatility will play a part, and therefore some players could end up winning loads, and others will end up losing their money on a video slot game. That is inherently the nature of the game, and suggesting that slots are rigged because they do not pay out all the time is incorrect.
Further, casinos have no reason to rig online slots; they already make enough money and more from these video slot games to then try and rig them as well. The way they do so is by getting enough players to play their games, and as mentioned earlier, the RTP is skewed towards the casino. Thus, with enough people playing their online slots and wagering money, the casino operator will always make money in the long term and thus has no incentive to drive away players by rigging its slot games.
Land-Based Slots vs Online Slots
In general, online slots have much higher RTP values than land-based casinos – while slot machines at terrestrial casinos could have returns of anywhere between 70% and 90%, you will be hard-pressed to find online slot games with RTP values under 94% (Apart from Red Tiger games and other Jackpot Slots), with most games having a return of over 95-96%. In fact, online slots with an RTP under 94% are generally considered poor investments and are thus rarely developed.
The reason for this is simple – the costs of running a brick-and-mortar establishment like a land-based casino are a lot higher than that of operating a website, and so online casinos can afford to give out higher returns, and they also can have thousands of players playing the same slot game simultaneously, further increasing their returns from a single game.
Are Online Slots Fair? The Verdict
Thus, it is extremely unlikely that an online video slot game will be rigged, especially if you are on a reputed online gambling site and the game itself is from a reputable studio as well.
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