Online Casino for Dummies: How to Stop Confusing RTP and RNG

Today, the iGaming industry is steadily growing. This is facilitated by the expansion of the internet, the growth of smartphone use, cultural and social approval from the authorities and celebrity influencers, as well as easy access to online gambling games. More and more people are discovering online casinos, but because of the desire to start playing as soon as possible, they don’t take the time to study all the details and may occasionally have difficulty understanding the casino terminology.

So, newcomers to online casinos often confuse two acronyms: RTP and RNG. And although they both start with 'R', both are three letters long, and both are related to slots, there is a fundamental difference between them. RNG stands for Random Number Generator. And RTP is the percentage of return to the player from the total amount of bets in the slot. And if in the case of RNG it is enough for a player to simply know this acronym in order to understand that the game will be transparent and its outcome is trustworthy for both players and operators, then understanding the essence of RTP can help the player in choosing a gaming strategy.

RNG: randomness provided by software

If you look at RNG games in a broad sense, then we are talking about all online gambling games (table games, casual ones, video poker, etc.), except for live croupier games.

In live dealer streaming games, randomness doesn’t depend on the soft, because the essence of such games is that a real dealer participates in the broadcast in real time and performs game actions. And here the result of the game already depends on the human factor as well.

Another thing is RNG games. Here, an algorithm is involved that generates an unplanned sequence of random numbers. Random numbers are of great importance for the outcome of the game round, guaranteeing an unbiased result. The RNG itself is an algorithm that is built into the game by the developers and hosted along with the game files on a remote game server owned by the game provider or a third party.

But an RNG game can’t be released without prior certification from one of the independent laboratories (for example, eCOGRA, iTech Labs, etc.). The laboratory checks the RNG step by step: first, it tests for vulnerabilities, for stability, and finally, it tests for the distribution of results. Having verified the quality of the RNG, the laboratory issues a detailed report and a certificate to the provider.

A more narrowly focused meaning of RNG games in online casinos is slots. The gambler visits the casino website, selects a slot, presses the virtual game start button, and the algorithm generates a series of pictures on the virtual reels of the slot and make up either a winning combination or a non-winning one.

By the way, one of the myths associated with RNG underlies the so-called “hot slot theory”. It appeared back in land-based casinos, when some “one-armed bandit” didn’t give a win for too long, and gamblers began to believe that this slot was becoming potentially profitable, as the chance of hitting a big jackpot on such a slot increases. Online casinos also have such a “theory”, based on the suspicion of the gambler that the online casino slot can “track” whether the gambler lost or won. But the RNG gives out an exclusively random set of numbers, and when choosing their gaming strategy, the gambler shouldn’t rely on the “hot slots theory”.

RTP: theoretical return-to-player

The acronym RTP stands for Return-to-Player and refers to the percentage of the total bets in a slot that the casino returns to the player in the form of jackpots or winnings. In more detail, RTP shows the percentage of the player's victory and the casino's revenue. In other words, if the RTP of 98% is indicated in the technical parameters of the slot, then it’s understood that this is how much the player will receive from the total bet. And the casino will get its 2%. But this is more theoretical than actual. That is, it can’t be expected that by making a lot of bets of $1, in each game the gambler will receive $0.98, and the casino - $0.2.

The fact is that the chances of winning while playing slots are made up of many indicators: hit frequency (the probability of winning on any given spin), volatility, variance, maximum win probability and bonus frequency. Therefore, RTP is an indicator of how much a slot machine or casino will return to a player in the long run.

Initially, RTP is set at the stage of preparing the game for users. The soft developer adds an RNG to the program, which ensures that each launch of the game is independent - that is, if the player wins the jackpot now, then the next launch of the game can also be a winner for them. Once development is complete, the game must be tested for randomness in an audit lab. The laboratory activates audit programs that can run hundreds of thousands of spins in a short period of time. The data collected by the program is analyzed and based on them it’s determined how much of each dollar wagered will be returned to the player based on the payout table in the game. This determines the RTP percentage.

RTP matters for those players who regularly invest large sums in the game. Such players need to know the RTP to get a fair return on all their investment in the game. If a gambler plays one-time sessions on slots, then on average a slot with a higher RTP will be better for them than a slot with a lower RTP. However, it should be clarified that RTP is objectively important for a player when two identical or almost identical slots are compared. This means that the games have the same format, bonus games, payouts and so on.

- B.E. Delmer, Gambling911.com