Slot menus love to show a percentage, and it tends to be taken as a promise. It is actually a long-run statistic with fine print. These notes are for adults only.
The one-sentence definition
If a pokie is built with a 94 percent RTP, then over a vast number of spins it pays back 94 cents for every dollar bet, and keeps 6. "Vast" here means millions of spins across all players, not one person's night out.
Think of a lucky dip
Imagine a barrel of 1,000 tickets, where tickets are worth A$0, A$1, A$5 and a single A$200. The average value is fixed by what is in the barrel. Dip in ten times and you could draw nothing at all, or the A$200. The barrel's average only becomes visible after thousands of draws. A pokie's RTP is that average.
Three common slip-ups
1. Using it as a short-term forecast. Fifty spins say little. 2. Assuming all versions are equal. Some providers offer a title with several settings, so a figure in a review may not match the one on the site you use. 3. Ignoring where the return sits. In games with huge top prizes, a large part of the return comes from outcomes most players never see.
What it is good for
When comparing two similar games, the higher RTP costs less on average. On A$500 of total bets, the difference between 92 and 96 percent is about A$20 in expectation. That is not trivial, but neither is it a prediction for your evening.
Where to find it
Check the help or information screen inside the game. Reefspins and other operators generally put the figure there, sometimes with the volatility rating beside it. If the page is missing, search the developer's own documentation.
The bottom line
RTP tells you the average cost of play across many sessions. It cannot tell you what will happen to you tonight. Set a budget, keep stakes where they were, and finish when the money you allocated is gone.