What is RTP and house edge in casino games?
RTP, or return to player, is the share of all money bet on a game that the game pays back over a very long run. The house edge is what is left: 100% minus the RTP. Penalty Unlimited has a 96% RTP, so it pays back 96.00 for every 100.00 bet on average and keeps 4.00. That describes a huge number of rounds, not your next session.
What does RTP mean?
RTP is an average over a huge number of rounds. Add up every bet ever placed on a game, add up every payout, and divide the payouts by the bets. That ratio is the RTP.
A single round never returns the RTP. You win more than your bet or you lose part or all of it. The RTP only shows up when you look at a great many rounds together, the same way a fair coin only lands close to half heads over many flips.
RTP is set by the game's rules: its odds and its payouts. It is not luck, and it does not drift up or down during the day.
What is the house edge?
The house edge is the part of each bet the game keeps on average. It is always 100% minus the RTP. Elements of Power has an RTP of 97%, so its house edge is 3%.
Think of the house edge as the price of play. On 100.00 of bets, a 3% edge costs 3.00 on average. A higher RTP means a lower price. It does not mean you will win.
What is the RTP of each Loot Yeti game?
All four free games on Loot Yeti have a fixed nominal RTP, and each comes straight from the game's own code. The last column shows how each game reaches its number. Payouts are also rounded to the cent and capped: per round in Chicken Road 2, Plinko Aztec and Penalty Unlimited, and per payout in Elements of Power. The last sections show when that matters.
| Game | RTP | House edge | Average back per 100.00 bet | How the RTP is built |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken Road 2 | 95.5% | 4.5% | 95.50 | Chance to clear each lane is the RTP divided by that lane's multiplier |
| Plinko Aztec | 98% | 2% | 98.00 | Slot odds are fixed; the Sun Wheel and free-ball bonus are tuned to reach it |
| Penalty Unlimited | 96% | 4% | 96.00 | Chance to score k goals in a row is the RTP times the stake over the cash-out |
| Elements of Power | 97% | 3% | 97.00 | The skull's chance is set so every spin, from every board, is worth the RTP |
Plinko Aztec has the highest RTP of the four, at 98%. The differences are small per bet but add up over many rounds.
How is RTP calculated?
RTP is the chance of each result times what it pays, added up. Penalty Unlimited makes this easy to see, because a round you cash out after the first goal has only two results.
- Stake 0.20 on Medium. The first goal moves the multiplier to 1.8×, so cashing out pays 0.36.
- The chance of scoring that first kick at this stake is 53.33%.
- Average payout: 53.33% × 0.36 = 0.192. A miss pays nothing, so it adds nothing.
- Divide by the stake: 0.192 / 0.20 = 96%. That is the RTP.
Plinko works the same way with more results. Each Plinko Aztec slot's chance times its multiplier, added up over all slots, gives 77.71%. The Sun Wheel and the free-ball bonus add the rest to reach 98%. Our Plinko guide has the full table.
Why can two games with the same RTP feel so different?
RTP tells you the average. Volatility tells you how far results swing around it. Two plans with the same RTP can give very different sessions.
Chicken Road 2 shows this inside one game. Cash out after the first lane on Easy and you win 94.6% of rounds at 1.01×. Cash out at lane 10 on Expert and you win 0.5% of rounds at 185.08×. Both plans have the same 95.5% nominal RTP. At the default stake of 0.50, cent rounding puts their real returns at 96.4% and 95.5%.
Low volatility means many small wins and losses, and a balance that drifts down slowly. High volatility means long losing runs broken by rare big wins. Neither one changes the average.
Can a strategy change the RTP?
Not the nominal RTP. In Chicken Road 2, every lane returns 95.5% on average before rounding and the cap. In Penalty Unlimited, every cash-out point returns 96%, rounding and cap included. In Elements of Power, full and part cash-outs only move value from the board to your balance, so the 97% holds whatever you do, before rounding and the cap.
The return you actually get can differ from the nominal RTP, and the max-win cap is the big reason. A round that reaches it is paid the cap, not the full multiplier. At the default 0.50 stake, riding Chicken Road 2's Expert road until it cashes out by itself ends at lane 16, with a real return of 52.74%. At the maximum stake on Medium the round ends at lane 22, returning 69.41%. Stopping well below the cap keeps you close to the nominal RTP.
Betting systems that raise the stake after a loss do not change the RTP either. They change the size of the swings, and they can empty a balance faster.
Frequently asked questions
Is a higher RTP always better?
A higher RTP means a smaller average cost per bet. It says nothing about how often you win or how big the swings are, so compare volatility too.
Does the RTP change with the size of the bet?
The nominal RTP does not. The return you actually get can: payouts are rounded to the cent and capped (per round, or per payout in Elements of Power), so a big stake chasing a big multiplier returns less, as the Chicken Road 2 examples above show. Penalty Unlimited is the exception: its chances are set for each stake so the average stays 96%, rounding and cap included.
Where do I find a game's RTP?
In a game's rules or info screen. On Loot Yeti, each game's How to play page lists its RTP and odds, for example Chicken Road 2.