Slots Payouts

Is Volatility More Important Than RTP?

While RTP rates are important when you are choosing slots that will bring you better results, you might also pay close attention to their volatility. In some cases, it can be said that the game’s variance is more important to players than its RTP.

The potential RTP programmed in a slot is usually fully reached after numerous spins. When we look at the comparison of the deviation from the RTP in a slot offered at a UKGC casino, we will notice that after 50,000 spins there is still almost a 5% deviation from the maximum RTP. To get closer to the real potential return, there need to be significantly more spins.

As you can see, sticking to the highest potential return of the slot is more important to the regulators of online casinos. Meanwhile, a regular player can rarely play long enough to reach a session with no extreme deviation from the potential return percentage.

This is why the volatility of a slot can sometimes be more important to players who are seeking fruitful outcomes. If you pick a low-variance slot, you have better chances to reach the lower deviation point quicker. The reason for that is that low-variance slots allow less risky bets, ensure smaller wins regularly, and can enable players to play more spins and enjoy longer slot sessions.

Choosing Slots According to Their Volatility

If you have several days to spare to constantly play a low-risk slot, you can continue to choose your games by simply comparing RTPs. As mentioned above, it may take roughly 50,000 spins to get closer to the maximum RTP of a slot. If you are willing to play that long, however, you have definitely lost the fun factor of the entire slot experience.

While low-risk slots are not the best way to go if you are chasing higher payouts, you should also be careful with high-volatility slots. It has been proven that payers who have a riskier betting style also tend to lose more than other players. While high-volatility games may sound tempting with their huge wins, the long losing sessions can also quickly exhaust one’s bankroll.

Despite the risk, if you are looking for a way to actually gain some profit from your slot play, you might want to opt for high-volatility slots. While low-variance slot variations may sometimes offer good payouts, even their biggest rewards often cannot compare with the generous wins of high-volatility slots.

Slots that have high volatility, tend to have a lower hit frequency. You will often notice that software developers program slots with higher RTPs to have higher variance. This makes the games riskier but can award quite bountiful payouts thanks to various bonus features and special symbols. An easy way to spot a high-variance slot is to take a look at the paytable of the game. If the lowest possible payout in the slot is still much higher than the one on low-variance slots, then you have come across a highly volatile option.

As you play online, you may also come across mid-volatility slots. As you may guess, these cannot be strictly categorized as either low-variance or high-variance slots as they tend to act differently at times. With these slots, you may experience sessions of regular smaller wins but you can also suffer many losing spins before you hit a major payout.

Controlling the Slot’s Volatility

One thing you may not realize is that you can sort of control the volatility of the slot you are playing. The player’s effect on a slot’s volatility, however, is almost always expressed in increasing the variance. Meanwhile, it is rarely possible to bring a slot’s variation further down.

You may often come across video slots that give you the chance to choose the type of bonus feature to activate. You can select between more free spins with lower multipliers being in the game or you can sacrifice a few free spin rounds to play with higher multipliers.

One popular video slot that can be given as an example is Betsoft’s Good Girl Bad Girl. It allows you to choose the Good Girl side, get paid for winnings from left to right, and play with low volatility. Meanwhile, choosing the Bad Girl will indicate that wins will be paid from right to left, allowing you to play with higher variance. There is also the option to choose to be paid both ways and play with medium volatility.

Another way to control a slot’s volatility is by playing video slots that allow you to choose the number of lines to bet on. To increase the game’s volatility, you can bet on fewer lines but raise your bet per line amount. Let us assume that you are betting $0.01 on every line of a total of 30 betlines. You can instead place a $0.02 wager on 15 bet lines and still make the same total stake but increase the slot’s variance.