Is RTP Really a Complete Scam?

[Alvarriti]

Let me share my situation: I've been playing on Stake for about 3-4 years. I'm currently Platinum IV, with around 500,000 total bets. I should mention that I'm not a fan of simple spins, so except for a few exceptions, 90% of those bets are bonus buys, meaning I purchase bonus features.

Here's where my journey with Stake begins, and everything I'll discuss below is not a complaint but rather an attempt to understand your situation and determine if this is just a streak of bad luck or if it's entirely normal, and in that case, if RTP is indeed a complete scam as the title suggests.

My gameplay generally revolves around three games that I enjoy:

• Gates of Olympus
• Wanted Dead or Alive
• Gates of Heavens

And a few other random games that don't really matter much in the equation I'm going to discuss.

The distribution of my bonuses probably occurred as follows: 200,000-250,000 bonuses between Gates of Olympus and Gates of Heavens, regardless of the bet amount—bonuses of $100, $50, $20, $10, $5, $2.5

For Wanted, maybe around 25,000 to 30,000 bonuses (30/60/120), also regardless of the bet amount.

Now, let's look at the facts:

I have over 300,000 bonuses bought.

• I've had 3 or 4 max wins on Gates of Olympus.
• I've had 0 max wins on Gates of Heavens.
• I've had 0 max wins on Wanted.

And here's where someone might say, "What do you expect, a max win every day? Don't be a hater," but that's not the point—keep reading.

Getting a max win on Gates of Olympus implies a 50x of the base bet you make (the base bet being the bonus in question, not what they tell you is the base bet, because you're really betting 100 times the original bet), and in the case of Wanted, it's 65 times the original bet.

With this situation explained, I have some questions:

1. What are the real chances of not getting at least 10/20/30/40/50 times a 65x or more of your bet in a simple spin? It's practically impossible, if not impossible (since any bonus, no matter how bad, usually pays 10-20 times your bet—I dare say the number is probably in the hundreds if not thousands).
2. How long does a losing streak last? There's something fundamental here—many people told me to change slots, but isn't it supposed to be unnecessary to do that? You may have more or less luck in other spins, but the point is that I like to play on those 3-4 slots, not on others.
3. How realistic is RTP? Because if the point is that I keep playing the same base bet indefinitely, it's supposed to be that between the total money won-lost, I should have at least a total equivalent to 95/96/97% of all my money spent on that slot, even without getting max wins and even if I loss the money. That is to say, some bonuses will pay 0.8, others will pay 1.2, and when you do the overall count—however, this year, I could say that except for one max win from a horrible bet that paid $500, all bonuses or 95% of the bonuses paid 0.10 or 0.20 of the buy-in. Therefore, the system seems somewhat unbelievable to me unless, magically, in the next 300,000 bets, I receive 50 consecutive max wins, which we all know won't happen.

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for your time, and please share your experiences. Again, this isn't a complaint, but if there's a real suggestion I'd like to make, it would be that they should implement AI to understand how people play. In my case, the casino is not only unprofitable, as it happens to anyone else, but also the average wager is only 2 or 3 times the total deposit, which sucks, especially for bonuses where you have to wager hundreds of millions of dollars, when in dice, 1% would be 20-30 times the deposit.


Just a clarification: I never complained about the money or how much I've lost on Stake. That's not the point of this message, so please avoid those kinds of comments.

[kahitohoga]

According to me Rtp is calculated how many people playing on the slot and it is distributed according between them ... For example if 10 people are playing gates 1000 and one will hit max win out of that 10 people than other 9 people will have less chance to win and need to pay for that RTP I think like that...

[Alvarriti]

9 minutes ago, kahitohoga said:

According to me Rtp is calculated how many people playing on the slot and it is distributed according between them ... For example if 10 people are playing gates 1000 and one will hit max win out of that 10 people than other 9 people will have less chance to win and need to pay for that RTP I think like that...

Not exactly, it is based on total wagered/total returned, regardless of whether that slot is played by 3 people or 3 million people.

Edited September 3, 2024 by Alvarriti

[BigXRP]

The fact that the RTP is 97%, for example, does not mean that of every $100 staked, at least $97 will be given back to the same player. You should understand it like this: If you invested $100  in the game and won $200 , then someone had to lose at the same time.

As a player you can never be sure whether you are just unlucky or being scamed...

The RTP result is not visible to players. This could only be assessed by a gambling commission that has access to all of the casino’s data

Edited September 3, 2024 by BigXRP

[avainferi]

RTP is a real thing, but it's misrepresented. It actually drives me nuts that Eddie says dumb stuff like "that's the enhanced RTP kicking in" because people actually believe that stuff and he knows that's not how it works. 

RTP is a theoretical value that you should expect x% of your money back in a very, very long time frame. Keep in mind it's theoretical, it's not guaranteed. You might beat beat RTP over a billion spins, and you might not. 

While I wouldn't call them a "scam", enhanced RTP is deliberately misleading. You cannot nor should not expect enhanced RTP to pay more in the short term. Whether RTP is 5% or 95%, your chances of winning on any given spin is the same. Better to just play the originals because at least you have the slim chance at nabbing a prag drop which are disabled for the enhanced games. 

[Alvarriti]

No one is debating how RTP works; I'm just asking how it feels. The idea is to share experiences. It seems to me that you can't always be on the losing side of RTP, at least not forever, and it feels very frustrating, at least for my type of game (bonus buys). Especially because, as I mentioned before, getting a max win in Gates means a 50x of the wagered amount. It's impossible to have a streak of 300,000 bets without hitting 10 or 20 times a 50x. That streak is impossible when playing slots with normal spins.

[MrRoundtree]

I think the biggest mistake in most brains are that the rtp is linked to any other player, betsize or anything else.

It's not that complicated that you think because it's just math and the rtp is always a long term theoretical value after millions and billions of spins and not for a single player or based on any betsize, coin or whatever.

In most cases, the slot doesn't know anything before the spin and after the spin (only the progressive slots are difficult and have a "mind" for few spins because of progress features). Additional the manipulation is not a thing that you can do as provider, of better what you never will do when you continue work in this business. It makes no sense to change anything on a permanent and save earning math formula. The Casino will win, always.

That's it. Nothing more, no magic, no balancing between players, nothing.

 

If you want to deep dive in the math, functionality of rng and many more, you can check as example this video. He explain all basics in a really easy way.

 

Greetings from a dev that worked few years with the Gauselmann/Merkur Group 

Edit: If you think that real slot machines works on different way than online machines, no, it's the same shit, just online

Edited September 3, 2024 by MrRoundtree

[Grarg]

RTP is just the average result, that's it. There's no scam or magic involved.

All slot spin and original bet results have a fixed probability. All slot results are pre-programmed in. The casino provider has a full table of the possible results, and the average of that is the RTP. The whole "billions of spins" thing is just marketing, but it's not wrong.

As for how bad you're running, that's just bias. When you hit a bonus immediately that pays 300X, you're running at like 1000% RTP. Nobody says anything about that. People have this delusion that EVERY single gambling session has run at RTP or BETTER, which is insane.

I've seen people go on huge heaters where they 10X their balance. Then they start spinning a slot and run at 50% RTP over 500 spins and complain about it. Pure delusion.

[Alvarriti]

I think these things can lead to misinterpretation due to a lack of transparency. As you mentioned, Eddie says one thing, but streams claim things like "RTP works," when in reality, it's just a number with no functional value.

However, there's no clear explanation on the slot (at first glance) about how RTP works, what the average number of bets validated by that RTP is, or anything that makes you think it's a truly functional margin. It would be as simple as adding a disclaimer, "RTP based on 10 million bets," but I've contacted support multiple times to find out the exact value, and even they can't tell me the real number. They say it's based on millions of bets, which could mean 1 million or 999 million bets—

it all seems very unclear.

By the way, just for an update and some real data, I just reviewed all the information on Wanted Dead or Alive, and it explicitly states that the RTP is based on 10 billion bets. Lol, what a joke—that must be the total number of buys/spins on Stake for this slot in a year. 😀

Gates of Olympus doesn't even show any information, so we could assume it might be 100 billion or more, haha. 🤡

Edited September 3, 2024 by Alvarriti

[MrRoundtree]

3 minutes ago, Alvarriti said:

I think these things can lead to misinterpretation due to a lack of transparency. As you mentioned, Eddie says one thing, but streams claim things like "RTP works," when in reality, it's just a number with no functional value.

However, there's no clear explanation on the slot (at first glance) about how RTP works, what the average number of bets validated by that RTP is, or anything that makes you think it's a truly functional margin. It would be as simple as adding a disclaimer, "RTP based on 10 million bets," but I've contacted support multiple times to find out the exact value, and even they can't tell me the real number. They say it's based on millions of bets, which could mean 1 million or 999 million bets—

it all seems very unclear.

Each Provider uses different amount of spins to validate the theoretical rtp depending on different things like volatile level etc. You can find these infos in most cases on the websites from each provider (nolimit as example give alot of infos about the "how to" of new slots incl. math and much more, just look for it).

For a normal Player it's absolutely not important if 100 million or 10000 million of spins. In most cases, you get the ~rtp after few hundred k spins +- a little bit. You can check these perfectly on all originals as example. I did more than 500 million spins on originals and the rtp is crazy exact on the point (+- 0,02%).

Just take it like it is: It's fun, it's gambling, it's a cool way to get some money on some day but in long term, you will always lose money (or you are a guy of 0,01% that quit gambling after profit)

Keep on spinning and just have fun with it

[Alvarriti]

5 minutes ago, MrRoundtree said:

Each Provider uses different amount of spins to validate the theoretical rtp depending on different things like volatile level etc. You can find these infos in most cases on the websites from each provider (nolimit as example give alot of infos about the "how to" of new slots incl. math and much more, just look for it).

For a normal Player it's absolutely not important if 100 million or 10000 million of spins. In most cases, you get the ~rtp after few hundred k spins +- a little bit. You can check these perfectly on all originals as example. I did more than 500 million spins on originals and the rtp is crazy exact on the point (+- 0,02%).

Just take it like it is: It's fun, it's gambling, it's a cool way to get some money on some day but in long term, you will always lose money (or you are a guy of 0,01% that quit gambling after profit)

Keep on spinning and just have fun with it

Thank you very much for your video, I'll check it out. Just to remind you, I mentioned something in my first message: this isn't about debating whether we're going to lose our money—that's guaranteed, no doubt about it. The point is that maybe you'd expect the RTP not to burn through it so quickly always, haha. But I'm not intending to complain about the losses with this message. And by the way, the originals are at least pretty horrible, haha.

[derikolol]

rtp is rtp, nothing more 

[georaul1994]

RTP it’s a legend, this RTP it’s just a fantasy because it’s base on about 100000000000 spins/bonuses bought. You will lose and continue losing because you’re not with infinite money or fake money like the streamers. So never think you’ll ever get something back, max win can be 65000 the spins but you can be one of those that lose 1 million to get back 65k. The more you play the more you will lose so don’t play anymore because stake you can win once then lose 1000 times 

[deadeagle33]

its a lot of text can u resume? there is a rtp or no?

[georaul1994]

RTP it’s just a Fairy Tail not real 

[McPh]

its not real

[Shanaya24]

11 hours ago, kahitohoga said:

According to me Rtp is calculated how many people playing on the slot and it is distributed according between them ... For example if 10 people are playing gates 1000 and one will hit max win out of that 10 people than other 9 people will have less chance to win and need to pay for that RTP I think like that...

true that is why those streamers have enormous profits, for every 1 big streamer win they can  fuck thousands of us and at the end of the year they show their rtp is correct of course not mentioning that the majority are fake wins

[TuguX]

I think it depends on the systems !

[Pisum1]

its not

[Alvarriti]

1 hour ago, georaul1994 said:

RTP it’s a legend, this RTP it’s just a fantasy because it’s base on about 100000000000 spins/bonuses bought. You will lose and continue losing because you’re not with infinite money or fake money like the streamers. So never think you’ll ever get something back, max win can be 65000 the spins but you can be one of those that lose 1 million to get back 65k. The more you play the more you will lose so don’t play anymore because stake you can win once then lose 1000 times 

Again, the initial message explains it perfectly. I’m not looking to avoid losing money; that’s guaranteed, it’s a fact, no one disputes it—you’re always going to lose money in a casino.

The point here is, what is the real probability of getting a 50x in 200,000 or 300,000 spins? In my case, it only happened 3/4 times in regular spins, it should have been many more times.  And surprisingly, the payouts always happen with low bets.

Edited September 3, 2024 by Alvarriti

[Alvarriti]

On 9/2/2024 at 11:12 PM, BigXRP said:

The fact that the RTP is 97%, for example, does not mean that of every $100 staked, at least $97 will be given back to the same player. You should understand it like this: If you invested $100  in the game and won $200 , then someone had to lose at the same time.

As a player you can never be sure whether you are just unlucky or being scamed...

The RTP result is not visible to players. This could only be assessed by a gambling commission that has access to all of the casino’s data

So, the "gambling commission" is based on the same country that provide the casino licenses? 💀

[rcrushzx517]

i also bonus buy alot but yea most of it will give u bad result but still i havent stop.. coz i got some maxwin already... gudluck buddy

 

[aldag]

I think it's pure luck

[CulitoFuerte]

Out of 25 bonus buys only one was above 1X 😂. I love playing on stake. Getting f every time
It's also teasing really good. Got the 1000x 8 times,  2 were on the same board /spin (I thought that's not even possible) with no connections obviously 

 

Edited January 7, 2025 by CulitoFuerte

[Papryk87]

The only game I kept track of any stats is Wanted and I wasn't really counting avg. return from bonuses but, 
I've spun on single currency and same bet size into 1960 bonuses for now which is: 1107 train bonuses (best win x wise here was 1,2k x), 793 duels (4,7k x win - 4 vs hit) and 60 dead bonuses (best one was 2,1k x).
0 base game full screens on the way.
So I think I got similar feeling regarding RTP, we just might be both on the bad luck boat