How big are your chances of winning on a slot machine on an online casino?

Just like land-based slot machines, online slot machines are completely random, so you need to keep in mind that no amount of skill will ever give you the edge when it comes to winning on these popular casino games.

It is true that all casino games are designed to provide the house with a built-in edge that diminishes the chances of potential payouts and ensures that the casino makes more money than it pays out in the long term, and this does not come as a surprise since we all know casinos, both land-based and online, are a business, and no business is ever created to lose money.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that slot machines are rigged and that your chances of winning on them are non-existing, not at all!

Online slot machines use a random number generator algorithm (RNG) to ensure fairness and unpredictability, and that each spin is independent of the previous ones, so in the short term, you could perfectly well win on these machines (even several times) and take some decent amount of money out of them.

However, as mentioned before, they are designed to give the house the advantage over the players in the long-term, and this is something that is determined by the Return to Player percentage (RTP), which is another crucial statistic to keep in mind when analyzing your chances of winning on a particular online slot.

The concept of RTP can pretty much be summed up as the percentage that represents the average amount of money a slot machine will pay back to players over time. For example, if a slot machine has an RTP of 95%, it means that, on average, players can expect to win back $95 for every $100 they wager.

But again, it seems important to reiterate that the RTP of an online slot machine is calculated over the long term and is based on thousands or even millions of spins, so don’t get intimidated by this factor right off the bat.

It’s also worth mentioning that the RTP of every online slot machine must be of public knowledge, allowing players to see and determine their actual possibilities of winning on a specific slot.

Players can usually find this percentage on the casino’s slot information page, but if not, they can always resort to the web and quickly find the RTP of the machine they are looking for.

In case you were wondering, online casinos have no possibility of manipulating the RTP of their slots. Contrary to what some may think, online casinos are not the actual owners of the slots. They just rent the slots from game developers while the games continue to be stored on the developers’ servers, meaning that casinos don’t have the power to access and change vital settings of the game such as the RTP.

And when it comes to what a good RTP looks like, it’s well known that to be considered good RTP it should at least be 96% or higher. Some of the most popular and more commonly played online slots usually have an RTP that ranges from 96% to even 99%, while some of the least popular ones are those with an RTP lower than 96%, and for a good reason.

But apart from the RTP, the specific chances of winning on a slot machine can also vary depending on another important factor that we know as volatility.

While RTP represents the average amount of money a slot machine will pay back to players over time, the volatility refers to the risk level associated with a particular slot machine and represents how often the slot will pay out.

This means that high volatility slots offer larger payouts but less frequently, while low volatility slots have more frequent wins but with smaller amounts.

So, in essence, your chances of winning on an online slot machine will highly depend on the slot you choose to play on and that specific slot’s RTP and volatility.

Therefore, if you decide to play on an online slot machine with high RTP (96% or higher) and low volatility, your chances of winning are pretty big; but on the other hand, if you decide to play on an online slot machine with low RTP (lower that 96%) and high volatility, then your chances of winning are pretty scarce.