Return to player, one shelf at a time

One number, five shelves, five different conditions

RTP, short for return to player, tells you what part of every stake placed on a game flows back in theory, averaged over a huge number of rounds. The slot dictionary defines it too. Less often mentioned: the condition behind the figure differs by shelf.

On a slot the studio’s model locks the percentage in; on RNG roulette the wheel’s layout sets it. On blackjack it only holds if you make the mathematically correct decision on every card. On plinko the studio publishes a value while you set the risk yourself. On video poker the pay table decides everything.

Whatever does not come back is the house edge, and the two always add up to 100.

All you need to know is what each number assumes.

Fact sheet for the payout shelf

As of 12 October 2026, the ‘High RTP’ tab mostly lists the games that have the word ‘Hot’ in their name. So Willy's Hot Chillies (96.00%) and Red Hot BBQ (95.66%) are there, while Well of Wilds Megaways (97.71%) is not. How the tabs and the search box work is covered in the lesson on lobby filters.

Seven games from both ends of the scale

The values come from the studios’ own pages and rules files. The setting used at Dukat.bet is not public, so confirm it in the help screen.

Between the two extreme rows, the house share differs by more than twelve times: on 100 euros of turnover it is 5.06 euros on the book slot and 40 cents on Blackjack Neo.

Still, this is no ranking: the top four rows hold unconditionally, the bottom three only if you meet the condition.

Where the percentage rests on your decisions

In the Relax Gaming rules file, the 99.6% of Blackjack Neo comes with the addition ‘with optimal play’. It means making the basic-strategy move on every hand: knowing when to stand, double or split. Play on gut feeling and you get less.

The two blackjacks do not share the same rules either. Blackjack Neo deals from four decks, shuffles before every hand and allows doubling after a split, but you can split only once. Multihand Blackjack Pro uses six decks and lets you double only on 9, 10 or 11, yet you can split up to three hands. Small details like these explain the gap between the two numbers.

On roulette there is nothing to get wrong. Roulette Nouveau has 37 pockets, and when zero comes up every bet not placed on zero loses, so the house share is simply 1/37, or 2.70%. Whether you bet on red or on a single number does not change the price, only the swings.

Video poker is the trickiest shelf. The 99.54% of 9/6 Jacks or Better is a theoretical value with optimal strategy, and the two numbers are the payouts for a full house and a flush. For the lobby’s Jacks or Better (Platipus), though, the studio publishes no pay table, so that figure cannot be applied.

No pay table, no RTP.

The rules in detail are on the shelf of software card and dice games.

Empty columns: Novomatic and the Relax slots

Greentube, the online developer of Novomatic games, does not publish RTP. Publicly you only see a volatility number with no scale, and the rest of the data sits behind a ‘Client login’. That is why we put no percentage next to Lord of the Ocean or any other Novomatic title. A demo will not help either: according to the lobby, no Novomatic game has one.

The RTP of Relax Gaming slots is not published either; only the rules files of their two table games give a value. Curiously, it is precisely these two, Blackjack Neo and Roulette Nouveau, that carry a ‘Slots’ label in the lobby.

Where no figure is published, one reliable source remains: the game’s own info panel after launch. If it is missing there too, the column stays empty (which is information as well).

Comparing two shelves in six steps

1. Open the game and its info or help icon; do not go by the lobby tile.
2. Write down the published RTP and next to it the house edge: 100 minus the number.
3. Check whether a condition comes with the number: ‘with optimal play’, ‘theoretical’, a specific pay table.
4. For a table game, read the rules line: number of decks, doubling, splitting, the payout for a natural, and on roulette how zero is handled.
5. If the number depends on decisions and you do not know basic strategy, do not count on the full value.
6. Only then compare the two shelves on the same turnover: turnover × house edge.

Five hundred euros of turnover, three tables

Worked example with invented values – independent of Dukat.bet:

One evening Zsófi puts 500 EUR through the games. She picks from three invented options: a slot at 95.50%, a blackjack that returns 99.50% with optimal play, and the same blackjack the way she actually plays it – mistakes included, at about 98.00%. What is the average cost of the evening in each case, and how much slot turnover would match the cost of the third case?

Solution.

1. Slot: 500 × 4.50% = 22.50 EUR.
2. Blackjack played flawlessly: 500 × 0.50% = 2.50 EUR.
3. Blackjack Zsófi’s way: 500 × 2.00% = 10.00 EUR, four times what the paper promises.
4. On the slot, an average cost of 10 EUR would come at 10 ÷ 0.045 ≈ 222 EUR of turnover.

Blackjack is still the cheaper shelf, but of the 20 EUR saved on paper against the slot, mistakes eat 7.50 EUR. All three numbers are averages, not a forecast for a single evening.

Four lines for your notes before you switch shelves

• The published RTP and its source: help screen, rules file or the studio’s page. A lobby tab is not a source.
• The condition behind the number: a fixed model, optimal play or a specific pay table.
• The house edge converted to the same turnover, so both shelves are measured in one unit.
• If no value is published: an empty column, not an estimate.

With the percentages sorted, turn to the risk levels shelf to see how hard a game swings on its way to the average.