Every casino game has a return to player (RTP): the share of each unit wagered that comes back on average over a very large number of bets. The house edge is the rest. Both come straight from the payout table, so they can be computed exactly rather than measured.
Computing RTP from a payout table
Multiply each outcome’s probability by its payout multiplier and add them up:
RTP = Σ probability(outcome) × multiplier(outcome) house edge = 1 − RTP
Dice is the simplest case. On Stake, a win chance of c percent pays 99 / c times the bet. At 49.5% that is 2.00x, and at 10% it is 9.90x. Whatever target you choose, the RTP is the same:
RTP = (c / 100) × (99 / c) = 0.99 → house edge = 1%
Games with many outcomes, such as Plinko or Keno, need the full table, and the edge can differ between risk levels and row counts. The Payout Tables (opens in new tab) list every multiplier with its probability and the resulting RTP, and the house edge comparison (opens in new tab) puts all the Originals side by side.
The edge is a cost per unit wagered
The expected loss of a session is the total amount wagered times the house edge. It does not depend on the bet size or the number of bets on its own, only on their product.
| Total wagered | Expected loss |
|---|---|
| $1,000 | $10 |
| $10,000 | $100 |
| $100,000 | $1,000 |
This is why wagering toward a VIP level has a price. The VIP Calculator (opens in new tab)shows the wager left to the next level and its expected cost at each game’s edge.
How far a session drifts
RTP describes the average over a very large number of bets. A real session is a sample, and its actual return spreads around the RTP. The spread narrows with the square root of the number of bets.
For Dice at 49.5% and 2.00x, the return of a single bet is either 0 or 2, with a standard deviation of almost exactly 1 unit. Over n bets the standard deviation of the session’s return falls to 1 / √n:
| Bets | Standard deviation | Typical range of actual RTP |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 10.0% | 89% to 109% |
| 1,000 | 3.2% | 95.8% to 102.2% |
| 10,000 | 1.0% | 98.0% to 100.0% |
| 100,000 | 0.32% | 98.7% to 99.3% |
A session of a few hundred bets can easily finish above 100%, and that says nothing about the game being loose. A game with rare large multipliers, such as high-risk Keno or a slot with a 5,000x max win, spreads much wider for the same edge, because a few hits carry most of the return.
Reading your own numbers
- Profit and Loss (opens in new tab) loads your Stake bet archive and shows the RTP you actually got on each game next to the expected one.
- The Stake Simulator (opens in new tab) plays thousands of bets on a seed pair so you can watch the spread above happen with a virtual balance.
- The Seed Checker (opens in new tab) reports the RTP of a whole seed pair over millions of rounds, where it settles close to the published figure.