Pay table and odds
| Line | Pays | Chance |
|---|
Each reel has 20 stops. The odds come from how many of each symbol are on each reel, worked out over all 8,000 stop combinations. Pays include your stake: 1× is your stake back.
This slot simulator is a simple three-reel fruit machine with nothing hidden. The pay table, the number of each symbol on every reel, and the return to player are all on the page. It returns exactly 96.375% of what goes in over the long run. Spin with free play money, or run 1,000 spins in one go and watch how far a session can stray from that number.
How the slot simulator works
Each reel has 20 stops, so there are 20 × 20 × 20 = 8,000 possible results, each equally likely. Three sevens need the single 7 on every reel: 1 in 8,000. It pays 300×. A cherry on reel 1 alone, which happens 1 time in 5.3, just gives your stake back.
Add up every result times its pay and divide by 8,000, and you get 0.96375. That’s the RTP: for every £1 staked, 96.4p comes back on average, and 3.6p stays with the machine.
Why a session doesn’t look like 96%
- Hit rate: 28.3% of spins pay something, but most of those are just the stake back. Only 9.6% of spins pay more than the stake.
- Volatility: one spin varies by about 4.9 stakes. Over 1,000 spins that’s still a spread of roughly ±15% around the average. So one session can return 80% and the next 115%, from the same maths.
- Big wins are part of the RTP. The 300× and 80× lines add almost 12% to the return between them, and you won’t see them in most short sessions.
Real online slots work the same way, with more reels, paylines and features. Their RTP is usually published in the game’s help screen, but the reel layouts aren’t, so you can’t check the hit rate or volatility the way you can here.
To see how long a budget lasts at a given RTP, use the slot bankroll calculator. For what a bonus is worth after wagering, try the wagering requirement calculator.
The simulator shows one run at a time. To see what a slot costs on average per hour of play, use the expected loss calculator.
For the hourly cost of every game side by side, see the casino simulator page.
Many slots let you skip the base game and buy the bonus. The bonus buy calculator simulates 10,000 runs of buying bonuses to show how fast that eats a bankroll.
This simulator uses play money only. Real slots have a house edge on every spin. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.