How to Calculate Estimated Value
1. Understand the Basics
Before diving into calculations, it’s important to understand a few key terms:
Payout Percentage (RTP): This represents the percentage of all wagered money that a slot machine will return to players over time. For example, a machine with a 88% RTP will return $88 for every $100 wagered, on average.
House Edge: The portion of money that the casino keeps. If a slot has a 88% RTP, the house edge is 12%.
Volatility: This measures how often and how much a slot machine pays out. High-volatility slots pay larger amounts less frequently, while low-volatility slots pay smaller amounts more frequently.
2. Gather Required Information
To estimate the value of a slot machine, you need the following data:
Estimated Base Game RTP: This is something we will calculate through 10s of thousands of spins.
Bet Size: The amount you plan to wager per spin.
Number of Spins: The total number of spins you play.
Bonus Features: The payout value recovered from specific features
Increment Meters: Some games have progressive meters, each time you get “X” symbol on screen that meter will increase.
3. Calculate the Expected Value (EV)
What if I told you Vegas Matt played this for a reason?
He had a calculated risk based on the current values of the progressive meters on the screen. He had already done the math to figure out what his estimated loss could be.
Simple Calculation for one of the Most Popular Games Regal Riches!
Example:
Regal Riches is bound to these parameters for their Progressive meters
Purple: Starts at 30 and Must Hit by 75
Green: Starts at 40 and Must Hit by 100
Gold: Starts at 50 and Must Hit by 125
So how should we collect data on this game to figure out when we should play.
FOR EXAMPLE PURPOSES ONLY!!!!
In this example you are going to collect all data associated with the game, this will take many many many runs to calculate specific numbers. For this instance we are going to try and figure out the entry point for purple that makes the most sense based on the single session of data we collected.
In this Example you can see on the right hand side the Money In vs Money Out. This is showing we lost $34.40 from chasing the purple.
On the left hand side you can see our data collection for the the amount of spins before receiving an additional Gem you can receive a range of 1-4 Gems on any given spin.
We had a total of 268 Spins and collected a total of 19 Purple Gems giving us an Average of 14.11 spins to receive a purple gem.
We triggered the Bonus at the Must Hit By feature of 75 and that bonus paid us $45. For an Average payout for the purple of 60 units.
So to figure out what our base game % payout would be we would use this simple formula.
4. Advanced Calculation
Starting Point: 30 Purple
Must Hit By Value: 75 Purple
Progress Rate: 1 Purple every 14.11 spins
Base Game Payout Percentage: 60.3%
Must-Hit Feature Average Payout: 60x the bet size
Step 1: Total Spins to Trigger the Must-Hit Feature
Step 2: Contribution of the Must-Hit Feature
The must-hit feature pays out an average of 60x the bet size. Over the 635 spins, the average contribution per spin from the feature is:
This is the expected value (EV) per spin from the must-hit feature.
Step 3: Base Game Contribution
The base game pays out 60.3% of the bet size per spin. In terms of EV, this is:
Step 4: Total EV Per Spin
The total EV per spin combines the base game EV and the feature EV:
This means that the total EV per spin is 69.75% of your bet size. You are losing 30.25% of your bet size on each spin at the start.
Step 5: Determine When You Break Even
To break even, the EV from the must-hit feature must fully compensate for the base game loss. This happens when the counter is closer to 75 Purple, as the number of spins required to trigger the feature decreases, increasing its contribution per spin.
Conclusion
You should start playing when the counter reaches approximately 64 Purple. At this point, the EV per spin is equal to your bet size, meaning you are no longer losing money on average. Playing earlier than this would result in a negative EV.
This is how you can simply calculate EV for any game using simple math. It is not a perfect calculation as you would have to do 10,000,000+ spins to reach the exact % of RTP but this gives us a range and allows us to play inside of this range to determine when a game can become positive or negative.
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