Winning Hit Frequency in Online Slots Explained

Winning Hit Frequency in Online Slots Explained

Full list of slots with disclosed winning hit frequency

RTP (House Edge), Volatility (Variation) and Winning Hit Frequency are the most important parameters of any slot game. However, I have noticed that a large group of online casino players pay rather little attention to Winning Hit Frequency though they definitely should.

With that being said, let us learn about:

  • Winning Hit Frequency (will be referred as Hit Frequency further in the article) and why it is worth to become familiar with it

  • How Hit Frequency affects Volatility and RTP (House Edge)

  • Types of Hit Frequency

  • Top 5 Hit Frequency online slots

What’s Hit Frequency

Online slot’s gameplay, like any other casino game, consists of rounds. The round of the online slot game is called “Spin”. At the end of each “Spin”, an online slot produces some outcome, and, as a result of it, a casino player either gets some winning or not.

Hit Frequency tells us how often a casino player is going to get any winning at the end of each “Spin”, on average. Belonging rather to the realm of probabilities, Hit Frequency is measured in percentages.

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Now you can see how Hit Frequency is not rocket science at all, though it is perhaps a good idea to keep in mind that:

  • Hit Frequency is all about the fact of getting a winning, and the size of it does not play any role. For example, even the smallest possible winning counts as a legit hit for Hit Frequency purposes.

  • Also, if we are talking about multi-paylines slots (the absolute majority of them actually are), then even winning per only one line is counted as a Hit. It does not matter even if the other 8 paylines (can be any number) have lost. As I said before, one line is already enough.

  • Hit Frequency value is determined by a computer program that runs this particular online slot in the background. Hence, Hit Frequency is a constant number, and the slot’s producer knows for sure what value it has. Though it is fair to notice that the majority of slot providers do not make this information public for some reason so that sometimes it is impossible to know what Hit Frequency a particular online slot has.

  • The last thing to say, sometimes we can get a situation when a casino player has not managed to hit a winning per line, but he/she has gotten some valuable opportunity, Free Spins or Bonus Game would be good examples. In that case, it still counts as a Hit since it produces value for online casino players.

Here’s an example of how a player has ended up with a winning at the end of the round (spin). It is small and not exciting, but it still counts as a Hit.

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Here’s an example of how a player has not hit any winning, and, jumping forward, this is the most probable outcome of the spin on average.

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What’s average Hit Frequency on the market

I have scrutinized quite a decent chunk of online slots that disclose the info about Hit frequency and come to the conclusion that 95% of online slots have Hit Frequency around 20-40%.

To be more precise:

Therefore, I would say that the gold standard of the industry in terms of Hit Frequency is 30% because this is a good compromise between the size of the winnings and how often you can get them.

For sure, you can come across online slots with Hit Frequency as low as 5-10% or as high as 50-60%, but those are rather exceptions than the rule.

Why Hit Frequency is tricky

Hit Frequency is a rather one-sided parameter as it takes into account only whether the winning has happened or not. What it misses out is the size of the winning. So to say, there can be many situations when a casino player gets only a half of what he/she has paid per Spin, and it still counts as a Hit.

For example, a player has set spin cost to be 10 EUR, and he /she gets 5 EUR of the winning. For sure, it doesn't make any good since it can not even cover up the initial investment, but the game considers it as a winning anyway.

Hit Frequency’s impact on Volatility and RTP (House Edge)

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Hit Frequency and Volatility. Most of the time, there is a strong connection between Hit Frequency and Volatility (or sometimes is called Variation) in video slots. Thus, an online slot with Low Hit Frequency is more likely to be a High Volatility slot, and, on the opposite side, High Hit Frequency often results in Low Volatility level.

It is a very predictable thing to have since if an online slot allows to win relatively often then the size of the winning can not be that big on average. Frequent low paying winnings, on their part, is a strong sign of low Volatility level.

Hit Frequency and RTP. On the other hand, Hit Frequency does not affect RTP at all. You can easily come across many online slots with High Hit Frequency and High RTP (Bloodsuckers, Hit Frequency 41%, RTP 98%), Medium Hit Frequency and Low RTP (Babushkas, Hit Frequency 29.8%, RTP 95.8%), Low Hit Frequency and Medium RTP (Sakura Fortune, Hit Frequency 21%, RTP 96.61%). Given that, there is clearly no connection.

Types of Hit Frequency

Hit Frequency might be divided into groups based on the probability of which event they predict:

  • Hit Frequency of getting any winning per line. Most of the time we refer to Hit Frequency exactly in that meaning and this is the most probable event to happen (as I said earlier, around 20-40%).

  • Hit Frequency of triggering Free Spins round. Here we separate Free Spins from other winnings, and assess only how it is likely to get Free rounds in a particular slot. As you may have guessed, Free Spins are much harder to trigger in comparison to ordinary winning per line (do not expect it to be more than 5%).

  • Hit Frequency of activating the Bonus Game is very similar to Hit Frequency of Free Spins in the sense that they are both difficult to hit (around 1-5% on average).

  • Hit Frequency of progressive jackpot is the toughest one, no question about that. Here we can witness an incredible 50,000,000 to 1 chances.

Top 5 Hit Frequency slots

Making this rating I have taken into account RTP level as well because I believe that you guys are interested only in online slots that can boast with both High Hit Frequency and High RTP % at the same time.

1) Bloodsuckers by NetEnt. Hit Frequency 41%. RTP 98%.

2) Bloodsuckers 2 by NetEnt. Hit Frequency 40.7%. RTP 96.94%.

3) Gold Factory by Microgaming. Hit Frequency 38.77%. RTP 96.54%.

4) Steam Tower by NetEnt. Hit Frequency 34.3%. RTP 97.04%.

5) Jack Hammer by NetEnt. Hit Frequency 24.91%. RTP 96.96%.

Where to learn about Hit Frequency of a particular slot

Unfortunately, software providers often prefer not to disclose this information. My assumption why they do so is that slot producers try to avoid unnecessary confusion. It could be the case because slot developers already have such a parameter as Volatility which somewhat reflects how much of Hit Frequency you are going to get.

As we have discussed before, Low Volatility slots usually have High Hit Frequency (around 30-40%), and High Volatility slots usually have Low Hit Frequency (closer to 20%).

Hence, once you have established what Volatility level a particular online slot has then you will also get a general idea of how frequently you are going to hit any winning.

In this section, you can learn what Volatility level each online slot has.

Which slots are better: Low or High Hit Frequency?

It is only a question of your personal preferences, because as we have learnt Hit Frequency affects only Volatility. Therefore, if you prefer highly volatile online slots, then you’d better grab the ones with low Hit Frequency, and vice versa.

Conclusion

Now you can see how significantly Hit Frequency affects overall gaming experience, and, as a result, why Hit Frequency is a big deal in online slots.

As for me personally, I prefer Hit Frequency to be somewhere around 30%. In my opinion, it is a good balance between the size of the prize and how often you can get them. Moreover, the majority of software providers certainly feel the same way as they are prone to produce slot games with Hit Frequency of exactly that level, on average.