The number
Two names for one number, and what that number costs you an hour
What a published return to player figure actually describes, what it cannot describe, and how to turn it into the price of an hour at the game you were going to play anyway.
One quantity, two names, and a long run that nobody ever plays
Every casino game keeps a settled share of everything staked on it over a long enough run, and the trade has two names for that share depending on the side of the table it is quoted from (the "return to player" from the player's side, the "house edge" from the operator's). They are one quantity rather than two, they add up to a hundred per cent between them ("RTP" and "edge", in the shorthand the trade uses for each), and neither of them describes an evening.
The confusion that follows is not accidental, although it is not quite dishonest either. A return of ninety-six per cent is a statement about millions of rounds pooled across every player of the game; the person reading it is about to play a few hundred, and the figure has very little to say about those (the supplier prints a true number, and the lobby prints it where a reader will take it for a promise).
This page is about the gap between the two, which is where almost every argument about "luck" actually lives, and about the one conversion that closes it. A share of the stake becomes useful the moment it is expressed as the cost of an hour.
The objection, which has to be dealt with first
A site paid by casinos has an interest in making the arithmetic of the games look mild, and the figures below are the ones that make it look least mild (the "house edge" is the number a marketing department would delete if it were allowed to). The answer we can give is that not one of them is ours: a return is published by the supplier inside the game, and a reader can open that panel before staking a cent (the "i" button, or the menu behind the three bars).
That is the check we would far rather hand over than a verdict. Count the pockets on a roulette wheel and the edge is established beyond anybody's contradiction, without needing to trust us, the operator or the supplier who built the thing (thirty-seven pockets on the "single zero" wheel, thirty-eight where a second one has been added).
We know of no authority in Canada that publishes a table of returns, and we publish none either (where a figure appears on this site it carries the panel or the supplier's own page as its source). Where we could not read either of those, the space is left empty rather than filled from a catalogue.
The limitation is short and real. Several lobbies refuse a connection from outside the country (an HTTP 403, the server declining to serve the page), so for those games we have no reading of our own and say as much in the "source" line of the table.
The number arrives after the definition, and a coin teaches it
A bet is priced by two things and no others: the chance of the outcome, and the sum paid when the outcome arrives (the "odds" in one sense of that word, and the "payout" in the other). A coin is the cleanest demonstration available, because the chance is exactly one half and nobody argues about it.
Stake a dollar on a coin at "even money" and the arithmetic gives everything back: half the time the dollar returns doubled and half the time it is gone, so the return is a hundred per cent (a game no casino would ever offer, since it earns the house nothing at all, and the "expected value" of the bet stands at exactly a dollar). Now pay the winner ninety cents instead of a dollar, leave the coin exactly as it was, and the return falls to ninety-five per cent.
Nothing about the coin has changed. The edge was built entirely in the payout, and that is where it is built in every game a casino deals (the "paytable" is the instrument, and the rules of the game are decoration around it).
Roulette is the same trick performed with a wheel. Put a unit on each of the thirty-seven numbers of a European wheel and you have staked thirty-seven units to collect thirty-six (one number arrives, paid at thirty-five to one, and the stake on it comes back), so the missing unit out of thirty-seven is 2.70 per cent of everything staked, which is what the "house edge" of the game amounts to in practice.
The American wheel adds a zero, which changes none of the payouts and all of the arithmetic: thirty-eight units staked, thirty-six collected, two units gone out of thirty-eight (the "double zero" wheel, labelled "American roulette" in most lobbies). That is 5.26 per cent, very nearly double, for a game that deals the same way and looks the same on a screen!
What it costs an hour, which is the only form worth budgeting in
A return is a price on a volume of stake, and a volume of stake is produced by a rate of play, so the figure a player can actually use is the price of an hour. Slots run quickly (six hundred spins an hour is an ordinary pace on a desktop, and "autoplay" is faster still), so a dollar a spin is six hundred dollars of stake inside the hour, which is a larger volume than most players would guess at before counting it.
At a return of ninety-six per cent that hour carries an expected cost of twenty-four dollars, and at ninety-four per cent the same hour carries thirty-six. The two games sit in the same lobby under the same "slots" tab, they are advertised in identical words; the difference between them is four per cent of six hundred against six per cent of the same six hundred, which is half again on the price of the evening.
The same conversion on the two wheels is one we would do before sitting down at either of them. Ten dollars a spin at forty spins an hour (a dealt table is far slower than a reel) is four hundred dollars of stake, which costs ten dollars and eighty cents on the European wheel and twenty-one dollars and five cents on the American one (the "outside bets" carry the same edge as the numbers do, since the zero takes those too).
Carry that out to a month and the number becomes a budget rather than a curiosity: four evenings of two hours, at twenty-four dollars an hour, is a hundred and ninety-two dollars of expected cost (a sum of the same order as a concert, a dinner or a pair of tickets). That is a figure a person can set beside anything else he buys for an evening, which is the comparison nobody in this trade ever makes for him.
Blackjack is the exception that proves the rule, because its edge depends on what the player does rather than on the game alone (a "basic strategy" card, followed exactly, brings a common rule set to something near half a per cent). The same game played on instinct gives back several times that, so it is the one place on the floor where the figure in the panel is a ceiling and not a price, and the "rules of the table" settle the rest of it.
A lobby that publishes the return?
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Landing page: the operator’s Canadian home pageLanding page named in the operator's programme link sheet, 14 October 2026. We publish no amounts.
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What the figure cannot settle, said before anything else
The published return describes a run so long that no person will ever play it, and that is not a quibble about precision; it is the character of the number itself. A game returning ninety-six per cent over a hundred million rounds is perfectly consistent with an evening that gives back nothing, and with one that gives back five times the stake, which is why the figure is always stated for the "long run" and never for a session.
"Variance" is the trade's name for how the return is delivered, and two games carrying identical figures can be entirely different propositions. One pays small amounts often and the other pays rarely and large, and the second will spend most of an evening below water even where its arithmetic is the friendlier of the two (the trade calls the first sort "low volatility", and a panel will sometimes print a "hit frequency" beside it).
The second thing the figure cannot settle is which build of a game you have in front of you. Several suppliers ship a title in more than one configuration (the same name, the same artwork, a different number in the panel), and the panel inside the game is the only place we know of where that question is answered for the lobby you are actually in.
A progressive jackpot complicates it further, because a part of the published return sits inside a prize that almost nobody collects (the pot is built out of the stakes themselves, and the figure counts it as returned). The number is honest; the experience of it is not the experience the number describes, which is worth knowing before a "must drop" banner does its work.
There is also the question of what the figure covers. A return quoted for a game with a "feature buy" or a side bet usually describes the base game, and the alternative is priced separately in the panel; a reader who intends to use either should look for its own line (the "base game" figure and the "bonus buy" figure can differ by a point or more).
From a share of the stake to a decision a person can make
So the practical shape of the thing is three multiplications long, and not one of them needs a tool. Take the stake per round, the rounds per hour and the edge, multiply the three together, and the answer is the price of an hour of the game you intend to play (a dollar, six hundred rounds, four per cent, twenty-four dollars, and the sum takes ten seconds).
A player who performs that arithmetic once holds something no offer on this site could hand him, which is a budget written in the unit he actually spends. He also holds the answer to the question the trade prefers to leave open, namely whether the evening is worth what it costs.
We publish no score for any game and we never will, because a score would be our opinion of a number you can read for yourself in the panel. What we can do is say where the panel is, what the figure in it means, and what it does not mean.
The rest of it belongs to the player. Read the return, turn it into an hour, and spend what the hour is honestly worth to you rather than what a banner suggests it might be worth!
Platinum Play
Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892
Open Platinum PlayCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Blackjack Ballroom Casino
MGA · Kahnawake
Open Blackjack Ballroom CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Grand Hotel Casino
MGA · Kahnawake
Open Grand Hotel CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Questions readers ask
What does a 96 per cent return actually mean?
It means that across a very large number of rounds the game gives back ninety-six dollars of every hundred staked on it and keeps four, which is the same statement as a house edge of four per cent. The figure describes the long run and not a session, and the distance between those two things is the subject of this page.
Is a higher return always the better game?
Not on its own, because the same return can be delivered in shapes that feel nothing alike: a game of low "variance" hands it back in small frequent amounts, and one of high variance in rare large ones. The return tells you the average price of the stake, and variance tells you how long the average takes to show itself.
Does the same slot have the same return in every lobby?
Not necessarily. Several suppliers ship a title in more than one configuration, so a familiar name can carry different returns in different lobbies, and the figure inside the game's own information panel is the only one describing the build in front of you.
Where can I read the return of a game before I play it?
In the information panel of the game itself, reached from the "i" or from the menu, where the figure is normally printed beside the rules. It is a reading a player can take before staking anything at all, and it beats any table of returns compiled elsewhere, including one compiled by us.
By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012
