This site began in 2018 as a small blog about online casino games, and this was its opening post. It is kept here, rewritten, because the address it sits at is part of the site’s history, but the first-person introduction it originally carried has been replaced with something a reader can actually use: a plain description of what the online casino category contains and how its parts differ from one another.
The four families of game
Almost everything in an online casino belongs to one of four groups, and the differences between them matter far more than the differences between individual titles.
Slots are the largest group by a wide margin. A slot is a fixed set of reels with a defined paytable, and the result of every spin is decided by a random number generator at the moment the spin is requested. Nothing about the machine’s recent history changes the next outcome. What varies between titles is the number of ways a combination can be formed, the volatility: how often a game pays and how much it pays when it does, and the bonus mechanics layered on top.
Table games (blackjack, roulette, baccarat, casino poker variants) carry a published house edge that comes out of the rules rather than out of the software. In blackjack the player’s decisions change that edge measurably, which is why the game attracts strategy in a way that a slot does not. That is the subject of the card counting post on this site.
Live dealer games are table games dealt by a person in a studio and streamed to the player. The rules are the same as their software counterparts; what changes is the pace, which is set by the dealer rather than by the player, and the table limits, which tend to be higher.
Video poker and instant games sit apart from both. Video poker is a draw poker hand against a paytable, and because the deck is defined, the correct play for any hand can be calculated exactly. Instant games (scratch cards, wheels, crash games) resolve in a single action with no decisions in between.
What “return to player” actually says
Every regulated game publishes a return-to-player figure, usually between 94 and 97 per cent for slots. It is the proportion of all money staked that the game returns across an extremely large number of rounds: millions, not hundreds. It is not a prediction about a session, an evening or a month, and a game with a 96 per cent RTP can return nothing at all over a hundred spins without anything being wrong.
Volatility is the figure that describes a session, and it is the one most often left out. A low-volatility slot pays small amounts frequently; a high-volatility slot pays rarely and larger. Two games with identical RTP can feel completely different for this reason alone, and the difference is entirely a matter of how the paytable distributes the same total return.
Where the industry has moved since 2018
The posts on this site date from 2018 and describe the market as it was then. Two things have changed enough to be worth stating plainly. Licensing has tightened in most European markets, with deposit limits, affordability checks and advertising restrictions that did not exist when these articles were written. And the games themselves have consolidated: a smaller number of studios now supply a larger share of the catalogue, so the same titles appear across operators that look unrelated from the outside.
Anything below the level of the mechanics (bonus terms, operator quality, payment methods) changes fast enough that a page written in 2018 cannot be trusted on it, and none of it is updated here.
Questions
Is this site a casino, or connected to one?
No. It is a reference site, and it does not take bets, sell anything or hold an operating licence. Three articles here cover casino games; the rest of the site is about how developer conferences are organised and attended.
Does a slot ever become “due” for a payout?
No. Each spin is resolved independently by a random number generator, so a long run without a win does not make the next spin more likely to pay. The belief that it does is common enough to have a name, the gambler’s fallacy, and it is wrong for every game in the four groups above.
Does a higher RTP mean a player will lose less?
Over a very large number of rounds, yes, marginally. Over one session it says almost nothing, because the figure is an average across millions of rounds. Volatility describes what a session is likely to look like, and the two figures are independent of each other.
Why are there casino articles on a conference site?
They are older pieces, published in 2018, and they sit in an archive of their own rather than in any of the sections above. The subject has nothing in common with the rest of the reference, which is why they are grouped separately.
Where can someone get help with gambling?
In the United Kingdom, GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, free and open at any hour. Most other jurisdictions run an equivalent service, and licensed operators are required to link to one.