JILI365 Hit frequency Explained — How Often a Game Pays Anything
Hit frequency (also called hit rate): What share of spins pay any win, however small, leaving aside the total returned over time.
Key facts and contents
- Term
- Hit frequency
- Short for
- also called hit rate
- Set by
- The studio behind the game, in the course of building the paytable and reel maths
- Where you meet it
- Spec sheets and the studio's info panels, a type of information published less often than RTP
- Not the same as
- Where comparison tables blur the three into a single 'how good is this game' impression, remember that hit frequency is not RTP and not volatility. One number does not predict the others: high hit frequency may go with low volatility or high volatility, or something else, and a full picture needs the whole set of three.
Almost no casino page explains Hit frequency, though it is a term that shows up on every one of them.
Hit frequency (also called hit rate) — What share of spins pay any win, however small, leaving aside the total returned over time.
What Hit frequency actually means
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Term | Hit frequency |
| Written out | also called hit rate |
| In one line | What share of spins pay any win, however small, leaving aside the total returned over time. |
| Fixed by | The studio behind the game, in the course of building the paytable and reel maths |
| Where you meet it | Spec sheets and the studio’s info panels, a type of information published less often than RTP |
Take every spin played and ask how many pay something, even less than you staked; that fraction is hit frequency. Where RTP and volatility come from the game’s paytable and reel maths, so does this, and yet its question differs from both. The total returned over the long run is RTP, the way it is divided between frequent-small and rare-large is volatility, and the frequency of stops on any winning combination is hit frequency, which describes nothing else.
A worked example
When a game gives its hit frequency as 25%, that works out to roughly one spin in four paying something across a large sample on average, with the other three paying nothing. If RTP and volatility are both moderate for the game, then over 400 spins about 100 win, and most of those likely return less than the stake. That figure does not address whether the 100 wins together exceed or fall short of what was staked; RTP is the number that does.
Using it in practice
Visible dry spells run longer than RTP alone would predict when a game’s hit frequency is low, which matters for how a session feels even with unremarkable long-run maths. Either number alone is a weaker guide to how a session will feel than the two read together, in cases where a studio publishes hit frequency alongside RTP. It becomes clearer when read alongside what rtp explained means, because the same clause usually carries all of them.
Game pages on this site are full of terms like Hit frequency, and when the studio publishes no figure behind one, the page says so in place of quoting a number from a comparison site. Several of the spec tables here have empty cells for this reason.
The common misreading
A game with a high hit frequency often gets assumed to pay more, or to be ‘looser’. It does not follow. Frequent hits do not guarantee a high return: 40% of spins can hit and the game still return just 90% overall, as most hits are smaller than the stake, while 15% of spins hitting can give 97% when the hits pay well. Size of the total return and frequency of a win are fixed independently of one another.
Where comparison tables blur the three into a single ‘how good is this game’ impression, remember that hit frequency is not RTP and not volatility. One number does not predict the others: high hit frequency may go with low volatility or high volatility, or something else, and a full picture needs the whole set of three.
Checking Hit frequency at JILI365
- At JILI365, open any game and look for its info or help screen.
- Read Hit frequency there with the definition above in mind, and find it first.
- Look at the same entry on another title and weigh the two before deciding what to play at JILI365.
- Note down your stake and your stop point ahead of your first round at JILI365.
FAQ
What part should Hit frequency play when I choose a game?
Visible dry spells run longer than RTP alone would predict when a game's hit frequency is low, which matters for how a session feels even with unremarkable long-run maths. Either number alone is a weaker guide to how a session will feel than the two read together, in cases where a studio publishes hit frequency alongside RTP.
Is it open to a casino to change Hit frequency?
Not on this site's evidence. The studio, not the operator, owns a value behind hit frequency when the game's own mathematics sets it, and where the studio publishes nothing, no outside source can confirm it either.
In what ways do people get Hit frequency wrong?
A game with a high hit frequency often gets assumed to pay more, or to be 'looser'. It does not follow. Frequent hits do not guarantee a high return: 40% of spins can hit and the game still return just 90% overall, as most hits are smaller than the stake, while 15% of spins hitting can give 97% when the hits pay well. Size of the total return and frequency of a win are fixed independently of one another.