SG777 Hit frequency Explained — How Often a Game Pays Anything

Hit frequency is a word most pages use while assuming the reader already knows it. This one does not.

Hit frequency (also called hit rate) — A measure of the portion of spins that produce any win, no matter how small, and not of the total returned over time.

What Hit frequency actually means

Counting is all hit frequency involves: what proportion of the spins played return a payout, whatever its size, even less than the stake. Paytable and reel maths fix it just as they fix RTP and volatility, but the question it answers is not the one either of those answers. Three different things are measured: RTP gives the long-run total returned, volatility gives the spread of that total between frequent-small and rare-large, and hit frequency gives only how often any winning combination appears.

Using it in practice

How a session feels depends on hit frequency as well as RTP, since a game that hits rarely will show longer dry spells than the RTP number hints at. Either number alone tells less about the real feel of a session than the two read together, wherever a studio publishes hit frequency with RTP. Read it beside the rtp explained entry, as a page that explains one nearly always covers the rest.

Game pages here use terms like Hit frequency throughout, and any figure the studio leaves unpublished is flagged as such, not replaced by a number from a comparison site. It accounts for the missing entries in several spec tables on these pages.

A worked example

Across a large sample, a 25% hit frequency works out at roughly one paying spin in four on average; the other three pay nothing. Out of 400 spins, around 100 win; when the game has moderate RTP and volatility, most of those wins are likely to be under the stake. That figure leaves open if the 100 wins total over or under the stake; RTP closes that question.

The common misreading

Many take a high hit frequency as proof that a game is ‘looser’ or pays back more. It does not follow. A 40% hit rate does not guarantee a high return: the game can still give back only 90% overall since most hits are below the stake, whereas a game with a 15% hit rate can return 97% by paying well when it hits. One setting decides how frequently you win, and another, unrelated one decides the size of the total return.

RTP and volatility are different measures from hit frequency, although comparison tables can blend the three together into one ‘how good is this game’ impression. Because the three numbers move independently of each other, a high-hit-frequency game might be low-volatility or high-volatility, among other combinations, and a full picture needs all of them.

Checking Hit frequency in the lobby you play at

1. Start a game in the lobby you use and look for its info or help screen.
2. Hit frequency should be listed there, and the definition above tells you how to read it.
3. Compare it with the same entry on another title before you choose one to play.
4. Write your stake and your stop point down before your first round.