What is meant by a games “payback” or “rated payback”?
“Payback” is the commonly used term among players, but a statistician would more accurately call it “Expected Return” which is defined as “a probability-weighted average of all possible outcomes.” If you are playing a game that has an Expected Return of 100.75% (e.g., full pay Deuces Wild), then over the long run you can expect an average of 75 cents gain for every $100 wagered. If you are playing 600 hands per hour on a five-coin quarter machine, then you are wagering $750 per hour, and you have an “expected” gain of $750 x 0.0075 = $5.62 per hour. Don’t forget that these ratings assume that you are playing a game with the designated payoff schedule, that the machine is honest (i.e., that every unseen card has equal probability of appearing at any time), and you are playing near-perfect strategy. To allow for human error, my published ratings are typically 0.01% to 0.02% less than the perfect play rating given by game analysis programs.
