PH22 Hit frequency Explained — How Often a Game Pays Anything

On most pages that use the word Hit frequency, readers are expected to know it already. This one does not.

Hit frequency (also called hit rate) — The share of spins that pay out anything at all, however small, whatever the total returned over time.

What Hit frequency actually means

Counting is all hit frequency involves: of all the spins played, how many land a payout of any size, including one below the stake. The game’s paytable and reel maths determine it, as they do RTP and volatility, yet it speaks to a different question than either. RTP is the long-run total returned, volatility is how that total is spread between frequent small wins and rare large ones, and hit frequency is only how often the reels stop on any winning combination.

The common misreading

Players tend to believe a high hit frequency signals a game that pays more, or one that is ‘looser’. It does not follow. Hitting on 40% of spins does not stop a game returning just 90% overall, since most of those hits are smaller than the stake; a game hitting on 15% of spins can still return 97%, because its hits pay well. Two separate dials govern win frequency and total return size.

Hit frequency differs from both RTP and volatility, even though comparison tables sometimes merge the three into one vague sense of ‘how good is this game’. High hit frequency can come with low volatility, or with high volatility, or in any other pairing, because the three numbers vary on their own and you need all of them for a full picture.

A worked example

A game that states a 25% hit frequency returns something on roughly one spin in four, on average, over a large sample, and nothing on the other three. Across 400 spins, expect roughly 100 winning spins, and most would probably pay less than the stake when the game’s RTP and volatility are both moderate. Whether those 100 wins total more or less than the amount staked is not something that figure tells you; RTP is the number that does.

Using it in practice

Low hit frequency means a game will show longer visible dry spells than its RTP alone would suggest, and that shapes how a session feels even if the long-run maths is unremarkable. If a studio publishes hit frequency next to RTP, reading them together tells you far more about how a session will feel than either number does alone. Setting it beside the rtp explained entry makes it easier to retain, as the same pages tend to mention them together.

Hit frequency is among the terms used across this site’s game pages, and if the studio has not published the figure behind it, the page says that outright and does not quote a comparison site’s number. Several spec tables here have blanks for that reason.

Checking Hit frequency at PH22

1. Find the info or help screen once you have opened a game at PH22.
2. Seek out Hit frequency there and read it by the definition above.
3. Before you pick a game at PH22, compare it with how another title handles the same entry.
4. Before the first round at PH22, write down your stake and where you will stop.