Slots are a roller coaster - definitely not for the faint-hearted. It's great when you get a big win, but sickening when you're on the wrong end of a £300 loss.
There is something called EV (effective value) where basically you do the math on a slot offer where the RTP works to your advantage rather than the House, however it's a loooong game. You can do Risk Free offers but they only give a small return, very rarely something that would result in a 'Big Win'. To get those can mean you high risk offers - and that can mean you do offer after offer after offer and each offer you are losing money but relying on math of +EV to eventually turn back in your favour. Make no mistake, if you are very unlucky this could take months to get back on track...
If you are starting out, I'd stick to Risk Free and Low Risk offers and then take the profits from that and build up slowly to higher risk offers. That way, you're not actually losing your own money as such, but winnings.
Variance refers to how often a slot pays out as opposed to how much.
For example, lets say you have two slots - both give a 97% Return to player (RTP).
You do 100 £1 spins on the first slot - 70 of your 100 spins pay you some winnings, but they are small amounts, all adding up to giving you back £97 in total.
You then do 100 £1 spins on the second slot which has higher variance. You do 100 spins but only 35 of them pay you back some winnings, however, they pay out twice as much as the first slot did so you still got your £97 back in the end.
Now, where things get dicey with slots is that obviously payouts are not that precise, a 97% RTP is based on thousands, if not hundred's of thousands of spins, not 100. That means you could do 100 spins and walk away with £125 and be £25 up, or you could walk away with £75 and be £25 down.
If you do your wagering on a high variance slot, if you win - you'll win bigger. However the flip side of that is that if you lose, you might just as easily lose bigger too. A low variance slot is generally safer because you're winning little and often; it is lower risk but gives lower rewards as a result.
Does that make sense?
