RTP and house edge are the same number, read from opposite ends
RTP — return to player — is the share of turnover a game's maths returns to players over an unlimited run. Whatever is left over is the house edge. A game at 98% RTP keeps 2% of everything staked; one at 99.5% keeps 0.5%. Neither figure describes a single session: it is the limit a result converges on across a very large number of rounds.
Here is how the declared numbers line up across Tonza Originals.
| Game | RTP | House edge | Expected per 1,000 USD staked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blackjack | 99.5% | 0.5% | −5 USD |
| Coin Flip | 98% | 2% | −20 USD |
| Mines | 98% | 2% | −20 USD |
| Roulette | 97.3% | 2.7% | −27 USD |
| Plinko | 97% | 3% | −30 USD |
Blackjack: 99.5% assumes accurate play
Table rules carry almost all of it: eight decks, the dealer stands on all 17s, blackjack pays 3:2, and doubling, splitting up to four hands and insurance are available. Paying 3:2 rather than 6:5, and standing on soft 17, are the two clauses that push the figure that high.
One caveat matters. The declared figure is reached only when every borderline hand is played correctly; loose decisions pull the return below it. Insurance is a separate wager with its own, worse expectation — it does not protect a hand, it adds turnover at an unfavourable price. And even with flawless decisions the expectation stays negative: the 0.5% does not go anywhere.
Roulette: single zero, one constant
The wheel is European with a single zero: 37 pockets, and a straight-up number pays 35:1 where a fair price would be 36:1. That gap is 1/37, or 2.7%, and it applies to every bet type on the layout. Red/black, a dozen and a straight-up number differ enormously in swing but not at all in expectation. Table details sit in the roulette section.
Coin Flip, Mines, Plinko: close percentages, different shape
Coin Flip and Mines share one house edge and Plinko sits a point below them. What a player actually feels, though, is not that point but the way each of the three spreads its outcomes.
- Coin Flip has the narrowest spread: a short round, two outcomes, results hovering near the average with no long tail.
- Mines lets the player set the number of mines. More mines means higher multipliers and a lower chance of reaching them; the declared RTP does not move, only the distribution does.
- Plinko offers low, medium or high risk plus an adjustable row count. Those settings stretch or compress the payout tails rather than shift RTP.
Volume outweighs game selection
Expected cost is simply turnover multiplied by the house edge. A thousand dollars staked at blackjack averages 5 USD; twenty thousand staked at Plinko averages 800 USD. The spread between games is smaller than the spread between one hour of play and eight. Originals accept stakes from 0.1 to 10,000 in the account currency, so turnover accumulates faster than it looks.
What does not alter the maths: progressions such as martingale redistribute risk without touching expectation, and a run of outcomes is never "due" to correct itself. VIP cashback — up to 5% from the second of twelve tiers upward, described on the loyalty page — reduces the net cost but does not turn a negative expectation positive.
Fairness of the round is a separate question
Every game above runs on a provably fair scheme: the server seed hash is published before the round, the client seed is set by the player, and a nonce increments with each bet. Once the seed is revealed the outcome can be recomputed by hand — round history, a verification calculator and seed rotation are all on the provably fair page. That proves the round was not adjusted after the fact; it leaves the declared RTP exactly where it is.
