Table of contents
Return to Player
Return to player is the share of all stakes a slot is built to pay back across millions of rounds. Gates of Hades runs at 96.52% by default, 96.50% when the free spins are bought and 96.47% when the Super round is bought.
- Game:
- Gates of Hades (a Pragmatic Play 6x6 cluster-pays video slot)
- Type:
- Slot game
- RTP as published:
- 96.52% theoretical, stated verbatim on the game's own rules screen
- Max win:
- 10,000x the bet, a hard cap that applies in both the base game and the free spins round.
Three RTP Figures, Not One
The rules screen lists three, each tied to a different way of entering the game. We opened the information panel in the official Pragmatic Play demo on , paged through to the fourth screen of seven, then found all three printed in a single block. The base game sits at 96.52%. Buying the ordinary free spins moves it to 96.50%. Buying the Super round drops it again to 96.47%.
| Mode | Stated return | How a player reaches it |
|---|---|---|
| Base game | 96.52% | Ordinary spins, scatters landing on their own |
| Buy Free Spins | 96.50% | Pay 100x the total bet |
| Buy Super Free Spins | 96.47% | Pay 500x the total bet |
Figures current as of ; the operator's live terms prevail.
Written down the gap looks trivial. Three hundredths of a point separate the cheap shortcut from the expensive one, while five hundredths separate ordinary spins from the Super buy.
Most pages about this slot quote 96.52% alone, which is how the other two figures stay invisible.
What the Buy Buttons Actually Cost
The buy buttons cost 100x and 500x the total bet, which came to $200.00 and $1,000.00 at the $2.00 stake we played. Buying the feature also buys a slightly worse theoretical return, which reverses what the price tag implies: the expensive button carries the lowest of the three numbers.
Both prices are multiples of the total bet, so at the $0.20 minimum they fall to $20.00 and $100.00, while at the $240.00 maximum they climb to $24,000.00 and $120,000.00.
We bought three rounds to watch the mechanic rather than to measure it. What came back is a lesson in sample size.
| Buy | Price at our stake | Stated return | Our single round returned |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Spins | $200.00 | 96.50% | $78.70 |
| Super Free Spins | $1,000.00 | 96.47% | $3,707.00 |
| Free Spins, second attempt | $200.00 | 96.50% | $317.50 |
Three rounds sit many orders of magnitude below the millions a return figure is built on. The Super round came back at 1,853.5x the stake. The ordinary buy before it returned 39.35x against a price of 100x, losing more than half its cost. The second ordinary buy returned 158.75x, turning a profit. Averaging those three produces a figure near 680x per purchase, which is meaningless arithmetic dressed as a finding.
Where Gates of Hades Prints Its RTP
Gates of Hades prints the figure that applies inside the client a player actually loads, rather than on a review page. The information button opens the panel, four screens in the return block appears, then the live figure is printed there in full.
That matters because the lower builds ship under the same name and the same artwork.
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Default build: | 96.52% |
| Cheaper build: | 95.47% |
| Lowest build: | 94.47% |
| Spread between highest and lowest: | 2.05 points |
Catalogues list those lower configurations. Pragmatic Play keeps its own configuration list for this title unpublished, so the panel inside the game settles the question by itself.
Why 2.05 Points Changes the Maths
Two points of return separates a slot that is merely expensive from one that is measurably worse. Run a thousand spins at a $2.00 stake through each build, then compare the expected cost.
| Build | Stakes wagered | Expected return | Expected cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 96.52% | $2,000.00 | $1,930.40 | $69.60 |
| 95.47% | $2,000.00 | $1,909.40 | $90.60 |
| 94.47% | $2,000.00 | $1,889.40 | $110.60 |
Forty-one dollars is the distance between the best build and the worst across that thousand spins. At ten thousand spins it becomes $410.00. The screen stays identical throughout: the same symbols pay the same amounts, the buy buttons still cost 100x, the artwork holds. Only the speed at which a balance drains moves. A player who assumes 96.52% because a review said so is guessing at odds they could have read in ten seconds.
Where This RTP Page Falls Short
This RTP page falls short in three places, though naming them is better than leaving them buried.
The configuration list is second-hand. The only return figure we read first-hand is the 96.52% on rules page four of the client itself, so 95.47% and 94.47% reach us through industry game data rather than through the studio, and we could confirm neither inside a live casino client.
Our own figures come from a single session on one host, which is a demonstration rather than a measurement.
And the check recommended below works only once the game is already open at a particular casino, which is later than most players would like to know.
Our Verdict on the RTP Spread
Treat 96.52% as the best case and read the panel yourself before assuming it. Being blunt about the corollary: we do not recommend buying the Super Free Spins round as a way to chase value, because it carries the lowest stated return of the three modes while costing five times what the ordinary buy costs.
If you want the highest published figure, check the panel before your first spin and close the tab when it reads 95.47% or 94.47%. If you are in demo mode, the figure is fixed at 96.52%, so the check is moot. If neither case fits, say the panel refuses to open on your phone, stay at the $0.20 minimum until it does.
