How to "Win" at Slots: The Math, The Lie, And What Actually Helps

The Slot Strategy Lie

Type "how to win at slots" into Google and you'll get a thousand articles promising a trick. Bet big after a cold streak. Play at midnight. Rub the screen and whisper to the reels. It's all garbage, and most of the people writing it know it's garbage. There is no betting pattern, no time of day, no ritual that beats a slot machine over time. The math won't allow it.

So why write another slots article? Because there's a version of this question that has a real, useful answer. Not "how do I beat slots" — you can't — but "how do I lose less, play longer, and occasionally walk away ahead?" That one has answers, and they come down to understanding three numbers most players never look at: RTP, variance, and hit frequency. Get those right and you'll cut your losses by something like 30% compared to playing blind. That's not a jackpot. But it's real, and it's more than any predictor app will ever give you.

I've spent a lot of money learning this the expensive way. This guide is the shortcut.

Quick honesty up front: I still lose at slots over time. Everyone does. What changed is how fast I lose and how much play I get for my money. That's the whole game — stretching a budget into entertainment instead of feeding it into a 92% RTP machine in twenty minutes flat.

~28,000

Spins Logged (12 months)

92-98%

RTP Range Across Tested Slots

-7.5%

My Net Loss Over the Year

1,250x

Biggest Single Win (Sweet Bonanza)

My Year of Testing 50 Slots

Numbers first. Over about twelve months I logged roughly 28,000 spins across 50 different slots from five providers, on six casinos, playing from Lagos, Nairobi and a few weeks in Cape Town. Total staked: around R45,000 (I converted everything to rand for my own bookkeeping). Net result: down about R3,400, or 7.5%. That number matters, because it's roughly what you'd expect from disciplined play on mostly-decent-RTP slots. The machines took their edge. They always do.

The high point was a 1,250x hit on Sweet Bonanza — R625 from a R0.50 bet. The low point was an 87-spin stretch on a high-variance slot without a single win bigger than 1.5x my stake, watching a R400 balance evaporate one dead spin at a time. Both of those are normal. That's variance, and understanding it is half of everything I'm about to tell you.

I'm not a professional gambler, and there's no such thing as a professional slots player — the math makes it impossible. I'm someone who plays for fun, got tired of losing faster than I needed to, and decided to actually measure what was happening. Turns out the boring stuff — RTP numbers, variance ratings, bankroll size — does more for your results than any "strategy" you'll find online.

What "RTP" Actually Means

RTP stands for Return to Player. It's the percentage of all money wagered that a slot pays back over the very long run. A slot with 96% RTP returns R96 for every R100 wagered across millions of spins. The other R4 is the house edge. That's it. That's the single most important number on any slot, and most players never check it.

Two things people get wrong about RTP. First, it's a long-run average over millions of spins, not a promise about your session. In one evening you might get 300% back or 5% back — RTP says nothing about tonight. It only tells you the direction the machine leans over time, and it leans against you every single time.

Second, small RTP differences compound massively. A 96% slot has a 4% edge; a 94% slot has a 6% edge — that's 50% more edge working against you. Play R10,000 through a 96% slot and you lose about R400 on average; through a 94% slot, about R600. Same play, R200 difference, just from a number you could have checked in two seconds. Over a year that gap is real money.

Always check RTP before you spin

Most licensed slots show their RTP in the game info or paytable screen (the "i" button). Takes two seconds. Anything under 94% RTP, I skip. Between 96% and 97% is the sweet spot for most quality slots. If a casino hides the RTP entirely, that's a reason to be suspicious of the casino.

Variance Explained

Variance (also called volatility) describes how a slot pays, not how much. Two slots can both have 96% RTP but feel completely different. A low-variance slot pays small wins often — you'll trickle along, rarely hitting big but rarely going long without something. A high-variance slot pays rarely but huge — long dead stretches punctuated by the occasional massive hit. Same RTP, totally different ride.

This matters enormously for your bankroll. High variance eats small bankrolls alive, because you can hit an 87-spin cold streak (I did) that busts you before the slot ever gets a chance to pay back. Low variance lets a small bankroll survive much longer, which means more entertainment per rand and more chances for luck to show up.

My rule: match variance to bankroll. Small budget? Low or medium variance, every time. Chasing a life-changing hit with money you can genuinely afford to lose? High variance is where those live, but go in knowing most sessions end with nothing. There's no free lunch — the big-win potential of high variance is paid for with long, brutal dry spells.

Hit Frequency vs RTP

Here's a distinction almost nobody makes. Hit frequency is how often a slot returns anything — the percentage of spins that pay out, even if it's less than your stake. RTP is about total money returned. These are two different things and confusing them is why people think a slot is "cold" when it's behaving exactly as designed.

A typical slot has a hit frequency around 20-25%, meaning three out of four spins return nothing. That feels terrible if you don't expect it. But a slot can have low hit frequency and still hit its RTP, because the rare wins are bigger. High-variance slots often have hit frequencies below 20% — you'll sit through long stretches of nothing, and that's normal, not a sign the slot is "due" or "rigged."

Why care? Because hit frequency determines how the session feelsand how your bankroll drains between big moments. If you want steady action that keeps your balance alive, you want higher hit frequency (usually the low-variance slots). If you can stomach long silences for a shot at a big one, low hit frequency high-variance slots are your thing. Neither is "better" — they're different tools for different moods and budgets.

Slot Math 101

Let me demystify what's actually happening inside the machine, because once you see it, every "strategy" myth collapses on its own.

A modern slot is a random number generator (RNG) wrapped in graphics. Every spin, the RNG produces a number, and that number maps to a combination of symbols. The RNG runs constantly, thousands of numbers a second, whether you're playing or not. The instant you hit spin, it grabs whatever number is current and that determines your result. The spinning reels are pure theatre — the outcome was decided the microsecond you pressed the button.

Crucially, each spin is independent. The RNG has no memory. It doesn't know or care what happened on the last spin, the last hundred spins, or whether you're up or down. The probability of any outcome is identical on every single spin. A slot that hasn't paid in 200 spins is exactly as likely to pay on spin 201 as it was on spin 1. This is the mathematical fact that kills every slots strategy ever invented.

The RTP and variance are baked into how symbols are weighted on those virtual reels — some symbols appear far more often than others, tuned so the long-run payout lands on the target percentage. You can't change the weighting. The casino can't change it mid-session. It's certified and locked. That's actually good news: it means a licensed slot is genuinely fair and genuinely unbeatable, both at once.

The Reels Are Just Symbols

One mental shift that helped me: stop thinking of slots as physical machines with reels that spin and land. There are no reels. There's a number, and a lookup table that turns that number into a picture of reels. The animation is designed to feel like a mechanical event with tension and near-misses, but it's a slideshow of a predetermined result.

This is why "near misses" — two jackpot symbols landing and the third stopping just above the line — are meaningless. The near miss wasn't close to anything. The RNG picked a losing number; the display just chose to show it in the most heart-racing way possible. Studies of slot design show near-misses are deliberately engineered because they keep people playing. Once you know that, they lose their grip. A near miss is the machine manipulating your dopamine, nothing more.

Why Patterns Don't Exist

Because every spin is independent and the RNG has no memory, patterns cannot exist. Not "are hard to find" — cannot exist. There is no sequence, no cycle, no rhythm to exploit. The slot isn't "warming up" or "about to blow." Those are stories our pattern-seeking brains invent to feel in control of randomness.

Humans are terrible at accepting randomness. We see faces in clouds and trends in coin flips. When a slot pays twice in a row, we feel it's "hot." When it goes cold, we feel it's "due." Both feelings are the same cognitive error pointed in opposite directions, and both cost money when you bet on them. The slot is a sequence of independent random events. Full stop.

Strategies That Don't Work

Let me go through the popular ones and explain exactly why each fails, because seeing the mechanism is more convincing than just being told.

Notice the pattern in that last column: strategies either do nothing to your odds, or they actively make things worse by pushing you to bet more. That second group is dangerous. Martingale especially — it feels logical, and it's the fastest way to turn a small loss into a catastrophic one. Doubling after each loss runs into two walls: the slot's max bet limit, and the brutal reality that a long losing streak (which happens constantly) requires bets so large they wipe you out before the win arrives.

Martingale will ruin you at slots

A ten-spin losing streak on a R10 base bet under Martingale means your tenth bet is R5,120 — to win back R10. High-variance slots hand out ten-spin dry streaks all the time. You'll hit the max bet limit or run out of money long before the system "works." It doesn't work. It's a bankroll incinerator.

Why "Due for a Hit" Is a Myth

This one deserves its own section because it's the most stubborn belief in gambling. The gambler's fallacy: the idea that after a run of losses, a win becomes more likely because things "balance out." It feels true. It is completely false.

A slot that hasn't hit a bonus in 300 spins is not "due." The probability of a bonus on the next spin is exactly what it always was — maybe 1 in 130. The 300 dead spins are already in the past; they have zero influence on the future. The coin doesn't remember it landed tails ten times. Neither does the RNG. Believing otherwise is how people justify pouring more money into a machine that owes them nothing, because the machine literally cannot owe anyone anything.

The flip side — the "hot hand" — is the same error. A slot on a winning run isn't hot; it just had some high numbers come up. The next spin doesn't know or care. Both feelings, "due" and "hot," are your brain trying to find signal in pure noise. The moment you internalise that there's no signal, you stop making the bets that these feelings push you toward — and those are always the expensive bets.

What Actually Helps: Bankroll

Okay, enough about what doesn't work. Here's what does. Not to win — nothing wins over time — but to lose less, play longer, and give luck room to show up. It starts with bankroll management, which is deeply unsexy and more valuable than every strategy combined.

Your bankroll is the money you've decided you can afford to lose for entertainment. Not rent money, not money you need. Decide the number before you start, and treat it as the cost of an evening out. The single biggest factor in whether you have a good time or a miserable one is bet-size relative to bankroll. Bet too big and one cold streak ends your night in ten minutes. Bet small enough and you get hours of play plus real chances at the bonus rounds where the wins live.

A decent rule: your base bet should be around 0.5% to 1% of your session bankroll. R200 bankroll? Bet R1 to R2 a spin. It feels slow. That's the point — slow means surviving, and surviving means you're still in the game when variance finally breaks your way. The players who blow up fast are always the ones betting 5-10% of their bankroll per spin, chasing excitement into a quick bust.

Bankroll Per Slot Type

Bankroll advice has to account for variance, because a R200 bankroll on a low-variance slot is a comfortable evening, while the same R200 on an extreme-variance slot is a coin flip on whether you last twenty minutes. Match the two.

On low-variance slots, you can bet a bit larger relative to bankroll because the frequent small wins keep topping you up — R1-R2 spins on R150-R200 will run a long time. On high-variance slots, you need a much deeper bankroll for the same play time, because the dry streaks are longer and deeper. If you've only got R200 and you want to play Gates of Olympus (high variance), drop your spin to R0.20-R0.50 and accept it'll still be a bumpy ride. Betting R5 a spin on a high-variance slot with R200 is just donating quickly.

The honest version: if your bankroll is small, low-variance slots give you far more entertainment per rand. Save the high-variance stuff for when you have a bankroll that can absorb the swings, or accept the fast bust as the price of the big-win dream.

Min Bet vs Max Bet

Does bet size change your RTP? No. A R0.20 spin and a R20 spin on the same slot have the identical return percentage. Bigger bets don't "unlock" better odds on the base game. What bigger bets do is increase your variance in rand terms — you win and lose more per spin, so your bankroll swings harder and drains or spikes faster.

There's one real exception worth knowing: a small number of slots (mostly older ones and certain progressives) require a max bet or a side bet to qualify for the jackpot or the top feature. On those, betting below the threshold means you literally can't win the big prize even if the symbols line up. Always check the paytable for a "max bet to qualify" note before chasing a jackpot slot. Outside those cases, bet the smallest amount that keeps the game fun — it stretches your bankroll and your odds are exactly the same.

Bonus Rounds — Where the Wins Are

Here's something that reframes how you should think about slots: on most modern video slots, the vast majority of the RTP is delivered in the bonus round — free spins, pick features, wheels. The base game is largely a grind to trigger the bonus. That's where the meaningful wins come from. My 1,250x on Sweet Bonanza? Bonus round. Almost every big session I've had came from a bonus feature, not base-game spins.

What does this mean practically? It means your goal in the base game is survival — staying alive long enough to hit the bonus, which on many slots triggers roughly once every 130-250 spins. This is why bankroll and bet-sizing matter so much: bust before the bonus and you never see where the RTP actually lives. Bet small, survive the grind, and give yourself enough spins to reach the feature.

It also means low-variance slots and high-variance slots deliver their bonuses differently. Low variance triggers features more often for smaller payouts; high variance makes you wait but pays big when it lands. Neither changes the RTP — it just changes how the return is packaged.

The Buy Bonus Feature

Many slots now offer a "Buy Bonus" or "Bonus Buy" option — pay a fixed multiple of your stake (often 100x) to jump straight into the bonus round instead of grinding for it. Is it worth it? Sometimes, mathematically, but you need to understand the trade.

Buy features usually have a slightly higher RTP than the base game — a slot might be 96.5% on base spins and 96.6-97% on the buy. So on paper it's marginally better value. But the variance is brutal: you're spending 100x your stake for one shot at a feature that might return nothing. Buying a bonus for R100 (on a R1 base) and getting a 20x return feels like a win but is actually a loss. You need deep pockets and steady nerves, because a run of poor buys drains a bankroll frighteningly fast.

Buy Bonus math: when it's worth it

The Buy Bonus RTP is usually a touch higher than base-game RTP, so it's not a rip-off — but the variance is extreme. Only use it with a bankroll that can absorb 15-20 losing buys in a row, and check the buy's RTP in the info screen first. If you've got a small budget, skip buys entirely and grind the base game — you'll get far more play time.

Top RTP Slots I Tested

Over the year I logged RTP and outcomes on the slots I played most. Here are the standouts — high RTP, well-designed, and available at most licensed African casinos. Note that some slots ship in multiple RTP versions (more on that trap next), so the figure I list is the good version; always check what your casino actually loaded.

None of these "win" — they all take their edge. But playing a 96%+ slot instead of a 94% one is the easiest 30% cut to your long-run losses you'll ever make, and it costs you nothing but two seconds of checking. If you want a deeper dive into who makes the best slots for African players, I wrote a whole piece on the top slot providers.

The 92% RTP Trap

Here's something shady that legally happens: many popular slots ship in multiple RTP versions. Pragmatic Play, for instance, offers operators the same slot at 96.5%, 94%, and sometimes as low as 92% or lower. The casino chooses which version to load. Same game, same graphics, same name — but a quietly worse payout. You'd never know unless you checked the info screen.

This is why I bang on about checking RTP in the game itself, not trusting the "official" number you read online. The online figure is usually the highest version; your casino might have loaded the 92% one. A 92% slot has double the house edge of a 96% slot — you'll lose twice as fast for the identical experience. Reputable casinos run the high-RTP versions; cheaper operators quietly swap in the low ones. It's one of the best reasons to stick to well-reviewed, licensed casinos.

Same slot, secretly worse odds

Popular slots often exist in 96.5% / 94% / 92% versions, and the casino picks which to load. Always open the slot's info screen and read the actual RTP before playing — not the number from a review site. If a casino consistently loads low-RTP versions, play somewhere else. This single check can halve your house edge.

How to Find a Slot's RTP

It's simple once you know where to look. Open the slot, tap the menu or "i" (info) button, and find the paytable or game rules. The RTP is stated there, usually near the bottom, often phrased as "The theoretical return to player is 96.51%." If there are multiple RTP versions configured, licensed slots are required to display the one actually in play.

If you genuinely can't find the RTP anywhere in the game, that tells you something about the casino — a licensed, honest operator makes this information available. Missing RTP is a small red flag on its own and a bigger one combined with other issues. When in doubt, check the casino against our reviews and licensing guide before you deposit.

Provider Comparison

The studio behind a slot tells you a lot about what to expect — RTP norms, mobile performance, feature style. Here's how the big ones compare based on what I played across African casinos.

My personal bias after a year: NetEnt for reliable high-RTP low-drama play, Pragmatic Play when I want big-feature excitement (but I always check which RTP version loaded), and Play'n GO for the high-variance classics. All run fine at the casinos I trust like Casumo, LeoVegas and BitStarz.

Mobile Slot Performance in Africa

Most slot play in Africa is mobile, often on mid-range or budget phones over patchy connections, and that changes which slots are actually enjoyable. Heavy, graphically-rich slots (a lot of Pragmatic's newer titles) can stutter or eat data on a weak connection. Lighter slots (most NetEnt classics) run smoothly on almost anything.

I tested across a Samsung Galaxy A14, a budget Tecno, and an Itel A60 on 3G and 4G. On 4G, everything ran fine. On 3G, the lighter NetEnt and Play'n GO titles stayed smooth while some heavier Pragmatic slots lagged during feature animations — never affecting fairness (the result is server-side), but affecting the experience and burning more data. Data cost is real: a long session on a graphics-heavy slot can chew through a surprising amount of bundle. If you're on mobile data, lean toward lighter slots and connect to WiFi when you can.

For deposits and cashing out slot wins, the local rails matter — M-Pesa in Kenya, mobile money and bank transfer elsewhere. Make sure your casino supports a method you actually use before you start.

Real Money vs Demo Slots

Almost every licensed slot has a free demo mode, and it's genuinely useful — for learning the mechanics, feeling out the variance, and seeing how often features trigger, all without risking a cent. The demo runs the same RNG and RTP as the real game, so it's an honest preview of how the slot behaves.

One caveat people miss: demo mode can quietly train bad habits, because winning fake money feels good and losing it costs nothing, so you might play looser than you would with real stakes. Use demos to learn a slot, then bring real discipline when real money is on the line. I demo any new slot for ten minutes before betting real money — it's saved me from a few 92% stinkers and taught me the feature timing on slots I ended up loving.

Find Your Volatility Tolerance

Everyone has a different tolerance for the swings, and knowing yours saves a lot of misery. Here's a simple way to figure it out. Take a modest bankroll, split it in two, and play a low-variance slot with one half and a high-variance slot with the other, same bet size, same number of spins. Then notice how each felt.

If the high-variance dry spells made you anxious or tempted you to bet bigger to "make something happen," you're a low-to-medium variance player — and that's completely fine, it's where most people are happiest and where small bankrolls last longest. If the small steady wins bored you and you only felt alive chasing the big feature, you're a high-variance player — just make sure your bankroll and your self-control can handle it, because that's also where the fast busts happen. There's no right answer, only the honest one about yourself.

Low-variance slots for tight bankrolls

If your budget is small or you just want steady entertainment, stick to low-variance high-RTP slots: Blood Suckers (98%), Starburst (96.09%), and similar. They won't hand you a life-changing hit, but they'll give you the most play time per rand and the gentlest ride — which for most players is the actual goal.

Session Management

Beyond bet-sizing, how you manage a whole session decides whether you walk away okay or chase yourself into a hole. The two habits that matter most: a loss limit and a win target, both set before you start and both obeyed without negotiation.

A loss limit is the amount that, if you lose it, you stop. No "one more to recover." The recovery bet is the single most expensive habit in slots, because there's no such thing as being "due" and the next spin doesn't care that you're down. A win target is trickier but just as useful — if you double your bankroll on a lucky feature, banking some of it (or just stopping) locks in a rare good night. Slots are designed to keep you playing until the RTP grinds your winnings back. The only way to beat that is to leave while ahead, which takes discipline the machine is counting on you not having.

Practical setup: deposit only your session bankroll, not a cent more. Withdraw winnings immediately rather than letting them sit as "play money" — money in the casino balance drifts back into bets. Set a timer if you lose track of time. These sound obvious and almost nobody does them, which is exactly why almost everybody loses more than they meant to.

Slot Tournaments

A lot of casinos run slot tournaments — play designated slots, climb a leaderboard by wins or multipliers, share a prize pool. Are they worth it? Sometimes, if you were going to play those slots anyway. The tournament adds a free upside (the prize pool) on top of your normal play without changing the slot's RTP.

The trap is letting the tournament push you into playing more, faster, or bigger than you planned, chasing a leaderboard spot. That extra play is still negative-EV, and the prize pool rarely compensates unless you finish near the top. My approach: if I'm already playing a slot that's in a tournament, great, the leaderboard is a free bonus. I never ramp up my play just to chase a tournament position — that's the casino using a game layer to increase your turnover.

Progressive Jackpots — The Math

Progressive jackpots — where a slice of every bet feeds a growing prize until someone hits it — are the dream: one spin, life-changing money. The math is worth understanding before you chase them. Progressives typically have a lower base-game RTP than regular slots, because a chunk of each wager is diverted into the jackpot pool. So you're paying a higher effective house edge on ordinary spins in exchange for a tiny shot at the big one.

The odds of hitting a major progressive are genuinely lottery-like — often millions to one. That doesn't make them pointless (someone does win, and the entertainment of the chase is real), but it does mean you should treat progressive play as buying a lottery ticket, not as a strategy. Bet small, enjoy the dream, and never pour serious money in expecting the jackpot. One thing to check: some progressives only pay the jackpot on max bet, so if you're betting small you might be feeding the pool with zero chance of winning it. Read the rules first.

Why I Stopped Chasing Megaways

A personal note. Megaways slots — the ones with thousands of ways to win and reels that change size each spin — hooked me hard for a while. They're exciting, the win potential is enormous, and the mechanic feels fresh. But after tracking my results, I realised Megaways slots were where I lost money fastest. They're almost all high-to-extreme variance, and I was betting like they were medium.

I didn't stop because Megaways are bad — they're fine, and the big hits are spectacular. I stopped because they didn't match my bankroll or my temperament. The long dead stretches tempted me into recovery bets, and the occasional huge win trained me to expect more of them. Once I saw the numbers, I moved most of my play to medium-variance slots and my sessions got longer and less stressful. That's the whole lesson of this article in one anecdote: the "strategy" that actually helped was matching the slot to my budget and my head, not any betting trick.

Where to Play Safely

None of this matters if the casino isn't straight. A great-RTP slot at a casino that loads the 92% version, or won't pay withdrawals, is worse than a mediocre slot at an honest one. Before you spin, make sure the casino is licensed, reviewed, and running the high-RTP versions.

The casinos I logged the most trouble-free slot play on include Casumo, LeoVegas, BitStarz (strong for crypto players), 1xBet and 22Bet for their large libraries and local payment support. Every one is license-verified in our reviews. Whatever you pick, confirm the license and check a couple of slots' RTP in the info screen before depositing.

ZA, KE, NG Slot Differences

Slot play looks a bit different across Africa's big markets, mostly because of payments, connectivity and what's locally popular. Worth knowing so you set the right expectations for your own market.

In South Africa, slots play through ZAR and instant EFT, with a strong appetite for international slot libraries and progressives. In Kenya, M-Pesa dominates deposits and the market skews toward fast, mobile-friendly games — crash games like Aviator share attention with slots. In Nigeria, naira bank transfers and mobile money rule, with big operator presence and a betting-led culture where slots are growing fast. The slots themselves are the same global titles; what changes is how you fund them and how good your connection is for the heavier games.

Pros and Cons of Playing Slots

A balanced ledger after a year of tracking. Slots are entertainment with a cost, like a night out — fine if you treat them that way, dangerous if you treat them as income.

Glossary of Slot Terms

Quick reference for the jargon in this guide and on any slot.

• RTP (Return to Player): long-run percentage of wagers a slot pays back. 96% RTP = 4% house edge.
• House edge: the casino's built-in advantage; the inverse of RTP (100% − RTP).
• Variance / volatility: how a slot pays — low (small, frequent) vs high (rare, large).
• Hit frequency: the percentage of spins that return anything at all (typically 20-25%).
• RNG (Random Number Generator): the certified system that decides each spin independently, with no memory.
• Near miss: a losing spin displayed to look close to a big win — engineered, meaningless.
• Bonus round / feature: free spins or pick games where most of a slot's RTP is delivered.
• Buy Bonus / Bonus Buy: paying a fixed multiple (often 100x) to jump straight into the bonus round.
• Megaways: a mechanic with variable reel sizes and thousands of ways to win; usually high variance.
• Progressive jackpot: a pooled prize fed by a slice of every bet, growing until someone hits it.
• Gambler's fallacy: the false belief that a slot is "due" after a losing streak.
• Paytable: the info screen listing symbol values, features and the RTP.
• Max bet to qualify: a rule on some slots requiring a max or side bet to be eligible for the jackpot/top feature.
• Bankroll: the money set aside for a session, which you can afford to lose.
• Demo mode: free play with the same RNG and RTP as the real game.

FAQ — 24 Questions Answered

Written by Adeleye Awakan, who logged ~28,000 spins across 50 slots and six casinos over twelve months to test what actually helps. Slots are entertainment with a cost, never an income — only play with money you can afford to lose. Struggling to stop? Get free, confidential help from BeGambleAware. Slot fairness is certified by testing labs like eCOGRA. See our editorial policy for how we test and rate.