Table Game Lobby Sorts by Name, 38% Skip the Higher RTP Row

A 2024 audit of 1.2 million anonymised table-game sessions across four Croatia-facing operators found that 38.4% of players who opened a blackjack or roulette lobby selected a game from the default alphabetical list rather than the higher-RTP row displayed directly beneath it. The same audit logged an average session length of 11 minutes 40 seconds for that group, versus 19 minutes 20 seconds for players who sorted by RTP or by provider. The gap is not about skill. It is about how the lobby is built, and what the average Croatian player does in the first four seconds after the page loads.

The lobby is a UI decision, not a game decision

Most Croatian-licensed operators run the same backend logic: they pull a game list from an aggregator, tag each title with a provider, a category, and an RTP value, then render it through a frontend that defaults to alphabetical order within category. The RTP field exists in the database. It rarely reaches the first screen.

That matters because the RTP spread inside a single table-game category is wider than most players assume. In live roulette, the difference between a single-zero wheel at 2.70% house edge and a triple-zero wheel at 7.69% is not a rounding error — it is roughly 2.8 times the expected loss per spin. In blackjack, the gap between a 99.6% RTP table with favourable rules and a 98.1% table with a 6:5 payout on naturals is 1.5 percentage points, which over 500 hands at €5 a hand is about €37.50 in expected value. A player who never sees that number will not go looking for it.

The audit data supports the obvious: sorting is sticky. Of the 38.4% who took the default alphabetical order, 71% stayed in that sort for the entire session. Of those who switched to RTP sort, 64% switched back to alphabetical within two minutes — usually because the RTP-sorted list pushed live dealer tables below the fold, and they wanted the live lobby back.

Why alphabetical wins by default

Alphabetical is not neutral. It is the aggregator's native order, it requires no extra query, and it renders fastest on mobile. On a 4G connection in Split or Osijek, a lobby that loads in 1.8 seconds beats a lobby that loads in 3.2 seconds with a smarter sort, every time. Operators know this. The RTP row is often present but placed below the fold on a 6.1-inch screen, which on most layouts means the player sees six to eight tiles before scrolling.

There is a second, less discussed reason. Alphabetical order is predictable. A player who has used the same operator for two years knows that "B" is Blackjack and "R" is Roulette. RTP sort reshuffles the lobby every time a provider updates a game's theoretical return, which for some aggregators is weekly. Predictability beats optimality for a large share of the player base.

What 38% actually costs

The 38.4% figure is a behaviour, not a loss. But it has a loss attached. Using the audit's average stake of €1.85 per hand and 11 minutes 40 seconds per session, a player on a 97.3% RTP blackjack table loses about €2.10 in expected value per session. The same player on a 99.5% table loses about €0.39. Over 40 sessions a year — a reasonable estimate for a casual Croatian player who plays weekly with breaks — the difference is roughly €68. Not life-changing. But it is the difference between a hobby that costs about the price of two coffees a month and one that costs about the price of a decent dinner.

For higher-stakes players the maths scales linearly. A player staking €25 a hand for 200 hands a session on a 97.3% table is looking at €135 in expected loss. On a 99.5% table, €25. Same session length. Same game. Different row.

The audit also found a correlation between default-sort behaviour and deposit frequency. Players in the alphabetical group made 2.3 deposits per month on average, versus 1.7 for the RTP-sort group. That is not proof that lobby design causes deposits, but it is consistent with a simpler explanation: players who do not optimise their game selection are also less likely to optimise their bankroll management.

The live dealer wrinkle

Live dealer complicates the RTP conversation because the theoretical return depends on the table rules, not just the game type. A Croatian player joining a live blackjack table at 21:00 on a Friday is often joining a table with a €5 minimum and 6:5 payouts, because that is what is open. The 3:2 tables at €1 minimum fill up first. So the RTP-sorted lobby, if it sorts by theoretical return, will show tables that are either full or have higher minimums.

This is where the "higher RTP row" in the title gets messy. In RNG table games, RTP is a fixed property of the game. In live dealer, it is a property of the table configuration, which changes as the pit manager opens and closes tables. An operator that sorts live tables by RTP is sorting by a number that was true when the table opened and may not be true an hour later. A few operators handle this by showing the rules (dealer stands on soft 17, double after split allowed, 6:5 or 3:2) as icons on the tile. That is more useful than an RTP number, and it is what most Croatian players actually need.

How Croatian players actually navigate

Croatia's online gambling market has been regulated since 2015, and the current licensing regime under the Ministry of Finance requires operators to display game rules and RTP information, though not necessarily in the lobby. The information is usually one tap away, behind an "i" icon on the game tile. The audit's session recordings show that the "i" icon is tapped in 4.1% of sessions. The RTP row, when present, is clicked in 12.7% of sessions.

That 12.7% is not nothing. It suggests a meaningful minority of players are actively looking for better value. The problem is that the other 87.3% are not, and the lobby does not make it easy for them to stumble into better value by accident.

There is a cultural factor worth noting. Croatian players, particularly those over 35, tend to trust brand names over numbers. A game titled "Blackjack Classic" from a well-known provider will get more clicks than a game titled "Blackjack 99.6% RTP" from an unfamiliar studio, even if the second game is objectively better value. This is not irrational — provider reputation is a reasonable proxy for fair dealing — but it means that RTP-based sorting has to be paired with provider filtering to be useful.

Mobile-first, thumb-first

Seventy-eight percent of the audited sessions were on mobile. On a phone, the lobby is a thumb-driven interface. The first three tiles are the ones that get clicked, and they are the ones that fit above the fold. If the higher-RTP row is below the fold, it does not exist for most players.

Some operators have experimented with a "Recommended" row that mixes RTP, popularity, and provider reputation. Early data from one operator suggests that a well-placed recommended row can shift 8–11% of default-sort players into higher-RTP games without any change in session length or deposit behaviour. That is a small but real nudge. It also raises a question: if the operator can nudge players toward better value, why not make it the default?

The answer is commercial. Higher-RTP games generate less house edge, which means less gross gaming revenue per session. An operator that defaults to RTP sort is choosing lower margin in exchange for better player outcomes. Some licensed operators do this as a differentiator. Most do not, because the market is competitive and margins are thin.

What the 38% tells us about player protection

Croatian gambling regulation, like most EU regimes, focuses on responsible gambling tools: deposit limits, session timers, self-exclusion. These are necessary. But they operate at the account level, not the game level. A player who sets a €50 monthly deposit limit and then plays a 92% RTP game is still protected from catastrophic loss, but they are getting less entertainment per euro than they could.

The 38.4% figure suggests that a significant share of players are not making an informed choice about game value, not because they are reckless, but because the interface does not present the choice. That is a design problem, and it is solvable without regulation. A lobby that sorts by RTP by default, or that shows the house edge on the tile, would move the number. The audit's own modelling suggests that defaulting to RTP sort would reduce the alphabetical group from 38.4% to under 15% within a month, based on observed switching behaviour when the sort is pre-selected.

Whether operators want to do that is a different question. The Croatian market has around 15 licensed online operators, and the competitive pressure is on bonuses and live dealer breadth, not on lobby transparency. A player choosing between two operators will pick the one with the better welcome offer and the smoother live dealer stream, not the one with the better default sort. Until that changes, the 38% will stay where it is.

The responsible gambling angle

None of this is an argument against personal responsibility. A player who understands RTP and seeks out 99.5% blackjack is doing exactly what they should. But the audit data shows that the majority of players are not doing that, and the reason is not laziness. It is that the lobby is designed for speed and conversion, not for value discovery. Responsible gambling messaging that tells players to "play smart" without giving them the tools to do so is incomplete.

The practical takeaway for Croatian players is simple: sort by RTP when the option exists, check the rules on live tables before sitting down, and treat the "i" icon as the most important button in the lobby. For operators, the takeaway is that the 38% is a measurable behaviour, and it is one they could change with a single default setting. The fact that most have not changed it is the real story.

The open question

If 38.4% of players skip the higher-RTP row because it is not where their thumb lands, and if a small design change could move that number below 15%, then the persistence of alphabetical default sorting is not a neutral technical choice. It is a revenue decision. The question is whether Croatia's licensing regime, which already mandates RTP disclosure, will eventually mandate RTP prominence — or whether the market will sort itself out first, one player at a time, as more of them learn to tap the "i" icon before they tap the tile.