Before the First Spin Versus After a Hundred
Reels land where they land. No figure on this page tells you when three scatters will drop, and nothing about a session is fixed in advance: the outcome of any run of spins is random, whether that run follows a short gap or a long one. An RTP of around 96.5 per cent describes a very long average across an enormous number of rounds, not a promise about your balance tonight.
Numbers like 96.49, 96.50 and 96.51 look alike, yet they belong to separate builds of the game, sometimes with different maximum stakes. Only the game rules screen names the one in front of you, so open it and read the figure there before you set a stake.
A ceiling of x10,000 is a cap on the top prize, not a target. The combination that reaches it sits at the far tail of the paytable, past x100 multipliers and repeated retriggers, and most rounds finish nowhere near it. Plan a session around your stake, not around the maximum.