Key facts
- In plinko gambling games a ball falls through a triangle of pegs and lands in a slot with a multiplier. Middle slots pay little or lose; edge slots pay the most.
- With 16 rows and fair 50/50 bounces, each edge slot is hit once in 65,536 drops, in our calculation. With 8 rows it is once in 256.
- Makers publish the return to player: BGaming lists 99% with a top multiplier of x1000, Spribe 97%, and Hacksaw seven versions from 98.98% down to 88.20% with a 3,843.3x top win.
- The RTP is your long-run return. On 1,000 drops at $1, a 99% version costs about $10 on average, an 88.20% version about $118.
- Real money plinko is an online casino-style game that cannot legally be offered to people in Australia under the Interactive Gambling Act.
How the plinko casino game works
Plinko is an online instant-win game. A ball drops from the top of a triangle of pegs, bounces left or right at each row, and lands in one of the slots along the bottom. Each slot shows a multiplier of your bet. Slots near the middle pay a fraction of your bet or a small win; slots at the edges pay the big multipliers.
Before you drop, BGaming's and Hacksaw's versions let you choose your bet, the rows and the risk level:
| Setting | BGaming Plinko | Hacksaw Plinko |
|---|---|---|
| Rows of pegs | 8 to 16 ("lines") | 8 to 16 |
| Risk level | Low, normal, high | Low, medium, high |
| Top multiplier | x1000 | 3,843.3x (max win) |
| RTP | 99% | 98.98%, 98.28%, 97.27%, 96.02%, 94.30%, 92.03% or 88.20% |
| Release | 28 January 2019 | not stated |
Spribe's Plinko works a little differently: you press one of three coloured buttons and a matching disc falls, and you can adjust the number of pins. Spribe lists an RTP of 97% and calls it a "Mini Game".
BGaming says the risk level changes the cell values, and Hacksaw says it affects the volatility of the game. In practice, higher risk means a wider gap between the small middle payouts and the big edge payouts. Neither page says whether the RTP changes with your settings, so check the game's info screen for the figure that applies to the rows and risk you pick.
Plinko odds: why the edges are so rare
A real plinko board sends the ball left or right with roughly equal chance at each peg. If a game behaves like that, the slot you land in follows a binomial distribution: to reach an edge slot, the ball has to bounce the same way at every single row. The makers do not publish their exact bounce model, so treat this as the textbook version.
| Rows | Slots | Chance of the centre slot | Chance of one particular edge slot | Chance of either edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 9 | 27.34% | 1 in 256 | 1 in 128 |
| 12 | 13 | 22.56% | 1 in 4,096 | 1 in 2,048 |
| 16 | 17 | 19.64% | 1 in 65,536 | 1 in 32,768 |
Those are our calculations. On 16 rows, more than half of all drops (54.55%) land in the middle three slots. The headline multiplier sits on a slot you would expect to hit about once every 65,536 drops. At one drop every two seconds, that is about 36 hours of nonstop dropping for one hit, on average.
Pundit tip: look at the multipliers on the middle slots, not the edges. If they show less than 1x, most of your drops lose money even when the ball lands on a "win".
The RTP is the price
The return to player is what the game pays back on average over a very large number of drops. Whatever rows or risk you pick, it sets your long-run cost:
| RTP | Expected loss on 1,000 drops at $1 (our calculation) |
|---|---|
| 99% (BGaming) | $10.00 |
| 98.98% (Hacksaw, top version) | $10.20 |
| 97% (Spribe) | $30.00 |
| 96.02% (Hacksaw) | $39.80 |
| 88.20% (Hacksaw, lowest version) | $118.00 |
Hacksaw publishes seven RTP versions of the same Plinko game. The board, the rows and the risk settings can look identical while the version a site runs costs over eleven times as much as the best one. If the game's info screen does not show the RTP, you have no way to tell which you are playing.
BGaming's 99% is high by casino standards. A 1% edge is in the same range as baccarat banker. The difference is speed: you can drop ball after ball or switch on autoplay, and Hacksaw's version lets several balls be in play at once. A low edge on a very large amount bet still adds up.
Provably fair, record boards and strategy
BGaming says its Plinko is provably fair, using server and client seeds so each result can be checked after the fact. That can show a drop was not changed after you bet. It does not change the RTP, and it does not stop a site from running a low RTP version of another game.
BGaming's page also mentions a record table of past results "to help players develop a winning strategy". Past drops do not affect future ones, so no pattern in that table can predict the next ball. There is no plinko strategy that beats the RTP; choosing a higher RTP version and betting less are the only levers. Our random number generator page explains how these results are produced, and the house edge guide shows why every pattern system ends up at the same average.
Plinko compared with other instant games
Plinko belongs to the same family as crash games and mines: fast, simple instant-win games popularised on crypto casinos. Spribe says its "Turbo Games", which include Plinko and Mines, became popular in the crypto community. The makers behind plinko also make pokies; see Hacksaw Gaming pokies and BGaming pokies. For where a 1% to 12% edge sits against table games, see best odds casino games.
Plinko gambling in Australia
Real money plinko is an online casino-style game. Under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, online casino games cannot legally be offered to people in Australia, and ACMA blocks illegal gambling sites. It is not an offence for you to play, but the sites that offer plinko to Australians are offshore and unlicensed here, so there is no local regulator if a withdrawal is refused. Free demo versions on makers' sites carry no money risk. If fast games are eating into your budget, the gambling help page lists free support.
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Frequently asked questions
How does the plinko casino game work?
You choose a bet, the number of rows of pegs and a risk level, then drop a ball. It bounces down the pegs and lands in one of the slots along the bottom, each showing a multiplier of your bet. Higher risk spreads the multipliers: bigger at the edges, smaller in the middle.
Can you win at plinko gambling?
You can win individual drops, but not in the long run. Each version has a return to player below 100%, so on average you get back 99 cents or less per dollar bet, depending on the version, and autoplay makes it easy to bet a lot quickly.
What is the RTP of plinko?
It depends on the maker and version. BGaming lists 99% for its Plinko, Spribe 97%, and Hacksaw publishes seven versions: 98.98%, 98.28%, 97.27%, 96.02%, 94.30%, 92.03% and 88.20%.
Does the number of rows change the odds?
More rows make the extremes rarer. With fair bounces, each edge slot comes up 1 in 256 with 8 rows, 1 in 4,096 with 12 and 1 in 65,536 with 16, in our calculation. The multipliers change with the rows, so check the stated RTP for your settings.
Is plinko legal in Australia?
Real money plinko is a casino-style game, and online casino games cannot legally be offered to people in Australia under the Interactive Gambling Act. It is not an offence to play, but there is no Australian regulator for offshore sites.
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