Plinko online: how the ball's fall works

A ball drops from the top of a board studded with pegs, bounces left and right, and comes to rest in one of the slots lined up at the bottom. Each slot shows a multiplier, and that is what sets your win. Plinko fits in those few lines, which is exactly what makes it so easy to follow.

What is less obvious is why the middle slots pay little and the edge slots a lot. The answer lies in one very simple rule of probability, which on its own explains the whole game.

A game born on television in 1983

Plinko first appeared in January 1983 on The Price Is Right, the American game show. Contestants release large flat discs at the top of an upright board fitted with pins, and each landing slot matches a cash amount. The segment quickly became one of the show's most popular.

The online casino version keeps the principle intact, swapping the disc for a ball and the fixed sums for multipliers of the stake.

How a round is played

You first choose your stake. Depending on the version, you may also set the risk level or the number of rows of pegs. You then release the ball, which bounces its way down to a slot, and the round is settled in seconds.

The path you see on screen is not physics at work: a random number generator decides where the ball lands, and the animation stages it. Each drop is independent of the last. Several balls in a row landing in the same place make that place neither more nor less likely on the next drop.

Why the ball nearly always ends up in the middle

At each peg, the ball goes either left or right, with a one-in-two chance. To reach the edge slot, it has to go the same way at every single peg. To land in the middle, it only needs to veer roughly as often in each direction, which can happen in a great many ways.

The figures make it plain. On an 8-row board, each of the two edge slots is reached only once in 256 drops, while the centre slot is hit more than one time in four. On 16 rows, the edge falls to a one-in-65,536 chance, and the three central slots catch more than half of all the balls between them.

That is the whole logic behind the multipliers. The middle slots, where the ball lands often, pay little, sometimes less than the stake. The edge slots, almost never reached, carry the most spectacular multipliers. A big win at Plinko is therefore possible, but exceptional by its very nature.

Rows and risk level: what they change

When a version lets you adjust these settings, they alter the table of multipliers, not the principle of the fall. A high risk level widens the gap: the middle slots pay even less, the edges even more. A low level pulls the payouts closer to the stake.

More rows also means more slots, and edges that are harder still to reach. The setting therefore mainly changes how your wins are spread over time. The return to player for each configuration is shown in the game's information panel, and it is worth a look before you drop the first ball.

The versions available at Dragon Casino

The catalogue features five Plinko games, which share the principle but not their look: Darwin accounts for two of them, Neon Plinko Dice and Splinko Dice. BetSoft supplies Plinko Rush, TaDa Gaming its Dice Plinko, and Gaming1 a Plinko Multiball Slot, which drops several balls per round.

They sit alongside the rest of the crash games section, with which they share very short rounds and a level of risk you set before playing.

A strategy for winning at Plinko?

There is none. Where the ball lands is drawn at random, and nothing you do before or during the fall affects it: not the moment you release it, not the slot you aim for, not the run of results that came before.

What you can control is your stake and the length of your session. The very fast pace makes drops go by quicker than you think, which is why it helps to set your gaming budget before you start, along with limits from your profile. The other game families are waiting at our online casino.