Originally made famous on The Price Is Right, Plinko has been reimagined at online and crypto casinos like Duelbits and Stake. The rules are simple: choose your bet, set your risk level, and drop a ball down a pegged board to see where it lands. With high RTPs, Provably Fair gameplay, and endless variations, Plinko may just become your new favourite game.
Join me as I share my experiences playing this arcade game, reveal strategies I’ve used to rack up big wins, and show you where the best Plinko games are hiding!
What Is Plinko?
Plinko is an instant online casino game based on the pricing game from the American show, The Price is Right. How it works is you drop a ball from the top of the board and watch as it bounces through rows of pegs before landing in a multiplier slot at the bottom. The multipliers (often as high as 1,000x) decide your payout.
Every bet gives you one ball, but some versions let you release many at once, for example, Football Plinko by BGaming, where you drop up to 100 balls together, like a Real Madrid training drill gone off the rails!
Most games let you adjust the risk level. Higher risk boosts the top multipliers but lowers the small ones, so it’s a trade-off. You can also change the number of lines (rows of pegs). More lines mean more possible paths, more multiplier buckets, and more randomness, making the outcome harder to predict.
Brief History of Plinko
Plinko’s story actually starts long before TV cameras were involved. Back in 18th-century Europe, there was a game called Billiard Japonaise, a sloped table filled with pins, where players launched balls from the bottom, hoping they’d land in prize slots at the top.
Jump to the 1920s in the United States, and a children’s game called the Corinth Game followed a similar concept. Kids would spring balls into a field of pins and aim for scoring slots. The game eventually made its way to Japan, where it was transformed into pachinko.
Pachinko exploded in popularity after World War II, and to this day, it remains one of Japan’s most iconic forms of entertainment, with over 6,000 parlours dotted around the country. It’s one of the few legal forms of gambling in Japan thanks to a clever workaround. Players exchange their winnings for tokens for prizes such as electronics, toys, cigarettes, or appliances, or sell them for cash at third-party outlets.
The American version we know as Plinko premiered on The Price Is Right in 1983. Created by Frank Wayne, the game quickly became a highlight of the show. Players dropped discs from the top of a pegged board, listening to the satisfying “plink-plink” as they bounced toward prize slots. Contestants could win up to $25,000, with the top prize originally centred and “no prize” slots flanking it.
Plinko didn’t just fade into TV nostalgia, it reinvented itself inside the crypto gambling scene. Around 2019, the game popped up on Bitcoin forums and blockchain casinos like Stake and BC.Game and quickly became the new Crash-style obsession.
Provably fair algorithms let anyone verify outcomes on-chain, payouts landed instantly in BTC or ETH, and RTPs were higher than most classic slots.
Plinko’s surge in popularity was in large part due to a dedicated online community as players swapped strategies in Telegram groups, streamed their sessions live, and hyped huge wins like Togi’s legendary $100,000 run.
Today, Plinko has splintered into hundreds of variations, from soccer to ancient Greek-themed boards, with major providers like Spribe and Hacksaw Gaming releasing games alongside in-house exclusives from Cloudbet and Jacks Club. What started as a Price Is Right sideshow now commands over half a million monthly players worldwide!
How to Play Plinko
Before I show you how to navigate the Plinko board like a pro, there are some features you need to wrap your head around:
Risk Levels
This is hands-down my favourite part of Plinko. You can pick between low, medium, or high risk, depending on whether you’re feeling cautious or a bit reckless. I’ve had days where I stuck to low risk and targeted lower but more frequent payouts (0.5x up to around 16x).
Then there are those wild sessions where I crank it up to high risk, trying to grab that juicy 1,000x multiplier. Unfortunately, you’ve gotta be ready for more 0.2x heartbreaks along the way.
Number of Rows
You can set anywhere from 8 to 16 rows. The fewer rows you pick, the flatter the results. Push it up to 16 rows, and suddenly you’re in big win territory, but look out for those tiny bankroll-draining multipliers. I usually go somewhere in the middle, unless I’m feeling like taking the scenic route to volatility town.
Play Mode
Plinko gives you two ways to roll: manual or auto. Manual mode is perfect if you want full control as you pick your risk, rows, and drop balls one by one. But if I’m multitasking (or just too lazy to click), I switch to auto mode, set my risk and rows, and let it run like a slot machine in the background. Watching those balls bounce while sipping on a beer is peak living!
Now that you know the little intricacies of Plinko, follow these steps to take your first ball drop and hopefully land on that 5-figure multiplier bucket!
- Select your stake – This is the cost of each ball, say $0.10.
- Set the risk level – Pick low, medium, or high. The higher the risk level, the bigger the top multiplier bucket is, but at the same time, it decreases the size of the lower multipliers.
- Pick the number of lines (8-16) – The more lines you select, the more multiplier buckets there are, which increases the randomness of results.
- Decide play mode: manual or auto – In manual mode, a single ball will drop every time you hit the play button, while in auto mode, a predetermined number of balls will come crashing down.
- Start playing – Hit Play and watch the balls fly off the pegs and hopefully land in one of the huge multiplier buckets at the bottom of the board!
| Low Risk Plinko on BC Game (10 rows) | |
| Multiplier | Chance of Ball Landing |
| 0.48x | 24.6094% |
| 0.96x | 41.0156% |
| 1.06x | 23.4376% |
| 1.35x | 8.789% |
| 2.9x | 1.9532% |
| 8.63x | 0.1954% |
Where Does the House Edge Come From?
Plinko’s house edge is derived from the disparity between the multiplier payouts and the chance of the ball landing in each bucket. Just like in roulette, the online casino pays you less than your actual odds of hitting a certain multiplier slot.
If you look at BC Game Plinko’s payout table above, you’ll notice the ball has a 24.6094% chance of landing in the 0.48x multiplier bucket. Based on that probability, the payout should actually be 0.50395x.
To calculate what the true payouts should be, divide 1 by Plinko’s RTP and then multiply all payouts by the result. For example, if, hypothetically, BC Game Plinko’s RTP is 95.247%, the zero house edge payouts are:
- 0.48 × 1.049901 = 0.50395x
- 0.96 × 1.049901 = 1.00790x
- 1.06 × 1.049901 = 1.11290x
- 1.35 × 1.049901 = 1.41737x
- 2.90 × 1.049901 = 3.04471x
- 8.63 × 1.049901 = 9.06065x
You can also calculate Plinko’s RTP by multiplying the ball’s probability of landing in each bucket by the payout and adding all of the results together like this:
- 0.48 × 0.246094 = 0.118125
- 0.96 × 0.410156 = 0.39375
- 1.06 × 0.234376 = 0.248438
- 1.35 × 0.08789 = 0.118652
- 2.9 × 0.019532 = 0.056643
- 8.63 × 0.001954 = 0.016866
Best Strategy for Plinko
Plinko’s not just about dropping balls and hoping for the best. Bonuses, bankroll management, and knowing when to tweak risk settings all make a huge difference. These are the Plinko strategies I’ve picked up over time, and honestly, I wish someone had told me this on my first session!
- Take advantage of bonuses – Don’t leave money on the table! On Stake, I make sure I’m collecting the 5% rakeback, it’s basically free cash back on every session, and over time, it’s saved me from busting. On BC.Game, I once turned their 120% first deposit bonus and 100 free spins into over 200 Plinko drops.
- Stick to high-RTP versions – I learned to avoid anything with a chunky house edge. Stake’s exclusive Plinko and BGaming’s original both run at just 1% house edge, and I’ve noticed my sessions last way longer there.
- Bankroll management – I always stick with 100 drops per session. If my bankroll’s $100, it’s $1 per ball. I’ve had nights where that discipline saved me, like when I went 40 drops without hitting anything big but still had enough left for a 20x that brought me back in the green.
- Start with low-risk settings and move up rows as you get confident – When I first started, I kept it at 8 rows, low risk. These days, 12 rows is my comfort zone. It unlocks higher multipliers, and I’ve hit 26x a couple of times on this board.
- High-risk for thrill runs – I only use 16 rows with high risk when I’m playing with bonus funds or feeling super lucky. I’ll never forget hitting a 130x on Stake after a dozen dead drops.
Final Thoughts: Plinko
Watching Plinko and not playing is NPC behaviour. Balls are literally free-falling to 1,000x, and you’re just sitting there scrolling. So tap in by checking out our best crypto casinos to play Plinko!
