How to Play Mines – The Ultimate Mines Guide

When you open any Mines game, the layout is almost always the same: there’s a square grid of covered tiles, a small settings panel where you choose how many mines you want on the board, and the bet controls that are usually at the bottom. Different providers may change the colours or animations, but most Mines games look largely the same:

Here’s what you’ll usually see on the screen when you load a Mines game:

• A 5×5 grid (sometimes you can change the grid, depending on the provider)
• A dropdown menu where you choose how many mines you want (often from 1 to 24)
• A multiplier indicator showing the value of your next safe pick
• A place where you set your bet
• Optional Auto Game or “Auto Pick” settings

Below, I’ll explain the settings you’ll come across in most Mines games and what they mean.

The ‘minefield’ is the grid where the game is played. On the grid, there are tiles that you need to click on and reveal whether they’re a pass or a fail (a mine means you lost).

Now, the vast majority of Mines games I’ve come across have a standard 5×5 grid (so 25 tiles in total); however, some games allow you to increase the grid size to 6×6 (36 tiles in total), 7×7 (49 tiles in total), 8×8 (64 tiles in total), etc.

The bigger the grid, the safer the first rounds will be, making the game less volatile. For example, if you pick an 8×8 grid with 8 mines, obviously, it’s much easier to miss the mines because they cover just 1/8th of the grid. On the other hand, if you play on a 5×5 grid and there are 8 mines, they cover more than 1/3rd of the grid, so you have just ~65% chance of missing them on your first attempt, and it lowers with each following tile.

Note from Australian Gamblers: I’ve noticed that a bigger grid often feels safer because you have more tiles to open, but the overall EV (expected value) stays roughly the same, so the grid size doesn’t matter much unless you specifically want very low or very high volatility.

This is the most important setting in Mines and the one that sets the game’s volatility. Before each round, you can select how many mines to be on the grid. I’ll be using a standard 5×5 grid because it’s the most common type, so let’s say you choose to play with 3 mines.

It means that there will be 22 safe spots on the grid and 3 dead zones. Now, with every safe tile you open, the number of safe spots reduces, so the multiplier increases. Now, maths time: the chance of hitting a safe tile on your first click is:

22 / 25 = 0.8822

Based on this calculation, we’ve got an 88% chance of choosing a safe tile on our first click.

Now let’s see what happens if you increase the mine count but keep the same 5×5 grid:

• 8 mines and 17 safe tiles: The chance of hitting a safe tile on your first click is 17 / 25 = 68%.
• 15 mines and 10 safe tiles: The chance of hitting a safe tile on your first click is 10 / 25 = 40%.

The mine count in Mines works like a volatility slider. The fewer mines, the lower the game’s volatility. The more mines you have, the more the volatility of the game increases. Theoretically, you have 24 volatility levels, because you can choose between 1 and 24 mines on the field, with 1 mine being the least volatile version of Mines, and 24 mines being the most volatile version of the game.

I’ll explain later how software providers use these odds to set the multipliers and insert a house edge.

Before each round starts, you choose how much you want to wager. Mines works just like most instant-win games in this regard (or even pokies), where you choose in the beginning, and it stays locked in for the entire round. The only two outcomes are cashing out with a multiplier or hitting a mine and losing the full amount.

The betting range is usually flexible, starting at A$0.10 or A$0.20 per round, up to A$100 and sometimes even more (especially if you play with crypto like BTC).

Once the round starts, you can’t change the bet, which means that you can either cash out after opening one or more safe tiles or click on a mine and lose your bet. The final payout is your original wager multiplied by the current multiplier. So, if you wager A$10 and the current multiplier is 2.90x, you’ll win A$29.

Most Mines games can be played in two ways: manually clicking each tile yourself, or using an Auto Play (sometimes called “Auto Pick”) feature. Auto Game lets you pre-set how many tiles you want the game to have in each, how many rounds you want to run, and whether the auto-play should stop after a win, a loss, or a specific multiplier.

It’s important to point out that in Auto mode, you pre-select the tiles that you want to open. So, for example, you can set a grid with 5 mines, and you can pre-select 3 tiles and let the game run for 10 rounds. The game will automatically click on the same 5 tiles for all 10 rounds.

Manual Mode, as the name suggests, is the classic way to play Mines – one tile at a time. You click on the tiles that you want to reveal manually, and you can cash out manually whenever you want to.

Note from Australian Gamblers: In Auto mode, if you pre-select 5 tiles and set it to run for 10 rounds, you can’t cash out early at 3 or 4 tiles. The game will always play out the full number of tiles you selected before moving to the next round. This mode speeds up Mines and makes it feel more like a pokie, so unless you specifically want that, I don’t recommend using Auto mode.

There’s a popular Mines progression strategy that’s been circulating on TikTok and Reddit forums, promising a guaranteed win. Well, let me tell you something: there’s no strategy that can guarantee winnings in a casino game that has a built-in house edge, but I’ll share it here and debunk it:

1. The strategy suggests starting with A$1 and playing on a 5×5 grid with 1 mine. Since the chance of hitting a mine is just 4% per click, it suggests aiming for 5 safe tiles. Do this for 5 consecutive rounds until you have a A$1 in profit. Unfortunately, the strategy doesn’t tell what to do if you lose in one of these rounds.
2. Next, the idea is to play with your profits. You continue with the same A$1 bet, but now, you cash out at just 3 safe tiles (usually around 1.15x multiplier).
3. You need to repeat step 2 over and over, and once you have a total of A$2 in profit, you put A$2 aside, and proceed with step 1 (cashing out at 5 gems with A$1.24). If you lose the dollar, you repeat step 2 until you have A$2 in profit again.
4. The goal is to repeat this process until the profit is A$10.

I have to admit it, the strategy looks good on paper, but the problem is that every step of the strategy carries the full mathematical risk of hitting the mine. Over enough rounds, the 4% failure rate will catch up with you, and since the multipliers are lower than the true odds, the house edge guarantees that you’ll end up losing more money than you’ll make.

Here are some actual tips for playing Mines:

• Stick to medium volatility for the best Mines experience. This is a purely game of luck, so there’s no real strategy on how to win, so at least enjoy it while you’re playing. Low mines are too slow, and high mines can be frustrating, so playing with 5-10 mines is the best option.
• Avoid Mines variants with lower RTP: Some providers add bonuses or extra features that lower the overall RTP to around 96%, so I suggest you avoid them and play standard versions with an RTP of around 98% or higher
• If you want to try a progression system, keep it simple: Oscar’s Grind or Fibonacci are popular progression-based betting strategies, but realistically, Mines isn’t an ideal game for these systems, so you’d be better off trying them in a game like roulette.

For my 200-round test of Mines, I decided to play Mines by Hacksaw. I know that this is not a real ‘classic’ variant, but I thought: what’s the point of going back, when most new variants let you choose the grid size? Also, Hacksaw’s game looks very modern and has an intuitive interface.

I started with a standard 5×5 grid, 5 mines, and a bet of A$10.

Now, a very important note about Hacksaw’s Mines: this game doesn’t have an Auto mode, which means that you will have to play each round manually. And while the pace genuinely feels slow (much slower than any pokie), it’s actually an enjoyable experience.

After ~100 rounds, I was around A$100 down, but I’ll credit that to my experimenting with different risk levels. Based on my experience, the best way to play the game is to cash out at ~2x multiplier. The odds are around 50%, so you get a largely fair chance of winning. With an RTP of over 98%, you actually get better odds than playing Red/Black in a game like European roulette, for example.

Now, to test how the game feels with a higher volatility, I tried the 3×3 grid with 3 mines.

I’ll credit it to my luck, but I had better success with this more volatile variant of Mines. Obviously, this is a much riskier variant, and I often hit a Mine even on my first click.

Now, to see how the game performs in the least volatile setting, I tried it with a 9×9 grid and just 5 mines.

This is a much less risky option, but you need to open 11 safe tiles for that 2.0x-or-higher multiplier, so the actual RTP is the same.

While playing Mines with the highest volatility (small grid and a lot of mines) can be frustrating because you’ll be constantly hitting mines, the lowest volatility can be frustrating too because the multipliers are very low, and you can still hit a mine fairly early in the game and lose your bet.

I suggest playing with a standard 5×5 grid and medium volatility with 5 mines for the best experience.

Mines may look like Minesweeper, but the two are very different games. This is NOT a game of skill, and since there’s no information on the minefield, every pick is a blind guess. This means that the game comes down entirely to your luck, how many mines you choose to be on the grid, and when you decide to cash out.

There are many different volatility levels, so if you prefer lower volatility, choose fewer mines. If you want bigger multipliers, increase the mine count and reduce the grid size.

With RTPs often around 98% or higher, Mines is a surprisingly fair casino game, and it’s also a good choice if you prefer a slower pace (when compared to games like pokies and roulette) and more player engagement.