How to Play Plinko – The Ultimate Plinko Guide

Plinko is actually a very simple game: you drop a puck at the top of a board filled with pegs and watch it bounce its way down into one of the prize slots at the bottom. In a real-life Plinko game, the “force” that pulls the puck down is gravity, but in RNG-based Plinko games, the algorithm determines where it will land.

Traditional Plinko is played on a tall board with a grid of pegs, and you should climb to the top and drop the disc or puck. The puck bounces off on its way down until it lands in one of the prize multiplier slots at the bottom.

You pick a position at the top of the board, let the puck go, and it goes down through the maze of pegs. Each peg sends the puck slightly left or right, and by the time it reaches the bottom, it takes a random path that makes it impossible to predict where it will land.

On the TV show, each slot at the bottom has a cash value. In casino Plinko, those slots usually have multipliers instead, such as 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 9x, 16x, 100x, or higher, depending on the settings. Your bet is multiplied by whatever slot the puck lands in, so if you wager A$10 and the puck lands in a x10 slot, you win A$100.

Fun fact from Australian Gamblers: Plinko was actually invented by The Price Is Right’s executive producer Frank Wayne. When thinking about how to name the game, he heard the sounds that the puck made on the board (plin, plink, plink), so he named it Plinko. The Price Is Right fans widely consider Plinko to be the most famous game of the show.

The layout in Plinko is always built around the same idea: there’s a tall board filled with pegs, a drop point at the top, and multiplier slots at the bottom. The look can change depending on the provider, but the fundamentals stay the same in all Plinko games that I’ve tested.

When you load any Plinko game, the screen usually shows three main things:

• The board with pegs (usually between 8 and 16 rows)
• The multiplier values at the bottom
• A small panel where you adjust your bet amount, risk level, and number of rows

I’ll now explain the settings you’ll come across in most Plinko games and what they mean.

In most Plinko games, you’ll see the triangular pegboard, and this is where the puck (or ball, or disc, or another round-looking item) bounces down. Just next to it, there’s usually a menu labelled Lines where you can choose how many rows the board will have. Usually, you can adjust the board from 8 to 16 lines, but I’ve seen Plinko games with up to 24 lines.

The more lines you choose, the longer the puck travels, and the more spread-out the results are. So, in theory, the number of rows determines the game’s volatility, because the highest multipliers are usually placed on these edges.

Let’s take BGaming’s Plinko game as an example. When playing with 8 rows in High risk level, the multiplier ranges from x0.2 to x29.

However, if we adjust the number of rows to 16, the lowest multiplier remains x0.2, but the highest multiplier jumps to x1000 (which is the highest possible win in the game). This means that while the max multiplier is higher, the likelihood of getting just x0.2 is higher too, so it’s a much riskier way to play the game.

This happens because Plinko follows a natural probability curve where the centre slots are hit far more often than the edges. So, when you extend the board, you actually lower the chance of reaching the sides, which is why the game offers the highest multipliers on those positions.

In other words, you’re much more likely to hit some of the low-paying centre slots, and the further you move from the centre, the lower the chance of the puck going into that slot.

Most Plinko games will let you adjust the risk level, and there are usually three options:

• Low Risk
• Normal Risk
• High Risk

With the Risk Level, you adjust how big (or small) the multipliers at the bottom of the board will be. The layout of the board stays the same, but the risk level changes the values of each slot, depending on the risk level you choose.

Just below the Play button, you can adjust how much you want to bet per drop. Every Plinko casino game has this option, and the betting range usually starts at A$0.10 or A$0.20 up to A$100.

You can also switch between Manual and Auto mode. Manual mode is exactly what it sounds like: you press Play for each drop, while Auto mode lets you run multiple drops automatically.

Note from Australian Gamblers: The Auto mode also allows you to have multiple pucks on the board at the same time. Obviously, this is a massive change from the TV Plinko, and while this option speeds up the game and brings it closer to pokies, it also makes the gameplay feel much more volatile. The pucks start dropping a lot faster than you might expect, so it’s definitely a feature to use with a bit of caution.

One thing I like about Plinko compared to a lot of pokies is that the RTP is usually quite high. Most Plinko games sit somewhere between 97% and 99%, which is better than the majority of online pokies and even many table games like European and American roulette. It doesn’t mean you’ll win, of course, but with a lower house edge, your balance generally lasts longer than it would on a 95% pokie.

Unlike games where the RTP changes randomly and is based on how the developer has structured the game and the RNG, Plinko’s RTP comes directly from how the multipliers are arranged at the bottom of the board.

Each slot has a fixed probability of being hit, and the provider balances the payouts based on those probabilities. So if a game advertises 98% RTP, the multipliers are calculated in a way where, over a massive sample of drops, the game returns 98% of the total wagered amount.

For example, if the game offers 1000x as the top multiplier on the far edge, the probability of hitting that slot is extremely low. To balance this, the centre slots (which you hit far more often) usually have a x0.2 multiplier, so this combination of extremely rare big hits and frequent small hits creates the final RTP figure.

Now, many developers state that your “chosen strategy” affects the RTP (although ever so slightly), but this is a bit misleading. What they really mean is that the different game settings might have different RTP presets. For example, playing the game at Low Risk and 8 rows might have an RTP of 98.91%, while playing it with 12 rows and Normal Risk has an RTP of 99.16%.

They call these “strategies” because you are choosing a setup, but there’s no real strategy as in blackjack, poker, or even roulette.

To demonstrate how to play Plinko in practice, I played and recorded a 200-round test of Plinko. I chose Blitz Plinko by Dragon Gaming for my test to check how the added features feel, and whether I’ll have any luck with the big multipliers.

I started with a bet of A$10, and I set the risk level to Blitz with 16 lines. In other words, I chose the riskiest mode in this game, and despite some wins, most of the pucks ended up in the Dead Zone. So, after the first 50 rounds, I was down A$239.

I decided to give the Blitz mode another go, but this time with just 8 rows on the board. This time, I had more luck and actually ended the 100th round with some minor profit. Now, for my next 50 rounds, I set the risk level to Medium and 12 lines. However, despite the lower volatility (compared to Blitz mode), I ended up losing around A$50.

Finally, I decided to try the lowest volatility setting with just 8 rows, and, unsurprisingly, the bankroll remained largely the same after the 50 rounds in this volatility mode.

Much to my surprise, I had the best luck with the highest volatility level in Blitz mode and 8 rows, and it was the only mode in which I actually won something. Sure, Plinko is a game of luck, but this test really showed me how the different risk levels completely change it.

It’s one of the rare casino games where you can genuinely feel the full spectrum of volatility, from extremely low-risk, low-reward mode to the incredibly high-risk modes.

Personally, I found the lowest risk mode a bit boring, so I would stick with the normal or high risk modes.

Plinko is one of the easiest casino games to understand, and the most distinctive part about it is the volatility. You can set it from extremely low to extremely high, and the risk level and lines (rows) on the board you choose really change the game.

I didn’t provide any Plinko strategies because there really aren’t any special tips or strategies about it. It’s a pure luck game, which means that you can’t influence the path of the puck, and you can’t make smarter decisions like you would in blackjack. Your entire approach comes down to two things: your bet size and the volatility setting you choose.

So, if you don’t want to risk it much, play with the lowest volatility setting. If you want to go for a higher possible payout, you’ll have to go for the higher volatility settings.

And realistically, if you’re playing Plinko at an online casino, you’re probably doing it because you want those higher volatility options. With an RTP that can reach around 99%, Plinko is actually one of the better games to use if you’re going to chase those higher wins.