प्लिंको

Plinko is based on a game show board. A ball falls through a triangle of pegs and lands in one of the slots at the bottom. Centre slots pay small multipliers and edge slots pay large ones.

How results are generated

In a typical provably fair implementation, each row uses one random float. A float below 0.5 sends the ball left, and 0.5 or above sends it right (the exact rule depends on the casino). With 16 rows, the game needs 16 floats, which is more than one 32-byte HMAC output provides, so it moves to the next round of the HMAC using the cursor.

Why it matters

The number of rows and the risk level change the payout table and the volatility. More rows and higher risk mean larger possible multipliers and more frequent small losses.

Worked example

On 8 rows, the number of right moves follows a binomial distribution. There is only 1 path out of 256 to each edge slot, so each edge pays a large multiplier, while the middle slot is reached by 70 of the 256 paths and pays less than your stake on most risk settings.