Whether you play for fun or to win, some games are always more popular than others. When it comes to casino games, you can check out https://verdecasino.com/en/category/popular to understand which ones are played more than others. But the popularity of some games makes their names known to everyone: even if you’ve never played them before, you’ll know what game they’re talking about when you hear the name.
Plinko is one of those games and has been played for over 40 years. Contrary to popular belief, it is a game that appeared on TV, not casinos, and it was a producer who invented it. So how exactly does plinko work, what is the purpose of the game, and is it possible to increase your chances of winning? Below, we will answer all these questions.
It Was a TV Game
In 1972, a game show called “Price is Right” began to be broadcast on US television. Although it was discontinued in 2007, you probably remember what this show was about – it was pretty popular. If you don’t remember, we can simply say that it was a program where contestants tried to guess the price of a particular item. Mini-games were also featured in the show because just making price predictions became boring after a while.
Price is Right producer Frank Wayne thought these games should be more fun, and in just a few days, he designed a new minigame he called “plinko.” Inspired by the “pachinko” boards in Japan, the game was first aired in January 1983 and was well received by the audience. The initial version of the game gave the contestant a chance to win up to $25,000. Later, this limit was increased to $125,000. Plinko became so popular that it was also released as a stand-alone board game. Most gamers remember plinko with these board games and don’t know that it was actually a minigame included in a TV show.
- The highest amount ever earned from plinko in one go is 39,200 USD.
- Each contestant has the right to use five chips, and so far, no contestant has managed to drop all these chips into the highest-paying Considering it’s been played for almost 40 years, that’s a pretty impressive statistic.
- Although not officially confirmed, the name of the game is thought to come from the sound of chips dropping (“plink”).
Rules of Plinko
Here are some basics:
- There are nine slots at the top of the Plinko board. In the lower part, there are also nine chambers. Each chamber represents a different cash prize amount. There are also two chambers with a value of 0, meaning that they do not pay anything.
- The slots in the upper part do not connect with the chambers in the lower part in a straight way. The Plinko board contains quadrilaterals that look like a zigzag pattern when viewed from afar. In other words, a chip dropped from the top does not fall straight down. It can change direction by hitting these quadrangles, and it can fall into any chamber.
- Speaking of chips, the game starts with the contestants dropping a single chip from any slot they want. By guessing the prices of the products correctly, the contestants can win four more chips and use them in the game too. The monetary value of the chambers in which the chips fall determines what the total prize of the contestant will be.
First, let’s take a look at what the monetary chambers mentioned above look like. The numbers in this table represent the cash prizes that can be won.
| 100 | 500 | 1.000 | 0 | 10.000 | 0 | 1.000 | 500 | 100 |
Let’s point out that these numbers have increased over time, but this does not change anything in terms of probability calculations. The highest paying chamber is always in the middle, and there are always two 0 chambers. If we drop a plinko chip right down the middle slot, we see that the probabilities of it landing in each chamber are:
| 100 | 500 | 1.000 | 0 | 10.000 | 0 | 1.000 | 500 | 100 |
| 0.019 | 0.054 | 0.121 | 0.193 | 0.226 | 0.193 | 0.121 | 0.054 | 0.019 |
Roughly, we can say that you have a 23% chance of winning the big prize with a chip dropped from the middle slot. This may sound like a high figure, but keep in mind that there is also a probability of around 20% for each of the 0 chambers: in general, plinko offers less chance of winning than almost any casino game. For example, if you wager on bets that pay 1:1 on European roulette, your chances of winning will be just over 48%.
It is important that you drop the chip in the middle slot: if you choose another slot, the probability of winning is even lower. This is because the possibilities for changing the chip’s direction are decreasing or increasing. In other words, when playing plinko, you should always choose the middle slot and hope that luck is on your side.