Duck Shoot: How It Works, Odds and Payouts

Duck Shoot is a shooting gallery with ten shots. You pick a lane of ducks, fire ten shots, and the number of ducks you hit sets your pay. Slow ducks are hit more often and pay less; fast ducks are hit less often and pay far more, up to 1,280x for a perfect round.

Coins are virtual and have no cash value. Each shot's hit or miss is drawn on our servers when the round starts, so aiming has no effect on the outcome.

How a round works

1. Set your bet and choose Slow or Fast ducks.
2. Fire shots one at a time. Each hits with the lane's chance: 55% for slow ducks and 40% for fast ducks.
3. After each shot you may cash out or fire the next. A miss does not end the round.
4. After ten shots, the round pays according to the number of hits.

If the shots you have left can no longer reach a paying count, the round ends early with nothing: in the slow lane after 6 misses (you cannot reach 5 hits any more) and in the fast lane after 7 misses (you cannot reach 4).

Slow ducks: 55% per shot

Fast ducks: 40% per shot

Weighting each pay by its chance gives a return of 96.85% for slow ducks and 96.94% for fast ducks. The shared limits for all games are on the odds page.

How often you get something back

In the slow lane even a very decent 6 hits out of 10 pays 0.87x, which is less than your stake.

Cash out between shots

The cash-out value after each shot is the exact average of what the remaining shots would pay. It starts at 0.9685x in the slow lane before any shot, and moves with every result. After five shots with 4 hits in the slow lane, cashing out pays about 1.65x; after five shots with only 2 hits, about 0.39x. After five shots with 2 hits in the fast lane, about 0.30x. These are true averages, so taking the cash-out and playing on return the same, which means the decision is about how much risk you want, not about getting a better deal.

A worked example

You bet 200 coins on the fast lane. The chance of 6 or more hits out of 10 at 40% is 16.62%, and at exactly 6 hits you get 1.15x, or 230 coins. Nine hits pays 128x, which is 25,600 coins, and happens about once in 640 rounds. A perfect round pays 1,280x, 256,000 coins, about once in 9,537 rounds. Switching to the slow lane for the same bet, 10 hits pays only 35x (7,000 coins) but happens once in 395 rounds. Neither lane is better value; they put the 97% in different places.

Max win and caps

The biggest Duck Shoot payout is 1,280x the bet, for ten hits on fast ducks. That is below the game-wide limits of 50,000x the bet and 250,000,000 coins per round, and a bet above about 195,300 coins would reach the coin cap first.

What is the same as other games

Duck Shoot, Knockdown: How It Works, Odds and Payouts and Mole Bash: How It Works, Odds and Payouts share a design: a fixed pay table based on how many hits you get, and a cash-out price that is the exact average of the rest. Duck Shoot began as a Tower look-alike but now works from the tables above, so it does not behave like Tower: How It Works, Odds and Payouts where one wrong door ends the round. For why a pay table like the fast lane swings so much, see Volatility in Casino Games: Why Results Swing.

Tips that hold up

• Do not aim. The hits are drawn before you fire.
• Choose a lane for the swings you want. Slow ducks give smoother results; fast ducks give rare large wins.
• Cashing out is a choice about risk. It never improves the average.
• Remember what a hit rate means. At 55% per shot you still miss 4 or 5 times in a typical round.

Play with limits

A ten-shot round can feel quick but repeating it can add up. Decide your limit before you start, and see Play Safely in Cashout Arcade: Limits and Breaks for tools. Cashout Arcade is for adults aged 18+, uses virtual coins and has no real-money prizes.