Lightning: how it plays, odds and payouts

Lightning is a storm over a 20-building skyline. You pick between one and eight buildings, a single bolt of lightning strikes one building at random, and if it is one of yours you are paid. Before the strike, between one and three buildings are charged with a multiplier, which is where the big results come from.

How a round works

1. Set your bet and tap between 1 and 8 buildings. The table below shows 1, 2, 4 and 8 picks as examples.
2. The server charges 1 to 3 buildings at random (1 building 50% of the time, 2 buildings 35%, 3 buildings 15%), each with a multiplier of x2, x3, x5, x10, x25 or x50.
3. One building is struck, chosen uniformly from the 20.
4. If the strike hits one of your picks, you are paid the base pay for your number of picks, multiplied by the building's charge if it was charged.
5. If the strike misses all your picks, the round pays 0x.

The storm animation is the reveal. Your choice of which buildings does not change anything, because every building is equally likely to be struck and to be charged.

Picks, hits and base pay

Each time you double the picks you double the chance of a hit and halve the base pay.

Charge multipliers

The struck building is charged in 8.25% of strikes, and a charged building carries x5.05 on average.

Worked example: four picks

With four picks the exact table is:

Suppose the bolt hits one of your four buildings and that building is charged x5. The pay is 3.6353 x 5 = 18.17x, so a bet of 100 coins returns about 1,817 coins. The chance of that exact result is 20% x 8.25% x 20%, which is 0.33%, about 1 round in 300. The more ordinary hit with no charge pays 3.64x and comes up 18.35% of the time.

Check the average: 0.20 hit chance x 3.6353 x (1 + 0.0825 x 4.05) comes to 0.97. The same calculation with 1, 2 or 8 picks gives the same answer, because the base pay is set to make it so.

Max win and limits

With one pick, a x50 charge on your building pays 727.06x the bet, a chance of 1 in 24,000 or so. The game-wide limits (50,000x the bet and 250,000,000 coins per round) cannot be reached. Volatility is high for the one-pick mode and noticeably calmer at eight picks, where the best result is 90.88x.

What matters and what does not

• Which buildings you pick: nothing. A skyline cannot be read for hot spots.
• Number of picks: changes the rhythm, not the return. Fewer picks = long quiet stretches and larger hits.
• Charges from earlier rounds: none carry over. Charged buildings are drawn fresh every round.

If you like to understand what a quiet stretch means, volatility explained puts numbers on it.

How it differs from other instant games

Duck Pond is also a pick-your-spots game, but you hook three ducks and the prizes are summed from a fixed pond. In Lightning there is a single bolt and the charge makes the result lumpy. For a pure picking game with a draw of many numbers, see Keno.

Play with limits

Coins are virtual, have no cash value and cannot be withdrawn or exchanged for prizes. For adults (18+), for entertainment. Set a time limit before you play; see playing safely in Cashout Arcade.