How the Mines Game Works: Tiles, Multipliers, Odds

Mines is a 25-tile board hiding a number of mines that you choose, from 1 to 24 (the app's picker offers 1, 3, 5, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24). Each tile you reveal that turns out to be a gem raises the multiplier. You can cash out of the round at any time (you lock in the current multiplier and keep the bet times that number), but if you reveal a mine the round ends and the bet is lost. The multiplier is not arbitrary: it is the exact price of the risk you have taken so far, minus a flat 3% house edge.

The board

You pick a bet and the number of mines. The server then places that many mines at random among the 25 tiles and keeps them hidden. You reveal tiles one at a time.

Two properties of the setup are worth stating plainly:

• The layout is fixed before your first tap. The server draws the mine positions when the round starts. Nothing about which tile you choose, how fast you tap, or what happened in earlier rounds affects them.
• Every unrevealed tile is equally likely to hide a mine. There is no safer corner or lucky pattern. After you have revealed some gems, each remaining tile has the same chance of a mine as every other.

Each safe pick and the multiplier curve

If there are m mines on the 25 tiles, the first pick is safe with probability (25 - m) / 25. The second is safe with probability (24 - m) / 24, given that the first was, then (23 - m) / 23, and so on. Multiplying these gives the chance of surviving k picks in a row. This is called a hypergeometric distribution.

The multiplier at step k is then 0.97 divided by that chance, rounded down to four decimals (the screen shows two). That is the same pricing rule as every other cash-out game: pay 97% of the fair price of the risk. The cash-out games guide explains the rule with a short example; the tables below are the full detail.

Worked example: 5 mines

With 5 mines, the first tile is a mine 5 times in 25 (20%) and safe 80% of the time. Here is every step, computed with the formula above:

Look at what the table shows. Every row is the same trade: multiply the chance by the multiplier and you get 0.97 (for example 0.4957 x 1.957 = 0.970). The multiplier rises faster than the chance falls only because the formula is dividing a fixed 0.97 by it. And as you go deeper, each additional pick is riskier: after 10 safe picks with 5 mines, the 15 tiles left contain all 5 mines, so the next pick is a mine 5 times in 15, or 33%. After 15 safe picks the next tile is a mine 50% of the time.

The risk of the next pick keeps rising

The table above shows the chance of surviving all picks so far. A separate question is the chance that the next tile is a mine, given that you have survived this far. With m mines and k gems already found, 25 - k tiles remain and m of them are mines, so the next pick is a mine with probability m / (25 - k).

The board gets more dangerous as it empties: the mines are a fixed number, and they share fewer and fewer tiles. This does not make a late pick a bad deal, because the multiplier rises to compensate (each step is priced so the return is still 97%). It does explain why the multiplier grows faster on later picks, and why deep runs feel so tense.

Why more mines means a bigger multiplier per pick, with the same return

The mine count sets how risky each pick is, and the multiplier follows. More mines, higher risk per tile, bigger reward per tile. The return is the same 97% throughout. The table includes 10 and 15 mines because the engine accepts any count from 1 to 24, although the app's picker skips them:

(The 3-mine row ends at 2,231x because clearing all 22 safe tiles is a 1-in-2,300 chance. The 1-mine row maxes out at a modest 24.25x because 24 safe picks in a row is not that unlikely.)

So the mine count is a volatility dial. One or two mines give long runs of tiny, near-1x steps. Ten or more make the first couple of picks decisive. The volatility guide explains how to read that shape.

The payout cap and the forced cash-out

Two limits apply to every game in Cashout Arcade: no round pays more than 50,000 times the bet, and none pays more than 250,000,000 coins. In Mines the multiplier can climb past 50,000x with 5 to 20 mines if you clear enough tiles (for example, 5 mines and 20 gems would be 51,536x). To keep every round within the limit, the game cashes you out automatically before a pick that would carry the multiplier over it. That is why the table above shows 19 picks for 5 mines, not 20, and 13 picks for 10 mines (48,040x).

Practically this means the top of the multiplier ladder is out of reach. For most mine counts, the last few steps of the curve have chances so small (the 19th gem with 5 mines is a 1-in-8,855 event) that they only matter in theory.

Re-skins and relatives in the app

Mines is the template for a group of games with a "reveal and risk it" structure. Balloon Pop, Mole Bash, Wire Cut and Bubble Pop began as Mines in a different costume. In the current app each of them has its own rules and pay table rather than the curve above, so do not assume the Mines tables apply to them:

• Balloon Pop is a collect game where popped balloons add ticket values to a pot and a dud loses it.
• Mole Bash uses nine moles, where gold moles raise the pay and a bomb mole ends the round.
• Wire Cut has a board of wires with a number of live wires and one defuse wire.
• Bubble Pop pays by the length of a chain reaction.

Each game's page and its info screen (i) in the app are the reference for its numbers, and the Odds page lists the rules that apply across games. Mines itself is on its game page, which lists the biggest win and return.

Common questions

Does cashing out early improve my odds? No. Every step returns the same 97% on average. Cashing out earlier gives smaller, more frequent wins, cashing out later gives larger, rarer ones.

Is there a pattern to where the mines are? No. They are placed by a secure random draw (see the RNG guide), and the layout is held on the server.

Is Mines provably fair here? No. Results are decided on our servers and the odds are published. The provably fair guide explains the difference.

Is there strategy? Only in the sense of choosing a mine count and a cash-out point to fit how you like to play. See the honest strategy guide for what does and does not hold up.