Mines

How to play

Mines is free play with play chips, and no real money is involved. The grid has 25 tiles, and before the round starts you choose how many of them hide a mine, from 1 to 24. The mines are placed at random when you press Start, before your first pick, and they do not move during the round. Each tile you open is either a gem, which lets the round go on, or a mine, which ends the round and loses the bet.

Every gem raises the multiplier on your bet. After k safe picks with m mines, the multiplier is 0.97 times the number of ways to choose k tiles from 25, divided by the number of ways to choose k tiles from the 25 minus m safe ones. In plain terms, it is the fair payout for surviving those picks, times 97 percent. With 3 mines the first gem gives about 1.10 times the bet, and with 24 mines the single gem gives 24.25 times the bet.

You can cash out at any time after at least one gem, and you receive the bet times the current multiplier, rounded down to two decimals. When every safe tile has been found, the round cashes out by itself. The expected return is 97 percent for any number of mines and any stopping point, a house edge of 3 percent. At the end of each round all the mines are shown, so you can see where they were.

Controls

Pick chips to set the bet and choose the number of mines in the list, then press Start. Click or tap any tile to open it. The line under the grid shows the current multiplier and the multiplier your next safe pick would give. Press Cash out to collect the amount shown on the button, or keep picking to raise it.

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