Plinko Casino in Australia: Where the Ball-Drop Pitch Meets the Block List

A little puck falls through a forest of pegs, lands in one of nine or sixteen slots at the bottom and credits whatever multiplier was printed on the slot. That is the whole pitch. Offshore sites that target Australians dress it with “99% RTP” and a “×1,000” headline multiplier, then invite a deposit that no Australian regulator is willing to back up. This page is the version of that pitch read honestly: the paytable as BGaming publishes it, the regulatory frame that makes offering the game to Australians an offence, the eleven operators the regulator has already called out by name, and the arithmetic behind how long a clearing requirement actually takes.

The figures on this page are current as of 8 November 2026 and have been checked against the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s register of blocking requests and formal warnings.

Eleven Operators the ACMA Has Already Named — And Why That List Is the Real One

The natural urge when comparing offshore Plinko sites is to ask which pays fastest or which has the friendliest welcome package. That frame falls over the moment the names are read: the Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued formal warnings over each of the eleven brands below. The list below is built from those warnings, not from marketing material, and is ordered as the regulator published them.

Two things stand out the moment this is read as a table rather than a list. First, six of the eleven warnings hit the same operator, Dama N.V., over six different brands — RocketPlay at one point, Level Up Casino, Woo Casino and Spirit Casino all on that single licence-holder. The corporate name behind the site rotates; the legal exposure sits with one Curaçao entity until it doesn’t. Second, the regulator does not just block: it names. Each formal warning names a corporate entity, a domain and a date. A punter who reads the table and ignores the operator column is reading the wrong half of it — the operator name is the only field an investigator can pursue if a withdrawal goes wrong, because the brand is replaced as easily as the punter is.

The verdict, since the audit asks for one: every brand in this table has offered a prohibited service to Australians. The one with the most exposures on the same operator, Dama N.V.’s four brands, is also the one whose marketing voice you will hear loudest if you search “Plinko casino Australia” today — which is itself a fact worth weighing.

RocketPlay

Pulsup Ltd picked up the RocketPlay warning in March 2026 after the site had already attracted an earlier caution to Dama N.V. in May 2022. The chain matters because the 2022 letter was a warning about the operator, not the brand, and the 2026 letter shows the warning did not stick. There is no Plinko paytable on the public RocketPlay page that research could confirm, so the only useful thing to take from the brand is the regulator’s name on the operator twice over.

Level Up Casino

Dama N.V. again, with a single formal warning dated May 2022. The site is one of the few on the table that research found listed by BGaming as a Plinko distributor, which means the studio’s 99% RTP claim is being carried into Australia through a brand the ACMA has called out. The combination is the point: a game that looks transparent because the studio publishes the numbers can still arrive through a wrapper that sits outside Australian law.

Woo Casino

Dama N.V. received a fresh formal warning over Woo Casino in March 2025. The site’s own pages carry a licence badge from a regulator that does not cover Australian customers, and there is no public record that the operator has accepted any of the ACMA’s letters. For a player choosing between this page’s eleven, the relevant contrast with the brand ranked above is older: the 2022 letter to Dama N.V. did not stop a 2025 letter to the same operator over a sister site.

Spirit Casino

Another Dama N.V. brand, formal warning dated May 2025. Three consecutive warnings to Dama N.V. across 2025 and early 2026, over three different brand names, point to a business model that absorbs the cost of a regulator letter and carries on. The pattern is the same one as Woo Casino, and the verdict is the same one: a player using this brand is depositing with an entity the ACMA has named by its corporate owner.

National Casino

Consolutetish S.R.L. attracted a July 2025 formal warning over National Casino. The brand is one of the few on the list that shows up in Wikipedia’s Plinko topic as a distributor, which is a thin credential — Wikipedia reflects what sites claim, not what regulators confirm — but it does tell the reader that the marketing footprint is wide enough to register in an encyclopaedia entry.

Bizzo Casino

Consolutetish S.R.L. again, with the July 2025 letter covering both National Casino and Bizzo Casino, and an earlier formal warning to TechSolutions (CY) Group Limited and TechSolutions Group N.V. going back to 2022. Two operators have carried the same brand across a regulatory letter, which is the same pattern as the Dama N.V. brands above and is worth flagging for anyone who reads “new operator” in a brand’s footer.

Ignition Casino

Bamboo Media received the July 2025 formal warning over Ignition Casino. The brand is one of the better-known names in the offshore space for Australian-facing pokies marketing, which makes the ACMA letter the more visible thing about the brand on this page. The fact that the regulator had to name Bamboo Media rather than the brand itself is a useful reminder: the corporate wrapper is where the regulator’s reach stops.

Instant Casino

EOD Code SRL received the formal warning over Instant Casino in February 2025. The brand is sometimes presented as a “no-KYC” pitch, which is its own issue — a brand that advertises less verification is advertising less recourse, and the ACMA letter is the regulator’s answer to the marketing claim.

Jackbit

Ryker B.V. drew a formal warning in April 2026 that named both Jackbit and CasinOK, a two-for-one letter that is rarer than the single-brand warnings on this table. The pairing is useful as a comparison: a punter who recognises Jackbit from a banner ad has probably seen CasinOK on the same affiliate network, and the ACMA treats the two as a single legal exposure.

Casino Intense

Sterplay Holding Ltd received the April 2025 formal warning over Casino Intense. The brand shows up in ABC News coverage of the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission and on ACMA material, which puts it in the small subset of brands on this table that have been mentioned in mainstream reporting rather than only on affiliate pages.

Sky Crown

Hollycorn N.V. received the formal warning over Sky Crown, and a parallel warning over Blue Leo, in September 2022. The 2022 date puts this brand among the earliest on the list, which means the ACMA has had three and a half years to see whether the warning changed anything and has had to send the same letters to other Hollycorn brands in the meantime.

What a Plinko Casino Game Actually Is

The game on the screen is a digital adaptation of a pricing game that premiered on the US television show The Price Is Right on 3 January 1983. A contestant on the show drops a chip down a pegboard into one of nine slots: the two outer slots worth $100, the next pair worth $500, the next pair worth $1,000, the centre slot worth $10,000, and one further $0 slot — for a maximum win of $50,000 across five chips.

The online Plinko casino game keeps the same visual idea and replaces the dollar amounts with multipliers that scale against the stake. BGaming’s version, the one most commonly advertised under the Plinko casino banner, advertises a 99% return-to-player rate and a ×1,000 top multiplier; balls drop through a pyramid of pegs into slots whose values are printed on the paytable. The player chooses a risk level — low, normal or high — and the number of lines, from 8 to 16, before each drop. The session can run on manual drops or on auto-bet, and the stake is set per ball rather than per line.

The paytable itself is the part worth a second look. A ×1,000 headline figure next to a 99% RTP looks generous until the layout of the multipliers is read: the slots near the centre, which the ball reaches more often because the pegs funnel it there, carry low values; the ×1,000 sits in one of the two outermost slots on a 16-line board. The 99% figure is averaged across every possible drop, weighted by the chance each slot has of catching the ball — and the chance the ball has of landing in the outermost slot is exactly the lowest of any slot on the board.

The point of the paytable is that the centre of a Plinko board is the most likely destination for the ball and the lowest-paying destination on the board. The pegs do the work; the multiplier choices at the edges do not change that geometry, only the size of the spread.

Plinko, Baccarat and Blackjack at a Glance

The reader who wants a quick orientation will compare Plinko to the table games Australian casinos actually run, since those are the games the regulators have approved and the games with published house edges. The table below sets three games side by side on the figures that matter to a reader deciding what to spend time on.

The comparison does not flatter Plinko. A player who sits at a Crown Melbourne baccarat table on the Banker bet is paying the house 1.06% on every dollar that goes in. The same dollar spent on BGaming’s advertised Plinko is paying the house about 1% on average across every drop — close, not identical. A player at a Crown Melbourne blackjack table using the liberal Las Vegas Strip rules and optimal play is paying about 0.28%, less than a third of either of the above. The reason blackjack sits where it does is that the player makes decisions on every hand; Plinko makes every decision for the punter, which is the design choice that keeps its edge where it is.

The figures behind blackjack’s edge are not invented for this comparison. They come from rule sets the casino regulators in Victoria and New South Wales have approved, the rules that govern which games can be played in the licensed rooms in this country. The 0.28% figure is for optimal play under one specific set of rules — dealer stands on soft 17, double on any two cards, double after split, resplit aces, late surrender — and other rule sets give different figures. The Atlantic City rule set, for instance, sits around 0.43%. The point is not which blackjack rule set is best; the point is that a player who can read the rule set on the table card can read what the edge will be, and that is a property no offshore Plinko page offers.

The Paytable, in Two Lines the Marketing Pages Skip

Most of the claims about Plinko sit on three numbers: the RTP, the top multiplier and the number of lines. The numbers below are what BGaming publishes on the game’s own page, and they are the same numbers an Australian punter will see on the affiliate page that links to the deposit screen.

The 99% return-to-player figure is averaged across every drop over a long session, and the weighting does the work that the headline hides. The centre slot is what the ball reaches most often, because the pegs physically funnel it there, and the centre slot is the lowest-paying slot on the board. The top multiplier is the value printed on the outermost slot, which the ball reaches least often because the geometry that funnels it to the centre also pushes it away from the edges. The advertised RTP is honest in the way a population average is honest: it is true on average and unhelpful on any individual drop.

The risk-level setting moves the spread between the centre and the edges. On “low” risk, the spread is narrow — the centre slot pays close to 1× and the outermost slot pays a few multiples of that. On “high” risk, the spread widens and the outermost slot can reach the advertised ×1,000. The trade-off is exactly what the spread says: a high-risk board has the same 99% RTP averaged across its slots, but it pays more rarely and pays more when it does. A punter who sets the board to low risk will see small wins often; a punter who sets it to high risk will see most drops land on or near the centre slot and occasional drops pay well. The headline figure of ×1,000 reads very differently once the reader sees that the centre slot is where the ball actually lands.

Why the Paytable Looks Like a Pokies Reel

A pokies reel in an Australian pub or club is governed by the same arithmetic that governs a Plinko board, and the comparison is the one most useful for a reader who already knows what a pokie looks like. A five-reel video pokie in a licensed venue advertises a return-to-player percentage that sits between 85% and 92% on average; a Plinko board advertises 99%. The difference is the size of the spread, not the existence of one: a pokies reel pays small amounts often and rare amounts occasionally, weighted to the centre of its paytable; a Plinko board pays small amounts very often and large amounts very rarely, weighted to the centre of its pegboard.

The reason a punter who plays a Plinko board will not see the 99% figure on any individual drop is the same reason a punter who plays a pokie will not see the 90% figure on any individual spin: both are averages over many plays, weighted by the geometry of the machine, and the geometry dominates the headline. A Plinko ball that lands on the centre slot has not been unlucky in any meaningful sense — it has done what the geometry says it will do.

The Legal Frame in Plain English

The federal Interactive Gambling Act 2001, as tightened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, makes it an offence to provide online casino-style games to customers physically in Australia. Plinko is a casino-style game, and an offshore site offering it to an Australian is offering a prohibited interactive gambling service under the Act. The penalties for an individual are up to A$220,000 per day; for a corporation, up to A$1.1 million per day. The Act targets the provider, not the player, and a player in Australia has not committed an offence by depositing — but the deposit also has no Australian protection behind it.

What the Act does not do is restrict the player. There is no criminal record attached to opening an offshore account. There is also no Australian complaints body, no local regulator to write to, no requirement that the operator hold the funds in a segregated account, and no obligation to pay out a disputed withdrawal. The operator’s home regulator — Curaçao in most of the brands on this page — has no jurisdiction to enforce an Australian punter’s complaint. An Australian punter who is refused a payout has, in practice, the operator’s word and the affiliate’s silence.

The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 passed Parliament on 19 August 2026. The advertising and inducement measures in the new law commence on 1 January 2027. The law exists, but it is law with a start date, not law in force on this page.

The Block List Is a Block List, Not a Schedule

The Australian Communications and Media Authority asked Australian internet service providers, in a round reported on 26 June 2026, to block 12 more illegal gambling websites: 7Signs, ChromaBet, Donbet, Duospin, Freshbet, Slots Gem, Jacks Club, Lucky Start, Pointsbetz.com, Spinrise, Vinyl Casino and Wildsino. That is one round, and it is the most recent round on the public record at the time of writing. The total of blocked and warned-against sites since the first blocking request in November 2019 is 1,751, by the ACMA’s own count.

The reason the round-based reporting matters is that the list updates. The brands above this paragraph are the twelve in the most recent round; the brands earlier in this article are the ones that earned a formal warning, which is a different legal instrument. A brand can be on either list, on both, or on neither. The brands on this page’s table are the eleven that have earned a formal warning, not necessarily a block request. A reader looking for “the current list” should treat the ACMA’s own register as the only authoritative source, because this page is a snapshot of what the research could confirm.

A Bankroll Number Behind the Block List

The arithmetic on the block list is a useful way to track the ACMA’s activity. The first blocking request was in November 2019; the running total of blocked and warned-against sites reached 1,751 by 26 June 2026. The window is six years and roughly seven months — call it 79 months — and the average works out to roughly 22 sites per month across the life of the regime. The band is more useful than the figure: in a slow month, the ACMA might not add any; in a heavy round, it might add a dozen at once. The point is the direction, not the count: the regulator is adding sites faster than it is removing them, and an offshore brand that is on the list today is on it tomorrow.

The same arithmetic frames the loss figure. H2 Gambling Capital estimated, in a 2025 report cited by the industry press, that Australians lose roughly A$3.9 billion a year to illegal gambling sites, and that the share of gambling going through legal channels has fallen from 74% in 2021 to 64%. The two figures together mean that the legal market is shrinking and the illegal market is absorbing the difference. The legal channels have not lost A$1.4 billion in a year because the legal channels are shrinking — they are losing share because the illegal channels are growing. The arithmetic behind that is simple: if the legal share has fallen by ten percentage points over four years, and the total pool has held roughly steady, then the illegal side has grown by the same ten percentage points of volume.

What a Punter Actually Recovers From

A punt with an offshore Plinko site that goes wrong has three realistic paths, and only one of them is in Australia. The first is the operator’s own complaints process, which is run by the operator. The second is the operator’s home regulator — Curaçao in most of the cases on this page — which has limited reach into Australian disputes and which the ACMA has specifically named in the formal warnings. The third is the affiliate network that introduced the punter, which is paid by the operator and is unlikely to act against the operator’s interests.

A punt with a licensed Australian wagering service that goes wrong has, instead, BetStop, the National Gambling Help Network, and a regulator that will respond to a complaint. None of those cover an offshore Plinko deposit. The asymmetry is the point: a punter choosing between the two is choosing between two very different pictures of what happens when the operator refuses to pay out.

Where Australians Are Protected, and Where They Are Not

The protections that exist for Australian online wagering — BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, the ban on credit cards and digital currency as deposit methods, the regulator’s complaints process — apply to Australian-licensed wagering services. BetStop went live in August 2023 and binds only Australian-licensed online and phone wagering services. An offshore Plinko casino is not connected to it.

The credit card ban is the cleanest illustration of where the line sits. Since 11 June 2024, credit cards, credit-related products and digital currency have been banned as payment methods for licensed online wagering in Australia, with penalties of up to $247,500 for operators. The legal deposit routes for licensed wagering are debit card, bank transfer, PayID/Osko and BPAY. An offshore Plinko site asking for a credit card deposit or a crypto deposit is operating outside the Australian rules, and the deposit itself is the clearest signal that the site is unlicensed. The ban was put in place because credit and crypto deposits make problem gambling harder to track; the same property is what makes the offshore Plinko sites prefer them.

The licensed bookmakers themselves sit in a small geographic footprint. The Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission regulates 52 of Australia’s online bookmakers — including Sportsbet, Bet365 and Ladbrokes — which are licensed in the Territory for tax reasons; the commission has no full-time staff and meets once a month in Darwin. The shape of that arrangement is part of why an Australian punter reads “licensed” on a page and assumes more than the licence actually covers.

Tax, Wins and the ATO

A recreational gambler’s winnings are not assessable income in Australia, and losses are not deductible. The relevant provision is section 6-5 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. The exception is a person who carries on a business of gambling, which is a different matter and one the Australian Taxation Office decides case by case. A punter reading about Plinko on an offshore site and asking “do I have to declare this?” is asking the wrong question for the offshore case — there is no ATO disclosure triggered by a recreational offshore win, because the winnings are not taxable income — and is asking the wrong question for the licensed case, because the licensed bookmaker is reporting the activity already. The honest answer is “model only, check with the ATO”, and that is what an editor says when the answer depends on the punter’s own situation.

Crypto Plinko Sites and the “Verified” Pitch

The crypto version of the Plinko casino game is the same game, paid for in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT or another coin. The paytable is the same; the pegs do the same work; the multipliers are the same. What changes is the deposit route and the marketing copy around it.

“Plinko crypto casino” is a phrase the affiliate pages use because it pulls in search traffic, not because the game is different. The game on the other side of a crypto deposit button is BGaming’s Plinko with the same 99% RTP and the same ×1,000 top multiplier. The deposit route is different because the offshore site prefers it: a crypto deposit leaves no chargeback route, no bank intermediary, and no paper trail the punter’s own bank will hold.

“Plinko casino no KYC” is the same pitch with the verification stripped out. A site that does not check a customer’s identity has no way to verify the customer’s age, no way to enforce a self-exclusion, and no record to hand to a regulator if the regulator asks. The pitch is sold as a feature. The trade-off is that the punter who loses has no Australian complaints body to write to, no identity on file with the operator, and no paper trail to follow the deposit if it goes missing.

The crypto angle does, however, change one thing about the punter’s exposure. The Interactive Gambling Act’s credit-card ban does not bind the offshore site, because the offshore site is not an Australian licensee. An Australian punter who deposits in Bitcoin at an offshore Plinko site has, in practice, no Australian regulator between them and the operator’s discretion. The deposit is the limit of the punter’s protection.

The Crypto Pitch as a Marketing Pattern

Three properties appear together on the offshore Plinko pages: a crypto deposit button, an absence of KYC, and a “provably fair” badge. The provably fair claim is a real cryptographic property — a hash of the seed that produced the result, so the punter can verify that the operator did not change the result after the bet — but it is a property of the result, not of the operator. A provably fair game tells the punter that the game did not cheat on this drop. It does not tell the punter that the operator will pay out the winnings from this drop. The two are separate claims, and the offshore pages sell them as one.

The credit card ban’s specific target was the digital-currency deposit. The ban was written to apply to digital currency as well as credit, because the same harm — a punter with no paper trail between them and a gambling site — follows from both. An offshore site that prefers crypto is an offshore site that has chosen to operate outside the rule the Australian regulator wrote for exactly this harm.

Where to Read the Paytable and Where Not To

The paytable that ships with BGaming’s Plinko is published on the BGaming site and is the same paytable that appears on every wrapper around the game. The 99% RTP and the ×1,000 top multiplier are not the operator’s claim; they are the studio’s. The operator’s contribution is the deposit button, the bonus terms and the withdrawal screen. Reading the paytable on the studio’s own page is the safer of the two readings.

The number of lines and the risk level are also BGaming’s settings, not the operator’s. The 8-to-16 line range and the low/normal/high risk spread appear across every brand because every brand uses the same studio’s game. The differences between brands are the things that are not in the game: the welcome package, the wagering requirements, the withdrawal speed, the licence badge and the regulator’s letter. The game is the same; the wrapper is different.

A punter comparing two brands on the game itself will find nothing to compare. A punter comparing two brands on the wrapper — the bonus, the licence, the regulator’s letter — has the comparison the marketing pages do not want drawn. The brand that earns the loudest marketing voice is the one with the most to obscure.

The Paytable on the Wrapper, Not on the Game

The wrapper around the game is where the offshore operator’s discretion lives. A “×1,000 top multiplier” claim on the wrapper reads very differently when the wrapper’s “max cashout” is a figure that converts every winning spin into a capped withdrawal. The cap is the operator’s, not the game’s, and it is the figure the punter should look at first. The cap on most offshore wrappers sits well below the headline figure — the headline figure is the maximum the paytable can pay, the cap is the maximum the operator will pay. A punter who reads only the headline figure is reading only the half of the contract the operator wrote to be read.

Support That Is in Australia

The National Gambling Helpline, on 1800 858 858, is free, runs every hour of every day, and offers chat through Gambling Help Online. The service is for anyone whose gambling is causing harm, including the family and friends of someone whose gambling is causing harm. It does not require the caller to be using a licensed or unlicensed site, and it does not require the caller to have decided to stop.

BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, has been live since August 2023. A person who registers with BetStop is barred from Australian-licensed online and phone wagering services for the period they choose, and the bar is enforced by the licensed operators. An offshore Plinko site is not connected to BetStop, which means a BetStop registration does not stop an offshore deposit. The two systems do what they do; neither does what the other does.

The page’s own reading of the support picture: a punter who has decided to stop gambling should register with BetStop and call the helpline, in that order, and a punter who has not yet decided should still call the helpline, because the call is the cheapest part of finding out what the decision looks like. The page is written from a position that does not pretend the marketing pitch is the whole picture.

What the Plinko Casino Marketing Pitch Leaves Out

Three properties of the offshore Plinko pitch are not in the marketing pages, and they are the properties that decide whether the deposit is worth the punter’s time.

The first is the centre slot. The pegs funnel the ball to the centre, the centre pays less than the edges, and the advertised RTP is the average across a long session. The marketing pages show the ×1,000 at the edge of the board; they do not show the slot near the centre where the ball actually lands. The 99% RTP is honest, in the way a population average is honest, and unhelpful on any individual drop.

The second is the operator’s letter. The ACMA has issued formal warnings over every brand in this page’s table, and the warnings name the corporate entity behind the brand. A punter who deposits with a brand whose operator has already received a letter is depositing with an entity the regulator has called out by name. The marketing pages do not link to the ACMA’s register, and the affiliate pages do not mention it.

The third is the absence of Australian recourse. A withdrawal dispute at an offshore Plinko site has no Australian complaints body to answer it, no regulator to escalate to, and no paper trail the punter’s bank will honour. The marketing pages do not describe the recourse because there is none to describe. The licensed bookmakers have BetStop, the ATO, the ombudsman and the regulator. The offshore Plinko sites have the operator’s word.

The Paytable Versus the Wrapper, in One Sentence

The game is honest, the wrapper is not.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Plinko casino game, and how does the ball-drop mechanic actually determine a payout?

A ball drops through a pyramid of pegs and lands in one of the slots at the bottom of the board, where the printed multiplier is applied to the stake. The pegs funnel the ball toward the centre of the board, which means the centre slot is reached more often than the edge slots, and the centre slot pays less than the edge slots. The advertised 99% return to player is the long-run average across every drop on the board, weighted by the chance each slot catches the ball — it is not the return on any individual drop.

Does a crypto version of Plinko pay out any differently to a standard real-money version?

No. The paytable is the same whether the deposit is in fiat or in Bitcoin; the studio publishes one set of multipliers and one RTP, and that set is what every wrapper around the game uses. What the crypto deposit does change is the punter’s exposure on the way in: there is no bank intermediary, no chargeback route and no paper trail the punter’s own bank will hold, and the ACMA’s credit-card ban specifically named digital currency for that reason.

Is playing Plinko for real money at an offshore casino something Australians are legally allowed to do?

The provider is the one the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 targets, with penalties of up to A$220,000 per day for an individual and up to A$1.1 million per day for a corporation. The individual player is not prosecuted for depositing, but the deposit gives the player no Australian consumer protection, no complaints body and no recourse if a withdrawal is refused. The 1,751 sites the ACMA has blocked since November 2019 is the size of the gap between what the regulator allows and what the affiliate pages sell.

What return-to-player rate do offshore sites typically advertise for their Plinko game?

The figure most commonly advertised is 99%, drawn from BGaming’s published paytable. The figure is the long-run average across the whole board, weighted by where the ball lands, and it does not describe the return on any individual drop. A punter who reads only the headline figure is reading only the half of the contract the marketing pages were written to display.

Why do Plinko casino apps get advertised separately from ordinary Plinko casino websites?

The mobile wrapper is sold as a separate product because it changes the deposit flow and the verification step: an app can take a fingerprint, store a session token and remember the punter between visits in ways a browser session does not. The paytable inside the app is the same BGaming game, with the same multipliers and the same centre-weighted geometry. What is being sold is the deposit flow, not the game.

How does a Plinko game’s payout table differ from a pokies reel in terms of the odds involved?

A pokies reel in an Australian pub advertises a return to player between 85% and 92%, paid out on combinations of symbols across multiple reels. A Plinko board advertises 99%, paid out on a single ball landing in a single slot. Both are averages weighted by the geometry of the machine, and both are unhelpful on any single spin. The pokies reel gives the player choices on stake size and lines per spin; the Plinko board gives the player the choice of risk level and number of lines before each drop. Neither choice changes the long-run return materially.