Online casino gambling has become a major part of the modern gambling industry. It gives players access to casino style games through websites and mobile platforms rather than traditional physical casinos. Alongside established games such as blackjack, roulette, and slots, online casinos have increasingly introduced original games built around fast rounds, simple mechanics, and customizable risk.
Stake is one of the platforms that has developed its own approach to this market. Launched in 2017, the platform offers a broad online casino and sportsbook platform, while also developing its own range of proprietary games known as Stake Originals. These games include titles based on familiar gaming concepts such as dice, crash, roulette, plinko, and mines, and have become an important part of the platform’s identity.
Among the originals, Stake Mines stands out for its simple but highly risk driven gameplay. The game combines a familiar grid based concept with wagering, allowing players to choose the number of hidden mines, reveal tiles, and cash out at increasing multipliers. Understanding how Mines works requires more than knowing its basic rules, however, as probability, payout calculations, randomness, and the house edge all play a central role in the experience.
What is Stake Mines?
Mines is a Stake Original title inspired by the familiar Minesweeper concept from the olden days. It is important, however, to distinguish it from the traditional computer game. Minesweeper is primarily a puzzle in which information revealed by surrounding squares can be used to deduce where mines are located. Stake Mines does not give the player equivalent information that can be logically used to identify safe squares. It is a game of chance in which the mine locations are generated randomly, while the player decides how many squares to reveal and when to stop.
A round takes place on a 5 by 5 board containing 25 tiles. Before starting, the player selects a wager and chooses how many mines will be hidden. The available range is one to 24 mines, meaning that at least one tile is always safe. Every other tile contains either a gem or a mine. The objective is to reveal gems, increasing the potential payout multiplier, without revealing a mine.
The central decision in Mines is therefore not simply which tile to click. It is the combination of mine count, wager size, number of successful reveals, and cash out timing. A player can stop after a single successful reveal and cash out, or continue uncovering tiles in pursuit of a substantially larger multiplier. If a mine is revealed before the player cashes out, the round ends and the wager is lost.
How a Round Works
The first step is selecting the wager. The amount at risk is committed to the round, so the player should regard the entire wager as money that can be lost before making the first selection. Stake’s current Mines guide says the minimum bet can be as low as 0.01, although actual wagering limits can depend on the account, currency, jurisdiction, and applicable platform restrictions.
The second decision is the number of mines. With one mine, 24 of the 25 tiles are safe. With 24 mines, only one tile is safe. Increasing the number of mines therefore dramatically increases the probability that the next selection will be a mine. In exchange, surviving selections generate much larger multipliers. Stake describes this as the main mechanism for controlling volatility: fewer mines generally produce more frequent successful selections and smaller multiplier growth, while more mines produce less frequent success and substantially larger potential multipliers.
After the round begins, the player selects tiles. A successful selection reveals a gem and increases the displayed multiplier. The player can then select another tile or cash out. Stake also provides a random tile selection function and an autoplay facility, allowing repeated rounds to be configured without manually initiating every individual bet. Autoplay changes how the player interacts with the game, but does not change the underlying probability or house edge.
Cash out is the crucial risk management mechanism. Suppose a player starts with a 10 unit wager and reaches a 3.00x multiplier. A successful cash out produces a 30 unit return, assuming the displayed multiplier and applicable rules. If the player instead continues and subsequently hits a mine, the round is lost. The important point is that an unrealized multiplier is not money that has already been won. It represents the amount that could be returned if the player cashes out successfully at that stage.
The Mathematics Behind Mines
Mines has a 99% return to player rate and a 1% house edge, which is similar to other Stake Originals Games in the library. RTP should be interpreted as a long run mathematical expectation, not as a promise that an individual player will receive 99% of their money back during a session. A player can lose substantially more or win substantially more in a short period because Mines has meaningful variance, particularly at higher mine counts. After each safe selection, there are fewer tiles remaining and fewer safe tiles remaining.
The payout multiplier is constructed so that the inverse of survival probability is adjusted for the game’s 1% house edge. High mine configurations can produce very large multipliers. Surviving a sequence that is statistically unlikely has a correspondingly large theoretical payout. A useful example is the one mine configuration as the absolute safest, yet lowest paying option in the game.
Initially, 24 of 25 tiles are safe, so the first selection has a 96% probability of being safe. The potential multiplier is relatively modest because the risk is low. At the other extreme, with 24 mines, only one of 25 tiles is safe on the first selection, giving a 4% probability of success. The reward for that successful selection is correspondingly much larger. This is the fundamental risk reward trade off running through every Mines configuration.
The important consequence is that choosing more mines does not magically create a mathematical advantage. The larger multiplier compensates for the smaller probability of success, while the 1% house edge remains embedded in the payout mathematics. Changing the mine count changes volatility and the shape of the experience, not the basic negative expected value of the game.
What 99% RTP Actually Means
A 99% RTP does not mean that every 100 units wagered guarantees a 99 unit return, nor does it mean that a player is entitled to receive 99% of their stake after a particular number of rounds. It is a theoretical long run statistic describing the expected return across a sufficiently large number of bets. Every online casino game has it, and RTP has long been a parameter that tells players roughly how difficult it is to win on a game.
For example, a game with a 99% RTP has an expected house advantage of approximately 1 unit for every 100 units wagered over the long run. Actual results can deviate enormously over short samples. A player might win several times in succession, experience a long losing streak, or hit an unusually large multiplier. The mathematical edge becomes meaningful over repeated play, not as a prediction of what happens on the next tile.
This distinction is particularly important in Mines because the player controls the apparent risk profile and sets the difficulty level. A low mine configuration can feel relatively safe because many individual selections have a high probability of succeeding, while a high mine configuration can produce dramatic swings. Neither configuration removes the house edge, though.
Probability After Every Safe Pick
One of the most common misunderstandings about Mines is the idea that a particular tile becomes “due” to be safe or dangerous. It does not, as everything is essentially random. The game does not develop a compensating pattern because of previous selections, and nothing is taken into account to make it logical.
What does change after a successful selection is the composition of the remaining unopened board. If three mines were initially hidden among 25 tiles and one safe tile has already been revealed, there are now 24 unopened tiles containing the same three mines. The conditional probability of the next unopened tile being safe is therefore 21 divided by 24, or 87.5%. The probability has changed because the number of remaining tiles has changed, not because the game is reacting to the player’s previous choice.
Five safe selections in a row do not make the next tile “more likely to be a mine” because the game wants to correct the streak. Rather, the conditional probability changes mechanically as safe tiles are removed from the remaining pool. Likewise, a long sequence of mines in previous rounds does not make the next round safer. Each board is generated independently, and previous wins and losses do not influence the next board.
The Provably Fair System in Mines
Provably fair is one of the defining technical features of Stake Originals. Stake’s system uses a server seed, client seed, nonce, and cursor as inputs to a cryptographic RNG process based on HMAC-SHA256. The server seed is committed to through a hash before the relevant results are generated, while the underlying server seed can subsequently be revealed so the player can verify the result.
The client seed belongs to the player and can be changed. The purpose of incorporating the client seed is to prevent the server from having unilateral control over the complete random input. The nonce increments with successive bets, allowing a new result to be generated from the seed combination without requiring a new server and client seed for every individual bet.
Mines requires multiple random values because a complete board can contain up to 24 possible mine locations. Mines requires three cursor increments per game to generate the possible bomb locations, and these generated values are translated into game specific outcomes, including the location of every bomb in a Mines game.
The practical meaning of provable fairness is narrower and more useful than the phrase can sometimes suggest. It allows a player to verify that the outcome was generated consistently from the committed cryptographic inputs. It does not mean that the player has a positive mathematical expectation, that every round will be favorable, or that a particular betting strategy can overcome the house edge. Fair randomness and favorable odds are two completely different concepts.
Stake Casino FAQs and Trivia
What is Stake’s business model?
Stake combines online casino games, sports betting, proprietary games, VIP programmes and affiliate marketing. Its strategy also extends into technology, streaming and sports sponsorships, creating an ecosystem around its gambling platform.
What are Stake Originals?
Stake Originals are games developed specifically for Stake, including popular titles such as Dice, Mines, Plinko and Limbo. Because Stake owns the games, Originals help differentiate the platform from casinos relying entirely on third party content.
What is Stake Engine?
Stake Engine is Stake’s game development and distribution platform. It provides studios with the technology and infrastructure to create and launch casino games, effectively making Stake both a casino operator and a gaming technology provider.
How does Stake Engine benefit game developers?
Developers can use Stake Engine to build, test, and distribute casino games through Stake’s ecosystem. This gives studios access to technology and a large player base while helping Stake expand its library of games.
Why does Stake invest heavily in sports sponsorships?
Sports partnerships give Stake global brand exposure and access to established fan communities. Its sponsorship portfolio has included football (soccer), Formula 1, UFC, cricket, and other major sporting properties.
Who are Stake’s ambassadors?
Stake has partnered with prominent athletes, musicians, and online personalities. Drake is one of its most recognizable partners, while other campaigns have featured figures including Davido and UFC fighters. Several major footballers (Aguero, Casillas…) and UFC (Halloway, Pereira…) fighters are part of the family, too.
What is the relationship between Stake and KICK?
Stake and KICK are separate platforms with a close commercial relationship and the same ownership. KICK is a livestreaming service, while Stake operates the casino and sportsbook. Users can connect their accounts, and Stake uses KICK as an important channel for livestreamed entertainment and promotions.
Why is Drake important to Stake’s marketing strategy?
Drake combines celebrity reach with Stake’s livestreaming strategy. His Stake related streams on KICK can generate entertainment, publicity and player engagement simultaneously, making him more than a conventional brand ambassador.
How does Stake’s affiliate programme work?
Stake allows affiliates to refer new customers through tracking links and earn commissions based on the activity generated by those players. Affiliates therefore function as an important customer acquisition channel.
