Stake Originals explained: every game, its edge and how to check it

Stake Originals are the in-house games at Stake: Dice, Limbo, Plinko, Mines, Keno, Crash and nine more, built by Stake rather than licensed from a slot studio. They are also the games most other crypto casinos copied, and the reason "provably fair" became a standard feature. This guide goes through every Stake Original in our record: what you bet on, what the maths implies for the house edge, how the random output becomes a result, and which games our verifier can recompute for you.

Our sources, and one gap

Stake's help article on provable fairness for Stake Original games confirms the Originals are provably fair but explains the idea rather than the maths. For the method, it points to Stake's implementation pages on stake.com. Those pages sit behind a bot check that our reader could not pass, again, when we prepared this guide. So the scheme and game list below come from our Stake audit, which records the construction our verifier runs. Stake's help centre also has no house edge table, so where we give an edge, it is what the formula or the payout table implies, and we say which.

The practical test does not depend on us: once you hold a revealed server seed, if our verifier reproduces your bet history, the description is right.

The engine every single-player Original shares

Thirteen of the fifteen games run on your own seed pair:

• Server seed: chosen by Stake and kept secret while in use. You see its SHA-256 hash before you bet.
• Client seed: yours. You can change it in the fairness settings at any time.
• Nonce: counts your bets on the current pair, one up per bet.
• Output: HMAC-SHA256 keyed with the server seed, over the message client seed:nonce:round. The 32 bytes are read 4 at a time, and each group of 4 becomes a number between 0 and 1. That gives 8 numbers per hash. A game that needs more moves the round counter from 0 to 1 and hashes again.
• Reveal: rotating your seed pair shows the old server seed in full, so every bet made with it can be rechecked.

Everything game-specific happens in the last step: how one or more of those numbers become a roll, a path, a board or a card.

Every Stake Original at a glance

"Per payout table" means the edge depends on the multipliers Stake shows inside the game for your settings, which we cannot read off Stake's documentation.

Dice and Limbo

Dice takes the first number, multiplies it by 10,001 and rounds down, then divides by 100. That gives 10,001 equally likely rolls from 0.00 to 100.00 in steps of 0.01. You pick a win chance and a direction. The roll is uniform, so the edge lives entirely in the payout Stake offers for your chance: multiply chance by payout, and whatever falls short of 1 is the edge. Our dice walkthrough shows the same steps with example seeds.

Limbo takes one number and divides 0.99 by it. You win if the result reaches your target. The chance of reaching any target x is 0.99 / x and the payout is x, so the expected return is 99% whatever target you set. A 2x target lands 49.5% of the time. For a full worked example of a limbo formula, see provably fair limbo explained.

Plinko

Plinko uses one number per row. Below 0.5 the ball goes left, otherwise right, and the slot is the count of rights. On 16 rows that is 65,536 equally likely paths, which is why middle slots are common and edges are rare. Risk level changes only the payout table, not the fall. Using the 16 row tables Stake shows in the game, all three risk levels work out to about 99%. Our Stake Plinko odds guide has the full table and the chance of every slot.

Mines and Keno

Mines draws 24 numbers and uses them to shuffle the 25 tiles: each number picks one of the tiles still left. The first tiles in that order hold the mines, so with 3 mines the first 3 picks are mines. Multipliers grow with each safe tile you open and carry a 1% edge at Stake. The board is fixed before your first click, which is why no tool can show you safe tiles in advance; our Stake Mines predictor guide explains why.

Keno draws 10 numbers from 1 to 40. Each number picks one of the balls still left, so no ball can repeat. Your return depends on how many of your picks are hit and on the payout table for the risk level you choose.

Roulette and the card games

Roulette turns one number into a pocket from 0 to 36 on a single-zero wheel. At the standard 35 to 1 on a single number, the edge is 2.70%, the same as any European wheel.

Hilo, Blackjack and Baccarat draw each card with its own number, multiplied by 52, from an infinite deck. Every card is independent of the ones before it, so counting cards gains nothing. Our verifier's card mode shows the cards in draw order. Which card goes to whom follows the rules shown in each game.

Wheel, Diamonds, Dragon Tower and Video Poker

These four run on the same seed pair, but our audit does not record how their numbers map to a result, and we could not read Stake's game-by-game page to add it. Use the verification tool inside Stake for them. You can still check the commitment for any of them in our verifier: paste the revealed server seed and the hash you were shown, and the hash line tells you whether they match.

Crash and Slide

Crash and Slide are shared rounds: everyone in a round sees the same result, so your own client seed plays no part. Our record lists both as hash-chain games, where each round's hash is the SHA-256 of the next one and the chain is played backwards. Paste consecutive round hashes into our hash chain check to confirm the links. We have not re-read Stake's crash formula because of the bot check, so we do not give a crash edge for Stake here. For how crash games work in general, including the instant bust, see what is crash gambling.

How to check any Stake Original

1. Before playing, open the fairness settings from any Stake Original. Copy the hashed server seed and set a client seed of your own if you like.
2. Play. Each bet in your history shows its nonce.
3. Rotate the seed pair. The old server seed is now revealed.
4. In our Stake verifier, paste the revealed server seed and the hash. A match proves the seed was fixed before your first bet.
5. Choose the game, enter your client seed and the nonce, and set the rows for Plinko, the mines for Mines or the number of cards. Compare the output with your bet.

The check runs in your browser. If a result does not match, the usual causes are a seed from a different pair, a nonce out by one, or a game outside the seven our tool recomputes.

What the Originals do not cover

The seed system covers only Stake's own games. Slots, table games and live dealer games from outside studios, such as Pragmatic Play Live and Evolution, rely on each provider's certified random number generator. Provable fairness also does not remove the edge: at 1%, $1,000 wagered costs about $10 on average, and fast games make that add up quickly. Set limits in Stake's responsible gambling tools before you play.

Sources

• Stake help centre: provable fairness for Stake Original games
• Stake implementation page, stake.com/provably-fair/implementation (behind a bot check, not readable for this guide; details from our Stake audit)
• RFC 2104: HMAC
• NIST FIPS 180-4: Secure Hash Standard