How crash games work
A multiplier climbs from 1.00x until it “crashes”. Cash out before the crash and your stake is multiplied; wait too long and it is lost. Behind the animation sits one simple rule that decides everything.
Anatomy of a round
- Betting window. Players place bets, often with an automatic cash-out target.
- The climb. The multiplier rises from 1.00x. You can cash out at any moment, by hand or automatically at your target.
- The crash. At a point decided before the round started, the multiplier stops. Bets still running are lost.
Aviator (Spribe), Spaceman (Pragmatic Play), JetX (SmartSoft) and similar games share this mechanic. Their RTP and rules differ by game and by operator.
The crash-point law
Crash games set the chance of the multiplier reaching any value x to the return to player (RTP) divided by x:
P(reach x) = RTP ÷ x
With 97% RTP that gives 64.7% for 1.5x, 48.5% for 2x, 9.7% for 10x and 0.97% for 100x. In the standard version of the model, about 1 round in 25 (4.0%) ends before reaching 1.01x, so any bet in it is lost.
| Cash-out target | Chance to reach it | Average return per bet |
|---|---|---|
| 1.1x | 88.2% | -3.0% |
| 1.2x | 80.8% | -3.0% |
| 1.5x | 64.7% | -3.0% |
| 2x | 48.5% | -3.0% |
| 3x | 32.3% | -3.0% |
| 5x | 19.4% | -3.0% |
| 10x | 9.70% | -3.0% |
| 20x | 4.85% | -3.0% |
| 50x | 1.94% | -3.0% |
| 100x | 0.97% | -3.0% |
Because a win pays exactly the target, the expected return of any target is target × RTP ÷ target = RTP. Every cash-out choice returns 97% of the stake on average. The house keeps 3%.
Probability calculator
Calculator
What RTP really means
Return to player is the share of all money staked that a game pays back over the long run. At 97% RTP, 3 of every 100 staked stay with the house on average. It says nothing about the next round or the next hour, where results swing widely around that average.
Some games come in several RTP versions and the operator chooses which one to run. Aviator is commonly offered at 97%, and lower configurations have been reported. The game’s rules or info panel shows the version you are playing; at a lower RTP every chance on this page shrinks in proportion.
Every round is independent
A round’s crash point does not depend on previous rounds. A run of low multipliers does not make a high one “due”, and a high one does not make the next round low. The history bar that many games display is decoration, not information. Believing otherwise is the gambler’s fallacy, and it is the root of most “strategies” and every “predictor”.
How the result is fixed in advance
Most crash games use a provably fair scheme: the game commits to a secret value (a seed) by publishing its cryptographic hash before the round, and reveals the seed afterwards so anyone can recompute the result. According to the provider’s public explanation, Aviator combines a server seed with seeds from the first three players who bet in the round and hashes them with SHA-512. The details differ between games; the principle is the same. Try it in our provably fair demo.
What you control, and what you don’t
- You control your stake, your target, how long you play and when you stop.
- You don’t control the crash point or the average return. Stake, target and timing change how bumpy the ride is and how fast money moves, never the 3% average cost.
Next: see what that means for the most popular plan in the 2x strategy, or what it costs per hour in the cost of play.