Cash or Crash: How to Play, Payouts, RTP and When to Cash Out

Cash or Crash, a live game show from Evolution, plays differently from other live games. As long as the round continues, each ball drawn from the ball-drawing machine raises the multiplier, but a red ball ends the round and you lose everything you have won up to that point. You can cash out before that happens, and if you keep drawing until the final level, you win up to 50,000x. Deciding when to cash out is up to you.

What You Will Learn

• With optimal strategy, the return to player (RTP) is 99.59%, which is high for a live game show.
• Optimal strategy calls for Take All at level 9. Waiting for level 20 is a poor choice in terms of expected value.
• Drawing the Golden Ball gives you a shield, and the multipliers from that point on are higher.

This article takes about 9 minutes to read.

Cash or Crash Rules and How to Play

Cash or Crash is a live game show from Evolution. It uses no playing cards or roulette wheel. Instead, the game is played with a ball-drawing machine that holds 28 balls. When a round starts, the balls are mixed and the machine selects one of them. The 28 balls are divided into three types, green, red and the Golden Ball, as follows.

Each green ball raises the level by one and increases the multiplier applied to your bet. The level is the number of consecutive wins: level 10, for example, means that a green ball or the Golden Ball has been drawn 10 times in a row.

In Cash or Crash, you keep making decisions during the round after your bet is placed. Each decision has a short time limit, so unless you decide in advance what you will do at each stage, you may run out of time.

Place Your Bet

Place your bet while betting is open. The betting window for each round is short, so decide on your bet size beforehand.

When a Green Ball Is Drawn, Choose One of Three Actions

The machine draws one ball from the 28 it holds.

If the ball is green, the round continues and the level goes up.

Before the next ball is drawn, you must choose one of three actions.

If you do not select an action within the time limit, Continue is selected automatically.

You can choose Continue and Take Half any number of times, but Take Half is not available if halving would leave a stake below $0.40. For example, Take Half on a $0.60 bet would leave $0.30, so it cannot be selected.

If you reach level 20, the round ends at that point and your payout is locked in.

The Golden Ball Continues the Round Automatically Until a Red Ball Is Drawn

If the Golden Ball is drawn, it acts as a shield, and balls are drawn automatically until a red ball appears. Each green ball drawn during this time still raises the level, and the multipliers after the Golden Ball are higher: only slightly at low levels, but 50,000x instead of 18,000x at level 20.

When a red ball appears, the automatic draws stop and normal play resumes. That red ball is treated as if it had not been drawn, so the round does not end.

A Red Ball Ends the Round and Your Winnings Drop to Zero

Unless the Golden Ball shield is active, a red ball ends the round immediately. Any winnings you have not cashed out are lost, and a new round begins.

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Cash or Crash Payouts

The multiplier at each level depends on whether the Golden Ball has been drawn. All multipliers include your stake: at level 1, a multiplier of 1.2x means a $1 bet returns $1.20.

The multiplier rises slowly at low levels and climbs steeply as the level increases. Reaching level 20 means drawing all 19 green balls and the Golden Ball, so the level 20 multiplier you can actually win is 50,000x.

Probability of Surviving Each Draw in Cash or Crash

Each figure below is the probability of surviving that particular draw without drawing a red ball. It is not the cumulative probability of winning every draw up to that point.

Note that this table does not account for the Golden Ball’s shield, which cancels the first red ball drawn after the Golden Ball. Your actual chance of surviving each draw is therefore slightly higher than shown.

Your chance of surviving the next draw falls with every consecutive win, so unless you are aiming for the highest multipliers, decide in advance when you will stop.

Cash or Crash RTP and Optimal Strategy

Cash or Crash has an RTP of up to 99.59%. This figure assumes the optimal strategy below. Any other choice of actions lowers the RTP, and some choices lower it considerably. Because 99.59% is below 100%, you will still lose money in the long run even with optimal strategy.

• Choose Continue through level 8 (8 consecutive wins), then Take All as soon as you reach level 9 (9 consecutive wins).
• If a red ball appears after the Golden Ball, choose Continue at levels 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14 and 15, and Take All at any other level.

Also keep your bet to $10 or less per round. Payouts are capped at $500,000, and $10 is the bet that reaches the cap exactly at the top multiplier of 50,000x. With a larger bet, a win at the highest levels is not paid at the full multiplier, which lowers the RTP.

How to Play Cash or Crash Without Lowering the RTP

Betting systems that raise or lower your bet only change the swings in your results. They cannot change the return to player (RTP). In this game, what affects the RTP is the action you choose after a green ball is drawn.

The closer your actions after each green ball come to optimal, the closer you get to the game’s full RTP of 99.59%. Even then, the RTP does not exceed 100%.

A common approach is to cash out as soon as you reach level 1. The level 1 multiplier is 1.2x, however, and the chance of surviving the first draw is 71.43%. Multiplied together, that comes to only about 0.86x, well below what the optimal strategy returns.

Use Take Half to Reduce Risk If No Shield Appears Early

At level 3, the multiplier is 2x without the Golden Ball or 2.2x with it. Choosing Take Half at this point recovers roughly the amount you bet.

If you want to secure part of your stake, Take Half at level 3 is one option. After that, you let the round run and hope the level keeps rising.

Cashing out with Take All at level 1 or level 3 is also possible, but the chance of even reaching level 3 is only about 34.8% (excluding the Golden Ball’s shield).

If you keep cashing out at low levels, each win stays small while losing rounds accumulate. Unless you let the multiplier run when you have the chance, your overall losses tend to grow.

Holding Out for Level 20 Lowers Your Expected Value

Waiting for level 20 is an option for players who only want the top multiplier, but reaching level 20 is extremely rare.

A 50,000x payout breaks even if it hits once in every 50,000 rounds. Multiplying all the probabilities in the table above, however, puts the chance of reaching level 20 at about 1 in 3.1 million (excluding the Golden Ball’s shield), nowhere near break-even. Once you have built up a run of wins, locking them in with Take All is the sounder choice.

Decide in Advance After How Many Wins You Will Cash Out

Suppose, for example, that you win five in a row early on without drawing the Golden Ball. The chance of drawing the Golden Ball has gone up, but so has the chance of drawing a red ball. Even so, the optimal strategy is still to choose Continue at the levels shown above until you reach level 9.

As a general rule, we recommend cashing out at level 9 (see the shield-break exceptions above).

Beyond that level, the multiplier does not rise enough to make up for the falling chance of winning.

Going from level 19 to level 20, for example, raises the multiplier sharply, from 11,000x to 50,000x, but the chance of success is 1 in 9: one green ball or the Golden Ball against eight red balls. The probability drops faster than the multiplier grows, so the bet has a poor expected value. Up to level 9, by contrast, the growth in the payout keeps pace with the falling chance of surviving.

After the Shield Breaks, Cash Out Based on Your Chance of Winning

The action you choose after the shield breaks (that is, after a red ball appears following the Golden Ball) makes a large difference to your expected value.

Breaking the shield does not by itself switch you to the Golden Ball multipliers. Those higher payouts start from the next level, once another green ball is drawn. If you cash out as soon as the shield breaks, you miss out on the higher multiplier. Even early in the game, at a level where the optimal strategy calls for Continue, wait for at least one more ball before deciding whether to Take All.

Late in the game, however, the multiplier rises only a little, while going up one more level lowers your chance of surviving considerably. As the optimal strategy above shows, if the shield breaks at level 16 or higher, cashing out right away gives the better expected value. As a guideline, when the shield breaks, cash out immediately at the levels where the optimal strategy calls for Take All (2, 7, 9, 10, 13 and 16 or higher), and at any other level choose Continue, then check the same list again at each new level.

Summary: When You Cash Out Determines the RTP in Cash or Crash

Cash or Crash, a live game show from Evolution, attracts both new and experienced players thanks to its unusual format and payouts that range up to 50,000x.

The rules are simple. The multiplier rises as long as you keep drawing green balls or the Golden Ball before a red ball, and drawing all 20 balls takes you to 50,000x. A red ball along the way wipes out everything you have built up, however, so your decisions on when to use Take Half (cash out 50%) and Take All (cash out 100%) determine the result.

With optimal play, Cash or Crash has an RTP of 99.59%, high for a live game show. Because that figure is below 100%, you will still lose money in the long run.