Penalty Shot puts you on the spot for a series of kicks. The goal is split into five targets, and on every kick the keeper covers some of them. Pick an open one and you score, your multiplier grows and you can either cash out or step up again. Pick a covered one and the keeper saves it, ending the round. The difficulty you choose decides how many targets the keeper covers and how many penalties are in a full run.
How to play
- Choose a difficulty: Easy, Medium or Hard.
- Place a bet by tapping chips onto the bet spot. Bets go from 100 to 10,000 credits in steps of 100.
- Press Kick off.
- Tap a target in the goal: top left, top right, centre, bottom left or bottom right.
- Goal or save. If your target was open, the multiplier rises. If the keeper had it covered, the round ends and the bet is lost. After each kick the keeper’s positions are revealed.
- Cash out after any goal to collect your bet times the current multiplier, or keep shooting. Score the last penalty of the run and you are paid automatically.
The keeper’s positions for every kick are drawn at random when the round begins. They don’t react to what you choose and don’t follow any pattern from one kick to the next.
You can also play with a keyboard: Tab to a target and press Enter or Space.
The three levels
| Easy | Medium | Hard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Targets the keeper covers | 1 of 5 | 2 of 5 | 3 of 5 |
| Chance to score each kick | 80% | 60% | 40% |
| Penalties in a full run | 8 | 6 | 5 |
| Multiplier after the first goal | ×1.21 | ×1.61 | ×2.42 |
| Multiplier for a full run | ×5.78 | ×20.79 | ×94.72 |
| Chance of a full run | 16.8% | 4.7% | 1.0% |
Easy, goal by goal: ×1.21, ×1.51, ×1.89, ×2.36, ×2.96, ×3.70, ×4.62, ×5.78.
Medium: ×1.61, ×2.69, ×4.49, ×7.48, ×12.47, ×20.79.
Hard: ×2.42, ×6.06, ×15.15, ×37.89, ×94.72.
Where the numbers come from
Each multiplier is 97% of the fair odds of scoring that many goals in a row. On Medium a kick goes in three times out of five, so a fair price for one goal is 5 ÷ 3 = 1.667; 97% of that is 1.617, shown rounded down as ×1.61. For two goals it is 0.97 × (5/3)², and so on. Payouts are cut to whole credits, which is why the smallest bet is 100.
The result is that the game returns 97% of the money bet wherever you stop, on every level. Cashing out after one goal, after four, or going for the whole run all carry the same 3% house edge. The level and the stopping point only change how often you win and how big each win is.
Strategy
No corner is better than another. On every kick the covered targets are chosen at random, so the centre is exactly as safe as the top corners. Changing or repeating your choice makes no difference.
Pick the level for the ride you want. Easy gives a long series of small steps; a full run of eight is rare but each early goal is likely. Hard is the long shot: two goals already pay ×6.06, but you will be saved on the first kick more often than not.
Set a target before kick-off. Since the return is fixed, the only thing a “plan” changes is the size of the win you are aiming for. Decide it at the start (say, cash out at ×3 on Easy or after two goals on Medium) and stick to it.
Don’t chase a save. A lost round says nothing about the next one. Raising the bet to win it back only speeds up the swings.
Keep bets small on Hard. A full run pays almost 95 times your bet, but you need to survive about a hundred rounds on average to see one.
If you like this format, Basketball Shot works the same way with the shot chance set by the distance instead of by a keeper, and returns 96%.
If you enjoy Penalty Shot, try Petits Chevaux or Pick’em Poker next.
