Mines simulator with the exact tile-by-tile multiplier maths: see how mine count changes the ladder and where the edge sits.
Each safe tile you reveal raises the multiplier by the reciprocal of the probability of surviving it, minus the house edge. With three mines on a 25-tile grid the first pick survives 88% of the time; by the tenth pick the cumulative survival chance is under 30%.
The simulator draws that ladder so you can see where the risk actually accelerates rather than guessing from the payout display.
More mines mean steeper multipliers and a much shorter expected run. One mine is a slow grind with tiny steps; ten mines is a lottery with two or three picks of realistic upside.
Expected value is the same across configurations, so the choice is purely about variance — and about knowing your cash-out point before you start clicking.
More mines make the ladder steeper and the death faster; fewer mines make it shallower and safer. The expected value is identical across every configuration, so the choice is purely a choice about variance — the same trade-off as picking a crash target.
The instructive experiment is to cash out at a fixed rung and vary the mine count. The hit rate and the multiplier move in opposite directions and cancel, which is what "the same expected cost" looks like when you can see it.
No. On a provably fair implementation the layout is fixed by the seed pair before your first pick and reveals nothing as you go.
Not for expected value. Pick a target multiplier in advance and stop there, because the decision gets harder the longer you survive.