MinesweeperKey findings
- 91% of Beginner boards can be finished by logic alone, but only 16% of Expert boards. On Expert, a game needs 2.7 guesses on average.
- Even a player who never misses a deduction and always picks the safest square wins 51% of Expert games, 87% of Intermediate games, and 96% of Beginner games.
- Where you click first matters: starting in the center instead of a corner raises the no-guess share on Intermediate from 58% to 71%.
- The dreaded coin flip is real but not the most common guess: 35% of Expert boards include at least one exact 50/50.
The numbers by difficulty
| Difficulty | Games | No guess needed | Average guesses | Win rate* | Has a 50/50 | Median 3BV (10th–90th pct.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner (9×9, 10 mines) | 500,000 | 90.7% | 0.11 | 96.2% | 6.2% | 14 (9–20) |
| Intermediate (16×16, 40 mines) | 250,000 | 70.6% | 0.45 | 87.3% | 17.3% | 63 (49–78) |
| Expert (30×16, 99 mines) | 100,000 | 15.9% | 2.65 | 50.7% | 35.4% | 170 (146–195) |
*Win rate of a player who makes every provable move and, when stuck, opens the square with the lowest chance of being a mine. It is a strong baseline, not a ceiling: smarter guessing strategies, which also weigh how much a square would reveal, can win a few more games.
3BV is the minimum number of clicks needed to clear a board without flags. It is the standard measure of how much work a board requires; our Minesweeper records page explains how it is used in competitive play.
Where should you click first?
| Difficulty | Corner | Edge (top middle) | Center |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 81.8% no guess · 96.0% won | 89.8% no guess · 96.7% won | 90.7% no guess · 96.2% won |
| Intermediate | 57.9% no guess · 85.0% won | 68.0% no guess · 87.2% won | 70.6% no guess · 87.3% won |
| Expert | 10.2% no guess · 45.6% won | 14.2% no guess · 49.8% won | 15.9% no guess · 50.7% won |
On this site, as in most modern versions, your first click and the eight squares around it are always mine-free, so the first click opens an area. A corner square has only three neighbors, so a corner start protects four squares instead of nine and often opens a smaller area. In the simulation, center starts produced the most no-guess boards on every difficulty. On Expert, a corner start also cost about 5 percentage points of win rate compared with the center. On Beginner, win rates were within a point of each other whatever the start, because almost every board is solvable anyway.
Older versions of Windows Minesweeper only guaranteed that the first click itself was safe, not its neighbors. Under that rule, more games need an early guess, so the no-guess shares there would be lower than these.
How many guesses does a game take?
| Difficulty | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 90.7% | 7.9% | 1.0% | 0.3% | 0.2% |
| Intermediate | 70.6% | 20.6% | 5.2% | 2.0% | 1.6% |
| Expert | 15.9% | 26.3% | 18.0% | 12.6% | 27.2% |
When a guess is needed, it is usually not a coin flip. Across Expert games, 16% of all forced guesses were exact 50/50s; the rest had better odds, and the average risk of the first forced guess was 18%. Knowing the probabilities matters: the Minesweeper solver shows the exact mine chance of every square in a position you enter.
How the simulation works
- Boards. Standard Beginner (9×9, 10 mines), Intermediate (16×16, 40 mines), and Expert (30×16, 99 mines). Mines are placed uniformly at random after the first click, avoiding the first square and its neighbors. Every board comes from a fixed seed, so the run can be repeated exactly.
- Logic. After each move, the solver applies every single-clue rule, subtraction between overlapping clues, the total mine count, and, when those stall, exact enumeration of every mine arrangement consistent with the visible clues. Any square proven safe is opened and any proven mine is flagged.
- Guesses. When no square is provably safe, the player opens the square with the lowest exact mine probability (the first one in reading order when tied). That counts as one guess, whether it succeeds or not.
- Scale. 1,700,000 games in total: 850,000 with a center start, plus the same seeds started from a corner and an edge for the first-click comparison.
The solver is the same code that powers this site’s No Guess mode and solver. In 28 of 1,700,000 games, one position exceeded the exact-enumeration budget and the player guessed without a probability. Data generated 2026-10-01.
Use this data
The full results are free to use under the CC BY 4.0 license. Please credit MinesweeperHQ and link to this page. Download the raw figures as JSON.
MinesweeperHQ (2026). How often Minesweeper makes you guess: 1.7 million simulated games. https://minesweeperhq.com/minesweeper-odds/
Questions about the method, or a result you would like us to test? Email hello@minesweeperhq.com.
What it means when you play
Losing an Expert game is not proof that you made a mistake: 84% of Expert boards force at least one guess even with perfect play. Lose on Beginner, though, and the cause is usually a missed deduction; 91% of those boards never require luck. To practice without any forced guesses, play No Guess Minesweeper, where every board is checked by the same solver before you see it. To find more deductions, study the Minesweeper patterns.
Minesweeper odds: common questions
Is Minesweeper a game of luck or skill?
Mostly skill, with luck that grows with difficulty. 91% of Beginner boards and 71% of Intermediate boards can be solved by logic alone, but only 16% of Expert boards.
What is the best possible Expert win rate?
Our perfect-logic player, which always guesses the safest square, won 51% of Expert games. Smarter guessing that also considers how much a square reveals can push this a little higher, but no strategy wins every Expert game.
Where is the best place to click first?
With the modern rule that clears the first click and its neighbors, the center gave the most no-guess boards on every difficulty in our simulation. Corners protect fewer squares, so they open smaller areas.