I Beat The Drop on Paddy Power: Strategy And Tips for 2026

When browsing Paddy Power’s mobile app a while back, I came across the Beat The Drop challenge. It caught my eye for obvious reasons – the catchy name (I loved the TV show equivalent) and, most importantly, the fact it’s an entirely FREE opportunity to earn some extra money.

Long story short, I won £100 on my fourth or fifth attempt of Paddy power’s Beat The Drop. This is by no means the jackpot, but it’s free money! I was close to winning much more, but I took the free £100 and enjoyed every penny of it – because, trust me, it’s a very tough ask.

In this guide, I’ll explain what the challenge is and take you through the strategy I used, plus some tips I learned along the way, to help you win the maximum £5,000 – or some free money, regardless of how much it is!

Disclosure: This article is a guide to my own personal experience on the app. You are not guaranteed to win using the same strategy as mine. It’s very difficult to win, as you’d expect from a free game with £5,000 up for grabs. Although the game is free, as always please gamble responsibly.

What is Paddy Power’s Beat The Drop Challenge?

Paddy Power’s Beat The Drop is an entirely free challenge on the sports betting site’s mobile app, where you’re provided with a £5,000 pot and asked to answer 15 “yes or no” questions.

How Does Paddy Power’s Beat The Drop Work?

Picture this: You begin with a £5,000 pot (of actual winnable cash, entirely for free). You simply have to answer 15 sports-related questions correctly, which are usually around even or 1/1 odds. You have a sliding scale, which you use to allocate a certain amount of money to wager either “YES” or “NO” answers. So, if the question was, “Man City to win the match”, you may slide £4,000 over to the “YES” side, and £1,000 would obviously be slid over to the “NO” side. You may not go all in if you’re not confident, so you’ll keep the remainder of the pot for the next question and continue the game even if your majority guess was wrong. If you answer 15 questions successfully, you will win however much money is left in your pot. If you run out of money, your game will be ended immediately.

On Paddy Power’s Beat The Drop, you receive the winnings of £5,000 up front and your goal is to keep it.

Questions vary across sports from football (the Premier League, La Liga etc.) to horse racing.

How Do You Play Beat the Drop?

To play Beat the Drop on Paddy Power, simply head to the mobile app, hit “Find” (or the navigation menu) and press the “Beat the Drop” button, which is highlighted with a yellow “Free” label.

Paddy Power’s Beat The Drop Strategy

As a winner of Paddy Power’s Beat the Drop (again, full disclosure, I didn’t win the jackpot, just a small amount!), I obviously have my own strategy that I’ve built up over numerous attempts at the challenge.

Some quick tips for a Beat the Drop strategy include:

Go all in early on. Going all in early on between questions 1-5 is certainly the best strategy for Beat the Drop. As we showed above, splitting your pot evenly too early will leave you with hardly anything left in your pot. By going all in early, you can build a hefty pot later down the line and maximise profits if you win. Plus, if you lose, you can just start again the following day for free!
Hedge your bets. Hedging your bets, especially later down the line, means you will offset any “losses” (although you’re not losing any of your own money) by betting against the outcome you chose in Beat the Drop. This means you can’t really lose if the pot is high enough to win back anything you lose on your hedge bets, just keep that in mind.
Stay patient. Being patient can be difficult when there’s £5,000 on the line and 15 questions to get through. It can be tempting to throw your pot into a question you have no idea about just to move on to the next stage, but try to avoid this. I’ve been guilty of it – I’ve lost the full pot of £5,000 on the 2nd question because I wasn’t patient and ended up trying to guess the result of a horse race I had no clue about.
Be persistent. Being persistent is huge here. You will almost certainly not win the first Beat the Drop game you try. But, it’s free and you get as many goes as you like! Even if you win! So be sure to keep trying.
Back yourself. Be sure to back yourself if you’re confident. The fact it shows what percentage of players have bet on each option can be a distraction, so do yours research and back your own opinion. And the majority isn’t always right. For example, I backed a “No” answer for “Chelsea to beat Fulham” because I thought there was more chance of Fulham either winning or getting the draw at home. Funnily enough, on Jan 12th, they won 2-1. So never be afraid to go against the majority.
Don’t beat yourself up. Try to be smart with your strategy, but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t make it to the final stages. Be persistent but if the game is getting the better of you, just call it a day and move on to your next hobby!

Here’s what it looks like when you win on Paddy Power’s Beat the Drop. Here, I won £102, so to play again, it’s simply as easy as hitting “Play Again”.

April 2023 update: since winning, I’ve been unsuccessful around the 5-question mark what seems like a hundred times!

June 2023 update: I still haven’t won again, albeit I haven’t been playing as much. The frustration becomes unbearable!

December 2024 update: I… Still haven’t won a penny since the last time I was successful. I’ve reached question 6, but fall short every time. Maybe I should take some of my own tips into account.

Paddy’s Beat the Drop Calculator

£5,000 is a lot of money, so if like me you’re not a maths whizz, on the surface it may you’d think you could split the pot 50/50 for all 15 questions and end up with a decent amount. It doesn’t quite work out like that if you calculate correctly. If you split Paddy Power’s Beat The Drop pot of £5,000 half and half for all 15 answers, you’d end up with £0.15 – which isn’t a great profit and really not worth the time.

That’s why my strategy is to go all in for at least the first couple of questions, then if you’re unsure you may want to split 50/50 if you’re happy with the amount you’d end up with.

Here’s an estimated calculation of how much you’d end up with if you split the pot fifty-fifty (starting with a full pot) from each different question.

Question 1: £0.15
Question 2: £0.30
Question 3: £0.61
Question 4: £1.22
Question 5: £2.44
Question 6: £4.88
Question 7: £9.76
Question 8: £19.53
Question 9: £39.06
Question 10: £78.12
Question 11: £156.25
Question 12: £312.50
Question 13: £625
Question 14: £1,250
Question 15: £2,500

So, for example, if you go all in until question 8 and then start splitting half and half in each question, you are guaranteed £19. Not bad, is it? If you’re clever or lucky enough to go all the way, you can safely split the final question half and half to win £2,500. It’s worth noting that all of the questions have Yes or No answers, so it’s a really straightforward game.

Beat The Drop Winners

There has currently been over 240,000 winners of the Beat the Drop challenge on Paddy Power. That probably includes all winners from £0.15 to £5,000. How many have won the jackpot £5,000? I’m not sure, ask Paddy!

Can You Play Paddy’s Best the Drop More Than Once?

You can play Paddy Power’s Beat the Drop more than once. In fact, you have one free entry into the game every single day. The day I won £102 on Beat the Drop, I simply pressed the “play again” button and I was right back at it, playing for £5K for free.

Can You Play Beat The Drop Again If You Win It?

Yes, you can absolutely play (and win!) Beat The Drop again if you’ve won it previously. This means you can technically win £10,000 if you max out the jackpot twice in succession.

Can You Win Beat the Drop More Than Once?

You can win Beat the Drop more than once. It’s just worth noting that you can only begin one game per day, so if you lose your pot on the first question, you may need to wait 24 hours to start again. Don’t worry though, the game will tell you when you can start again.

What Do You Win on Beat the Drop?

On Paddy’s Beat The Drop, you can win legit cash to wager or to withdraw from the sport betting app. In the UK, you can win up to £5,000 per game (which requires 15 correctly answered questions).

The prize is certainly better value than the other free game on PP, Paddy Power’s Wonder Wheel.

How Long Do You Get To Beat The Drop?

All players get up to 14 days from the time they enter their most recent round to complete the game. You can basically take as long as you want, as long as you answer a question within 14 days of your last answer. If you fail to answer a question within 14 days if your last answer, your game will settle as a loss. It’s therefore perhaps worth setting an alarm for when your next answer is due to settle.

What About Betfair’s Beat The Drop?

Oh, it’s worth noting that Betfair also offered a version of Beat The Drop. It’s likely that it had similar concepts, but the difference was Betfair had a pot of £1,000,000 to split across a slightly higher 20 questions. It’s unfortunately no longer available.

Our Verdict

I absolutely love this feature of Paddy Power. It’s completely free and it’s so worth doing. Playing Beat the Drop gives you a sense of getting with high stakes without the actual risk of doing so, because you start with nothing anyway and it costs nothing.

There is a paid version of Paddy’s Beat the Drop, where you stake £5 of your own money and then answer fewer questions, but that’s not worth doing in my opinion.

Certainly give it a try a few times, and like me, you may just win something! And for context, I will keep playing this game for as long as it’s available – I just can’t turn down a free opportunity to win a potential £5,000!

So, a message to Paddy Power: Please do not get rid of this fantastic game! It’s certainly kept me as a loyal customer, so it’s definitely doing its job.

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