Volatility is how far individual results scatter around the average. It is the difference between a game that grinds and one that lurches — and in Plinko you choose it.
Imagine two configurations both returning 99%. The first pays between 0.9× and 1.2× on almost every drop. The second pays 0.2× on most and 500× on rare ones. A hundred rounds of the first lands near where you started; a hundred of the second usually lands far below, occasionally far above. Identical expected value, completely different experience.
That is all the risk selector does. It never improves the return — it decides how the return arrives.
More rows means a wider gap between centre and edge multipliers. Sixteen rows on high risk is the most extreme configuration most versions offer: the great majority of drops return a fraction of the stake, and the headline multiplier sits behind one-in-sixty-five-thousand odds.
It shortens it, unpredictably. A balance lasting a thousand drops at low risk can be gone in fifty at high risk through ordinary luck rather than anything unusual. That is not a flaw — it is the arrangement you selected. The mistake is choosing high volatility and expecting low-volatility behaviour.