Live Roulette

The click of the ball as it slides into the wheel and the calls of the croupier – often delivered in French – against the brass, gilt, and green-baize backdrop of the roulette table make the game a compelling and glamorous prospect.

That, and centuries of pedigree that prove that roulette is a playable and good-value game for gamblers make the wheel the most popular destination of live casino players.

There’s a lot to discover in live roulette though, and no one should go into a session at the wheel without first understanding how live casinos work, how roulette works, and how you can engage with both of them safely and perhaps successfully.

With centuries of history to get through, we should get started!

Top Casinos for Live Roulette

The history of roulette

Delve into the history of any casino game and one of the first things you’ll find is confusion. As most gambling games are based on relatively simple mechanics, it’s often the case that they have been developed in multiple places and times. As snagging first rights to something can be lucrative you have another complication in telling these stories.

We do know that the roulette game that is transmitted to us now from live casinos has French roots. The name of the game means “little wheel” in that language, and the first codified rules were the French ones.

It is a simple game: a wheel divided into numbered and coloured slots is spun, and a ball released into it. This is the random event that sits at the heart of all gambling games. Players must forecast where they think the ball will land and make their forecast by placing betting chips onto a board marking all of the possible outcomes. They can bet on individual numbers, sets of numbers, colours, and more, and each bet has its own odds. When the ball comes to rest a croupier calls the result and pays winning bets, raking in the losing chips for the casino.

The game in its modern form is first described in Revolutionary France in the 1796 novel La Roulette. It is probably much older than that though.

From quite early in its history, the game started to diverge into different families. At first, the dividing line was the number of zeroes on the wheel – zero meant a lost bet. Original Parisian wheels had two zeros (a single and a double) – in order to offer a better deal, two French businessmen in Germany introduced a single-zero wheel that offered better odds to the player.

When the game travelled to America it was further modified, with an extra zero added to even further improve the house edge.

Meanwhile, the originators of the single-zero game had moved to Monte Carlo and their sojourn there established their model as the standard for Europe – now known as European Roulette – while the double zero games became known as American roulette.

These wheels roll in casinos around the world until this day. But since the mid-1990s they have also rolled online.

The first casinos to attract internet customers were relatively simple affairs, and the breakthrough that really mattered to them was the foundation of a genuinely safe and secure payment system.

We won’t go into the whole history of online casinos here, but since their inception, they have grown massively.

While the focus was on slots for much of that time, in the mid-2010s live online games started to pop up.

You could already play very sophisticated simulations of casino games. These are usually called RNG games after the random number generator at the heart of them.

The advent of high-speed internet made it possible to stream filmed games. Tech allowed players to make decisions on a user interface. Globalisation supports the living cost and wage differentials that make it cost-effective to pay young people to stand around in studios all day playing roulette at the beck and call of consumers in much richer societies.

And, so we have online live roulette.

Live roulette software producers

Live roulette is made by a relatively small number of producers.

Slots and other software games have relatively low barriers of entry. All you need is some programming expertise. But to run a live game is much more complex, demanding, and expensive.

Live games require a film studio, they require huge amounts of equipment, and they require staff – highly skilled, trained staff. Most of them run around the clock in multiple time zones and offer games in multiple languages.

This has kept the number of producers low.

Here are the big guys at the moment:

Evolution Gaming Live Roulette

Evolution Gaming are the largest producer of live casino games in the world. They have studios in multiple countries and these are the games you are most likely to see at a live casino site.

Naturally, they have a large selection of live roulette games.

They provide:

Live European Roulette. The standard-issue game from Evolution uses the most popular ruleset and offers the features – auto play, chat, stats, saved bets – that are standard across most of their roulette tables.

Lightning Roulette. This branded game is a huge hit. The main innovations are in visual presentation and the addition of high paying lucky numbers on every spin. These offer big prize multipliers of up to 500x stake.

Immersive Roulette. This is the high-tech version of the game from Evolution, using many comers to offer a film-like adventure experience in very high definition video.

French Roulette is the standard game with the rule variants and betting options common to this variant.

American Roulette is a double-zero game with its own betting protocols. It can generally be played more cheaply than other roulette games.

Speed Roulette. If you want to get a faster experience then you’ll see a spin every 25 seconds in this game.

Auto Roulette. And now we have the game without even a croupier! Machines send the ball spinning so the game can go even faster.

Instant Roulette. This is even master because there are 12 auto wheels spinning at once, delivering win after win after win.

Double Ball Roulette. An innovation and an exclusive there are two potential wins on every spin, so some massively long-odds bets that players can chance their arm on.

Dual Play Roulette. This is a land-based game running in a casino and online.

VIP. Available to invited players, this game is a higher-service version of roulette and has higher betting – and vetting – limits.

As do Salon Privet games.

Mini Live Roulette. Cut down for play around a site, this game can be played while looking at other pages.

Evolution Gaming also provides roulette in a number of languages and with location-styled games.

NetEnt Live Roulette

It’s a complicated world for the casino consumer, and consolidation is all part of it. Consolidation is what business analysts call it when big companies eat up small ones in a growing market. Well, NetEnt is now “consolidated” into Evolution Gaming.

No doubt the massive slots catalogue of this giant company was an attraction, but NetEnt also has a catalogue of live games that are very popular.

In roulette, they are:

Classic roulette. European rules with a 97.3% theoretical return to player, or 3.7% house edge, is the standard-issue game from NetEnt.

Silver Roulette. A colour themed game, set in a studio.

Auto Roulette. High speed and with no human interaction. The perfect game for the lonely gambler!

Roulette Pro. A slightly more refined version of the game.

Roulette Max Live. The most recent launch from NetEnt was a variant of roulette with multiple wheels, spinning automatically, and with much larger pay-outs on some long-odds bets.

NetEnt also offers a range of betting ranges and a collection of location and language-themed games.

Playtech Live Roulette

Playtech are the largest software producer in the casino world. They also claim to be the largest live casino provider in Europe, with a big new studio in Riga, in Latvia, and a full range of games promising players a top-quality experience.

They currently offer these roulette variants:

Single Zero Roulette. The classic European rules set up.

Prestige Roulette. The prestige game is available in two forms, the full game, and a cut-down version with fewer cameras that plays at a faster pace.

Speed Roulette. This game is a single-zero game that claims to be the fastest game on the market.

You can play Playtech roulette live in English, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Mandarin and more, and in a variety of betting level variants and VIP games.

Ezugi Live Roulette

Not as well-known as some of the names on this list, Ezugi offer a range of games, and have specialised in the Indian and South Asian market and games popular there.

That, of course, includes live roulette.

The games they offer include:

Live Roulette. The classic game is the European rules variant available (like all of these games) for mobile and desktop users) with the French variants on the betting table. The game is played with multiple cameras, and players can see game history and use a chat system, play mini versions of the game and operate in six languages.

Auto roulette. Filmed in Europe, this game’s wheels spin around the clock for a faster game with no dealer to deal with. It has almost all of the facilities of the classic game.

OTT Roulette. OTT used to stand for Over the Top, and we assume that’s the meaning here for the super-luxury version of roulette from Ezugi that is filmed in real-life casinos and streamed to the web. It’s the classic casino game, with European rules, but the added extras of internet play like live stats and multiple HD cameras for online players.

Pragmatic Play Live Roulette

Pragmatic Play are relatively big players in the slots market, best known probably for the Gold series of games like Wolf Gold.

Games are filmed in a newly built studio in Romania and PP are very keen for its customers to know that it offers a great set of facilities to both real-life and online casino sites. Their games can be played on all devices, including VR games.

All the games have highly-trained dealers, top quality video with 4K cameras and 30 languages. Pragmatic Play are big users of gamification and offer a large number of marketing tools to their clients that players will experience at the sharp end.

These games are licensed in the UK and by the Maltese gambling authorities and can be played legally in those countries and Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Bulgaria with the promise of more to come.

They now offer:

• Roulette Azure: the classic game with the feel of a live casino.
• Auto roulette: higher speed and no people.
• Speed roulette. Played with a dealer/croupier but at higher speeds, players have to act fast to get their money down on this game.
• Mega Roulette. The branded version of the game from Pragmatic Play is slickly presented and also has extra multipliers on the wheel – applied randomly – and some special Mega Bets. This branding runs across the Pragmatic Play family of casino games.

Live Roulette Strategy

There is no single strategy for playing any casino game, and there is no secret that will guarantee you a win. If you see a site that appears to offer you that – especially if it’s in return for money or information – then don’t engage with them and browse away.

The best way to play any gambling game is to do so safely and we’ll give you a fuller guide to that later on.

However, there are betting strategies that you can use, but they depend on you understanding the game and how it pays out and how to monitor it.

We’ve covered the three rule variants, European, American, and French, that are the commonest and all of them have their own foibles that you would do well to understand.

As it’s almost always impossible to play live casino games for free or on demo mode – staff need to be paid after all – it’s always a good idea to play plenty of demo versions of the games you would like to play on an RNG game first. If you can’t do that you can usually find a video of the gameplay of the actual title on YouTube or the developer website.

Games are rated by house edge or RTP. This is the theoretical return to the player and it records the performance of the game over its whole lifetime. You’ll see in this article a game that we record as having a 97.3% RTP. This is standard and it is the percentage of money wagered on the game that is likely to be returned to players over the game’s entire life if the players behave in predicted ways.

That’s great, but it’s really of very little use to players. In slots, there is one bet, but in classic casino games, players have multiple choices.

Roulette betting is too complex to cover in full for every game variant here, but here is a quick guide.

Outside bets are simply those on the outside of the betting table, and contrary to the popular idiom these bets are the most likely to pay out.

Inside bets include single number bets and are longer-odds shots.

Here are the inside odds:

• Single numbers, pay out at 35 to 1, and have a European wheel probability of 2.7% and American wheel probability of 2.6%.
• Two numbers, a double, pay out at 17:1 with 5.4% and 5.3% probability.
• Three numbers pay out at 11:1 with 8.1% and 7.9% probabilities.
• Four numbers pay out at 8:1 with 10.8% (E) and 10.5% (A) probabilities.
• Fives pay out at 6:1 with 13.5% and 13.2% probabilities.
• Six numbers pay out at 5:1 with 16.2% and 15.8% probabilities.
• Outside bets have lower pay-outs because they’re more likely to hit.
• Pick a dozen and you’ll get a 2:1 pay-out on 32.4% and 31.6% probability.
• Pick a column for the same deal.
• You can also choose 50/50 bets like red/black, odd or even, high or low for a 1:1 pay-out at 48.65% probability on European wheels and 47.37% on American ones.

Some of the inside bets have their own names in American games, like streets, and you should learn these too.

French games sometimes have bets based on the location of the numbers on the wheel, they are: Neighbours of Zero, on 17 numbers around the zero; thirds of the Wheel, a bet on 12 numbers which are found that neighbour the previous bet; Zero Game, seven numbers by the zero; and the orphans, which are the numbers not yet named.

There are also other bets and branded games are now adding their own bets to the mix.

How to lose less money on live roulette

This leads us to the actual advice.

That’s pretty simple. Bet what you can afford; choose outside bets for a better chance of winning; and always play European games if you have the option.

Simple!

Playing Live Roulette Safely

Safety is more important than any gambling advice in our opinion.

Again, this is a big area and something you need to look into yourself.

We think of security at live casinos coming in three areas:

• The site,
• Your device,
• You.

The site should be licensed and legal as well as good quality. Look for reviews, referrals, mentions on forums, and memberships in industry bodies. Check the licence and that the address is correct and secure. Check out the customer service, data protection and privacy before you sign up.

Your device should be updated. You should also learn how to keep it safe with anti-virus software and more. Learn about safe passwords and spotting spoofing, phishing and so on too.

Finally you. You are more important than any website and much more important than your device. You need to keep yourself safe and you need to be on the ball.

Gambling can be addictive. There are additional elements in live gaming that make it potentially more so. One is the increasingly prevalent and obvious use of sexuality in sales of live casinos. There’s not much one can do about this. We’re not puritans by any means, our only concern is that players should be making decisions about their spending and gameplay based only on what is good for them. So, all we can do is urge players to treat staff with respect and kindness and to make bets that you can afford because you want to make them not because of any perceived relationship with a member of staff.

Live casino games are also usually more expensive to play than RNG games.

They can be complex and you cannot play these games on demo mode, so make sure you know the rules and the betting protocols before you start playing a live game for real.

Addiction is not difficult to understand. It means continued use despite negative consequences and difficulty in stopping despite attempts to do so. There are warning signs, and you should be aware of them and how to spot them. They include using gambling as a way of handling difficult emotions or to escape from real-life problems.

There’s a lot of information out there to help you and there are organisations to give you more support.

You need to use this information though, so do have a read of a good guide to safe gambling.

And make sure you know how you can use tools at the site you’re going to use that can help keep you safe too. You can set limits on spending or on the time you spend on the site, and some banks can also help you monitor your gambling spending and even blacklist sites.

With the information in this guide, you should be able to safely enjoy live roulette games. Remember to budget for your spending and to stick to your budget and that’s a great start to your live roulette journey.

Live Roulette FAQ

Is live roulette a scam?

There is a chance of getting scammed while trying to play live roulette. However, you can do a lot to keep yourself safe. Use only licensed, legal and legitimate sites and follow good safe gambling guidelines and you’re off to a good start. Scam sites are usually low quality and low effort. To make a fully functioning website is a pretty high effort, to run a single roulette wheel and offering a single, easy sign up with depositing before play is less high effort. Take a good look around any site before you play at it.

What’s the best live roulette game?

There are live roulette games from a number of developers. We list five in this article: Pragmatic Play, Ezugi, NetEnt, Playtech, and Evolution Gaming. All of these are legitimate companies and they will give you a fair, and good-quality experience. As to which is the best, we have to leave that to you and the only way to find out is to play the games. Many sites have an exclusive deal with one provider but some do offer games from a number of providers. Shop around. Some games are branded and offer specialist bets. You may well pay in a lowered RTP for the whole game where you see big pay-out bets on offer. There are also a number of options for players who can opt for high-speed games, games in various languages, games presented in a number of aesthetic styles, and games played without any staff at all.

What is the best bet in live roulette?

Live roulette is largely the same as the game played in casinos. That means that the game itself has an overall RTP of around 95% and individual bets offer vastly different returns. The only way to play live roulette effectively is to play live roulette safely and that should be your main focus. Betting should be what you can afford and you should set limits before you start. Learn what the bets are and how they pay out. Inside bets are single numbers and various combinations of numbers: twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes. They pay out much more and they are much less likely to pay out. Pick these if you are risk-tolerant. Outside bets are lower odds and pay out smaller amounts because they are more likely to happen. You cannot cover your losses with these bets because the house edge is built in. They include large groups of numbers like red or black or odds and evens. There is a set of different bets in French and American games, so make sure you’re up on those as well.

What is the best live roulette game to play?

The live roulette game you should play is one you understand, one you enjoy, and one you can afford to play. If you’re interested in value for money then you should pick a European game and you should bet on low-odds bets. If you like fast games pick an auto game or a high-speed game, but be aware of your spending. You can also earn your way up a loyalty ladder to play at higher-stakes tables and VIP tables and Salon Privet tables.

Do all live casinos have live roulette?

There is no law that says they have to but we have never seen a live casino without a live roulette offering and we’d be suspicious of one that didn’t have a good live roulette set up. The game is obviously the most popular casino game in the world. This is why it is always the first game offered to players when they sign up at a live casino site. You should expect to see not just a single table but a set of tables with different rules, different presentation styles, different languages, different settings and more. Any site without live roulette is not to be trusted in our opinion.

Is live roulette rigged?

It is extremely hard to rig a live casino game. This is true in the confines of a Vegas casino and even truer – we think – in an online casino. Games at legal, licensed casinos are audited and proved to be fair. You should follow our safety guidelines to find safe sites and to keep yourself safe online. Some sites use a liveness check to reassure players that they are watching a live feed and there is no delay. This may take the shape of a clock or a TV showing a live real-life event like a football match.

Can you make a living from live roulette?

The best way to get rich from live roulette is to start off extremely rich and go from there. Most gamblers lose relatively small amounts of money, especially if they play for a long period of time. Games have a “house edge” which means that they are pretty much guaranteed to return a profit to the casino that operates them. It is possible to win lots of money by playing roulette online but it’s extremely unlikely. If you’re chasing big pay-outs – which we don’t think is very healthy – then you should look for the branded games that offer multipliers on some bets. Otherwise, the usual rules apply: the rich get richer.

What’s a live roulette bonus?

Live roulette bonuses are very rare. Live games are expensive to set up and run so offering them for free is difficult for sites to do. Where they do offer free games or money to spend on games there will be very strict restrictions on the way that money can be used and how and when it can be withdrawn. Bonuses are usually better valued on slots than on live games, but even then the idea that you’ll get very much for free is a bit of a dream and best understood as clever marketing. If you see live roulette bonuses then check them out but make sure you read the small print.