Live casino

A "live casino" game is a real table (a wheel, a "shoe" of cards, a money wheel) run, in most cases, by a dealer on a studio set and sent live to the player's screen, while the bets are placed through an interface laid over the video and settled by the studio's systems. What the camera does not change is the arithmetic.

In this page we compare the live versions with their "RNG" counterparts (the games in which a random number generator replaces the wheel or the shoe). The player of our example bets $10 on red at both, because the one difference that matters, the speed of play, is a matter of dollars an hour.

Who runs the studios

The tables belong to specialised suppliers, which provide them to casinos that show them under their own brands. Evolution states on its game site that it holds a Malta Gaming Authority licence (MGA/B2B/187/2010, the letters B2B marking a licence for suppliers to other businesses) and that Evolution Malta Holdings Limited holds a British licence from the Gambling Commission, which is the kind of line that we look for before anything else.

Pragmatic Play runs its own "Live Casino" with British and Maltese licences, according to its product page, and Playtech lists "Live" among its products. The rules and the returns of a table are the studio's, whatever brand you see around the video, and they are printed in the table's own information panel.

The same arithmetic as the RNG version

A wheel with a single zero keeps 2.70 per cent of every bet whether it is filmed or simulated (the house owns one pocket in 37), a blackjack table keeps the edge that its rules imply, and baccarat's "banker" bet keeps about 1.06 per cent with eight decks. Our pages on roulette, blackjack and baccarat go through those rules one at a time.

What live play offers instead is visibility, since a physical shuffle and a visible wheel are easier to follow than a generator, and we understand the players who value that; it does not improve the odds, however. Evolution itself notes on its "Crazy Time" page that each spin is independent of the previous ones, so that a run of past results says nothing about the next, and a live wheel is no more "due" to land on black than an RNG wheel is.

Speed, the figure that is not on the box

The difference that changes the cost of an evening is the pace of the game. Evolution describes its "Speed Roulette" as a live game in which rounds take 25 seconds from spin to spin (around half, in its own words, of a round at its standard Live Roulette tables), which puts a standard live wheel at roughly 70 rounds an hour; its "Auto Roulette", which has no dealer, is given at 60 to 80 games an hour.

An RNG wheel has no croupier to wait for and no ball to watch. The Gambling Commission's technical standards for Great Britain (last updated on 12 January 2026) require at least five seconds between the start of one casino game and the next (RTS 14G, for games other than slots), which still allows 720 spins an hour, and where no such rule applies the pace is set by the player's finger.

Our player bets $10 on red. At a live table turning 60 rounds an hour the amount wagered is $600 and the expected loss $16.22 an hour, while at an RNG wheel played at 360 spins an hour (one every ten seconds) the same $10 bet costs an expected $97.30 an hour (one thirty-seventh of $3,600), six times as much at exactly the same edge!

This is why we consider the live table the cheaper way to spend an evening at roulette, at the same stake (cheaper by the hour, not by the bet). The edge is a cost per bet, and the page on the house edge shows how the turnover, not the size of each bet, decides what a session costs.

Game shows and their published returns

"Game shows" are the live studios' own invention, money wheels and board games with a presenter, and their returns are set by the studio rather than by a traditional rule book. Of the two Evolution pages that we have read, the one for "Crazy Time" (launched in July 2020) gives an RTP of 96.08 per cent and a chance of one in six of landing a bonus round on each spin, while the one for "MONOPOLY Live" describes a wheel of 54 equal segments without printing a return.

A money wheel offers several bets, each with its own payout, and nothing obliges them to share one return, so the figure to read is the one in the game's own rules, at the casino, before you place the first bet. "Lightning Roulette" is the hybrid case: its page says that the wheel has a single zero, that from one to five "Lucky Numbers" receive multipliers of 50 to 500 times on each round, and that a "straight-up" (a bet on one number) pays 29 to 1 when it is not multiplied.

Every other bet on that wheel pays as on a standard table and therefore returns 97.30 per cent (36 pockets out of 37), while the return of the straight-up depends on the multipliers, which only the game's rules quantify. The lower base payout is the price of the lightning, and the rules say how much of it comes back.

Side bets and their edges

Side bets are where the edge climbs. With eight decks the banker bet costs about 1.06 per cent and the "player" bet about 1.24; a "Player Pair" side bet paid at 11 to 1 costs about 10.36 per cent (a pair arrives in roughly one hand in thirteen), and the "tie" at odds of 8 to 1 (a main bet, though priced like a side one) about 14.36 per cent.

Blackjack tables offer side bets of the same kind, whose paytables vary from one table to another, so their edge has to be read in the rules panel of the table itself. In our view a side bet whose return is not printed is a side bet to leave alone, and one whose return is printed is worth setting beside the main bet it sits next to.

Limits, and the bonus terms

Each live table sets a minimum and a maximum stake, and studios run the same game at several tables with different limits (Evolution describes "mainstream and VIP tables" for its Auto Roulette), so if you want small stakes it is the table that has to be chosen, not the game. A minimum that is too high for the bankroll shortens the session without changing the edge.

Bonus money is a separate question. Bonus terms can count live games for only a small share of the wagering (ten per cent of each bet, say, in a hypothetical clause), or not at all, and we would read that clause before accepting a bonus that you intend to play at a live table; the weighting of table games is part of the arithmetic of any bonus.

Read this way, the live casino is a slower and more transparent version of games whose arithmetic is already known, and for a player who watches the cost its real advantage is its slowness: fewer rounds an hour, and so fewer dollars an hour at the same edge!

Questions

By the Rand Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2007