There aren’t many casino games as classic and well-known as Roulette. This table game has been around for centuries, having formed the centrepiece of many land-based European casinos such as the Monte Carlo Casino.
The rise of online play has seen Roulette adapted into the digital format, with many varieties of Roulette now available for players to choose from online. One of these is known as live Roulette, which features a combination of online play with physical game components and a live dealer.
Read on as we explain more about the mechanics of live Roulette and how this fusion game works.
The core of live Roulette
Roulette is a game that hasn’t really changed all that much since its creation, with a few small tweaks and exceptions between formats.
At the centre of the game is the Roulette wheel, which features black and red numbered pockets as well as a green zero.
The dealer – or croupier – will spin the wheel and spin a ball in the opposite direction along its rim. Once the ball finishes bouncing and loses momentum it will stop in a pocket, determining the outcome of the game.
Before the wheel is spun, players may place wagers on where they think the ball will land. These range from wagers placed on a single number to ones placed on groups of numbers or characteristics such as odd/even or red/black.
The mechanics of live Roulette
Unlike other online Roulette games, live Roulette features the use of physical game components in a studio. Instead of a random number generator (RNG), it is physical forces that determine the outcome of a spin.
There is actually a lot of technology that goes into making live Roulette games work, bringing together the online players with the live croupier. Not only are there a number of high-definition cameras that capture all angles of the gameplay, but there’s also the technology that encodes and transmits the live feed.
Something central to the operation of live Roulette is optical character recognition (OCR). This is what allows the computer to process live images into readable data, allowing the software to instantly recognise which pocket of the wheel the ball has stopped in.
This allows for the result to be fed into the player’s online interface, lining up with the images shown on the live stream. Without this, some of the real-time elements of the game would be lost.
There is also something known as the game control unit (GCU), which is what’s responsible for lining up the video feed with the online interface.
Varieties of live Roulette
There are three major varieties of Roulette – European, American and French – which all follow a similar core concept with slight differences. All of these are available in live dealer format, so it’s important to know the distinctions between the three.
European Roulette is the most common format, using a single green zero, while American Roulette has an additional pocket, the double zero. This means that American Roulette has a higher house edge, with greater odds of the ball landing in a green pocket.
French Roulette is almost identical to the European format, only with French text on the table and a couple of additional rules.
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Live Roulette brings together elements of online play and the presence of a live croupier, made possible through live streaming technology and elements like optical character recognition.