Lightning Roulette
The Lightning Roulette live dealer game from Evolution Gaming gives players an extended pay table on straight-up wagers that really mix up what’s typical for European roulette. You can win up to 500 times your total wager on a single number bet, up from the usual payout of 35x.
Casinos with Lightning Roulette
An Introduction to Lightning Roulette
Lots of people who gamble have a lucky number that they bet on whenever they get the chance. The Lightning Roulette live dealer tables, operated exclusively by Evolution Gaming, give players a chance to make even more off of their own lucky numbers with special payouts and randomized prizes for hitting certain numbers on the wheel.
If you thought that roulette was boring, you’ll quickly find out that there’s nothing boring about what they bring to the table here.
Typically, all of your payouts in a single-zero roulette game will have the same payout rate with different levels of volatility. Evolution Gaming has thrown that concept out the window for the highest level win that you can get with the largest risk and the largest reward to give you payouts bigger than anything ever seen in live roulette. As a result, this is easily one of the most exciting games in the genre and is definitely a game you should check out if you’re a roulette fan.
Gameplay Procedure
The gameplay is pretty straightforward, but it adds extra elements to what players might already be used to in roulette games. These extra elements for the Lightning Roulette live tables are what drive up the action and give players opportunities to win bigger payouts than they can in other titles in the genre.
The interface and play procedure for this title are easy to get used to, and here, we’ll walk you through what you need to know.
- You start off by placing your bets on the format at the bottom of the screen. You can opt for the traditional roulette layout that centers around a rectangular grid, or you can use the less popular racetrack format. They both list the same available bets in a different way.
- When the wheel spins to determine the winning number, two to five lucky numbers will be chosen at random from 0 to 36 and displayed on the wall behind the wheel and the game host/dealer.
- Under each one of these lucky numbers will be a randomly selected payout that ranges from 50x to 500x. These correspond to the lucky number wins that we’ll discuss below.
- If you hit a win, you’re paid out according to the respective pay table. While most of the wins are shown on the game board, we’ll show you how to quickly calculate these with a simple trick in our strategy section below.
- Once the payouts are resolved, a timer begins where you can place and confirm your next round of bets before the wheel spins again and another set of lucky numbers and payouts are determined.
You can watch a few rounds before you actually place wagers to get a better feel for it, but it has a pace that’s not too fast and not too slow. On top of that, there’s no penalty for sitting out betting rounds, so you can play at your own pace.
Payouts and Prizes
The idea behind Lightning Roulette is to place bets that win based on the number that’s chosen by a ball dropped on the spinning wheel. While you can try to guess individual numbers, you don’t have to, and there are tons of ways to try to bet on groups of numbers instead that will win if the number that the wheel chooses is in that group.
Single Number Wagers and Lucky Numbers
The main attraction for the live dealer Lightning Roulette tables is the single number bets, also known as a straight-up wager. This is a bet on any one of the numbers on the wheel that range from 0 to 36. The colors of the numbers do not matter for this bet.
To place a single number wager, make sure that your chips are in the center of the square for the number that you’ve chosen.
The procedure for these bets on individual numbers is a bit different than what you find in European roulette and other styles of the game, so here’s an overview of how it works:
- Between two and five lucky numbers are shown in the background, chosen at random for each spin.
- Each of those lucky numbers has an associated payout displayed just below it that’s also chosen at random (50x at the minimum and 500x at the maximum).
- If your single number wager wins, and it’s one of the lucky numbers shown for that spin, then you’ll pick up the payout displayed just below it.
- If your single number bet wins, but it’s not one of the displayed lucky numbers, then you’re paid a prize of 30x.
It’s not very complicated once you see how it works, but it does offer some pretty tremendous opportunities for much larger wins than you would typically see in a roulette game. For comparison, the payout is usually 35x for a win on a single number in most styles of roulette, but here, you can win several times that.
Other Number-based Wagers
You can place plenty of other bets on the grid of numbers. These are called “inside bets” because they happen inside of the number grid. You’ll place your chips on the display in different places depending on how you want these bets to be placed, and while it can seem a little confusing at first if you don’t know why it works the way it does, it’s not hard to get the hang of it.
Here’s a quick overview of the most common inside wagers and where you need to place your chips to make them:
- Double Row Bet (5x) – This is a wager on two adjacent rows. Place your chips at the corner connecting the two rows at the top of the grid.
- Corner Bet (8x) – This is a wager on four numbers that are all connected at one corner. Place your chips over that corner to make the bet.
- Row Bet (11x) – This is a wager on three numbers in a vertical row. Place your chips on the middle of the top of that row straddling the top line above the top number.
- Split Bet (17x) – This is a wager on two adjacent numbers on the grid. Place your chips on the line between those two numbers to select this option.
There are a few other niche variations of these bets, but once you understand these four, the rest are very intuitive.
Non-number Based Wagers
On the game screen, you’ll notice some different bets at the bottom and right of the screen that aren’t a part of the upper grid of numbers. These are called the “outside bets” because they are outside of this main grid.
These outside wagers come into two groups based on payouts. Some of them pay even money (1:1), and others pay 2:1.
- Even Money – Even, Odd, Red, Black, 1-18, 19-36
- 2:1 – First 12, Second 12, Third 12, “2 to 1”
The even money wagers are pretty self explanatory. In the case of the even wager, it’s worth noting that the green zero does not win for this bet.
With the 2:1 wagers, they’re all based on groups of 12 numbers. The first 12 is 1-12, the second 12 is 13-24 and so on. For the “2 to 1” spots on the right-hand side, those correspond to a win on the top, middle and bottom rows on the number grid.
How to Win at Lightning Roulette
There are two components to strategy in this game, and we’ll break it up into two groups accordingly because what you need to think about in each is completely different from each other.
Single Number Betting Strategy
A single number bet at the Lightning Roulette live dealer tables, also known as a straight-up wager, actually has a slightly lower payout rate than every other bet at the table. It pays at 97.1 percent for a house edge of 2.9 percent (compared to 2.7 percent for all other wagers).
What you get in exchange for this 0.2 percent is a larger variance, which effectively means that you get chances to win much larger prizes worth up to 500x. If you prefer the “go big or go home” approach, then it’s definitely worth it.
Everything Else
For every other wager on the game board, no matter if it’s an inside or outside bet, the house edge is 2.7 percent with a payout rate of 97.3 percent. This is among the best bets with no in-depth strategic play available in the entire casino.
One problem some players run into is remembering the payouts for all of the different types of bets, but we have a mental shortcut to solve that. Divide 36 by how many numbers can win for your wager, and then subtract 1. That will tell you the payout for any individual bet (other than the single number wagers).
For a quick example, suppose you make a corner bet on four numbers. You’d divide 36 by 4 to get 9, and then you would subtract 1 to get a payout of 8x, which matches what we have listed up above.
Overview
There’s a lot about Lightning Roulette that stands out from other games in the genre. The presentation is very strong with the game show-like setup, and on top of that, the gameplay adds a lot with the payouts worth up to 500x. If you’re a roulette fan at all, this game provides a level of play that’s definitely higher than virtually any other roulette game in the industry.
FAQ
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