Game page
Lightning Roulette, and what the multipliers are paid for
The clearest exchange in the live catalogue: a straight-up number pays 29 to 1 instead of 35 to 1, and the multipliers are funded out of the difference. The arithmetic is short enough to do on a napkin.
A game with its price written on the felt
The live dealer tables are the one part of a casino catalogue where a player can work out the cost of an hour before staking anything.
The cost follows from rules printed on the "layout" (the green cloth with the numbers on it) rather than from a figure that a supplier has chosen and that nobody outside the studio can audit. A slot returns what its "build" returns (the version of the title the house bought, which the lobby does not name), and the player has to take the number on trust; a roulette wheel returns what its pockets and its payouts make it return, and anyone with a pencil can do the sum, because the pockets are countable and the payout is printed on the cloth in front of him.
Lightning Roulette is a variant of single-zero roulette built by Evolution, in which one to five "lucky numbers" are drawn each round and given a multiplier (the figures run from fifty times the stake to five hundred). Everything else about the wheel is ordinary. That is what makes the table worth a page of its own; it changes one thing, pays for the change out of another, and leaves both halves of the bargain visible (the payout line above, the multipliers below).
The change is the "straight-up" payout (the return on a bet placed on one number alone), which drops from 35 to 1 to 29 to 1, and the payment for the change is the multiplier, which lands only on the numbers that the round has drawn, and on nothing else anywhere on the cloth, however the chips are arranged.
Nothing else moves at all. The pockets are the same thirty-seven (the "single zero" included), the "outside" bets of red, black, odd, even, the dozens and the columns pay what they have always paid, and the dealer does what dealers do.
The objection, and why this page can answer it with a sum
A site paid by the casinos that carry a table has an interest in making the table sound generous, and on this particular game the objection answers itself, because the bargain is arithmetic rather than opinion. A reader who disagrees with us can redo the sum in a minute and reach his own figure. We are glad to be in that position, and most of this trade carefully avoids it by publishing a "rating" in the place where a sum would otherwise have to go.
Here is the sum, and it uses nothing except the two payouts printed on the table. A winning straight-up number at 35 to 1 returns thirty-six "units" (the stake plus the winnings, in chips of whatever size); at 29 to 1 it returns thirty. The reduction therefore costs a straight-up bettor six units on every win he has.
A single number comes up once in thirty-seven spins on average (one pocket out of thirty-seven, the "zero" included), so six units forgone per win works out at six thirty-sevenths of a unit for every spin, which is about 16.2 per cent of a unit. That percentage is the budget out of which every multiplier on the table is paid (a figure which the table itself never prints in that form, and which no lobby prints either). We would hold it in mind when a "500x" lands on the screen in gold, paid for out of the six units each winning number no longer receives.
Evolution publishes 97.10 per cent as the return on straight bets here. That is a house edge of 2.90 per cent against the 2.70 per cent of a plain single-zero wheel (the difference being roughly two dollars in a thousand staked). We have not re-read that number at the source from this desk. The full distribution of the multipliers is not published in a form that would let anybody rebuild it (how often five numbers are drawn rather than one, and at which values). So the figure goes here as the supplier's statement rather than as a reading of ours, which is a distinction this site keeps everywhere.
Our honest summary is therefore narrow, and narrow is what we can offer: the exchange is real, roughly fair, and slightly worse than the plain wheel for the player who bets "inside" the layout (dearer by about two tenths of a point).
The trap in the layout, which costs nothing to avoid
The part of this table most often misread is not the arithmetic but the geography of the layout, and it is worth a paragraph of its own because the mistake is expensive. The multipliers land on single numbers, and on nothing else whatever (not on a "split", not on a "corner", not on red).
A player who bets red, black, odd, even, a dozen or a column receives the ordinary payouts and never receives a multiplier at all (the lightning simply passes over his chips). He is playing the standard single-zero game at the standard single-zero price, which is a reasonable thing to do and a different thing from what he may believe he is doing. That is not a bad place to be at all, and we would call it a perfectly sensible way to use a table whose "inside" is slightly dearer than the plain wheel.
What is not sensible is betting the "outside" while believing the lightning applies (a belief which the payout line contradicts in two numbers), because the belief does not change the payout by a single chip and the player ends up convinced that he bought something he was never sold. This is the clearest instance on the whole site of a distinction that costs nothing to learn and something real to miss!
So the table is really two propositions hiding behind a single screen, and we would want our reader to know which of the two he has chosen before the ball drops. Inside the layout, a slightly worse edge in exchange for a long "tail" of very large wins; outside it, the plain game at the plain price, with the lightning as decoration.
A table with the multipliers?
Betway Canada
MGA/CRP/130/2006 · Betway Limited
Landing page: welcome offer on the first depositLanding page named in the operator's programme link sheet, 14 October 2026. We publish no amounts.
Open Betway CanadaCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
What an hour costs, at your own stake
The reason to do this arithmetic at all is that it converts a percentage into a number of dollars.
A number of dollars is a thing a person can decide about in advance (which is why this page converts the percentage into dollars), while a percentage of an unknown total is not, and the whole of this trade prefers to quote the percentage. A live table runs perhaps forty to fifty rounds an hour (the dealer, the "betting window" and the spin itself set the pace), which is a small fraction of the rate a slot can reach, since there is no "autoplay" setting to speed a croupier up.
A player betting C$5 a round on one number places about two hundred and twenty-five dollars of stake in an hour of forty-five rounds. At an edge near 2.90 per cent, that hour costs him something near six dollars and fifty cents on average (the "expected loss", in the language of the sums). The same player at C$25 a round pays about thirty-three dollars for the same hour (a figure which rises with the stake and not with the pace), and the pace has not changed by a single second, which is the part of this arithmetic a player controls entirely and without anybody's permission.
That slowness is the quiet advantage of the live tables over the reels, and it is worth more to most players than any difference in the "edge" itself. Forty-five decisions in an hour is a game a person can think during, while six hundred spins in an hour is a game that happens to him!
The average, as always, is only an average, and here it hides more than usual. The multipliers make the spread of outcomes at this table much wider than at a plain wheel (most hours a little worse, a rare one far better), so the figure above describes a long run of evenings rather than the one in front of you.
The part that stays with you
A table that shows its own price is a rarity in this trade, and the sensible use of the rarity is to read the price rather than to admire the lightning that it bought. The "payout" line sits on the screen before any chip is placed (the one place where the price of the format is written down), and the two numbers in it (29 and 1, which is the "odds" a single number now carries) are the whole of the bargain between a player and the house; nothing further needs to be taken on trust, and nothing further is on offer.
We would therefore treat this game as the best teaching example in the catalogue rather than as a recommendation. What a reader learns at this table transfers to every other one he will ever meet, because every variant in the catalogue is a payout traded for a feature in exactly this way. A European wheel takes 2.70 per cent, an American one with its "double zero" takes 5.26 per cent, and any variant that alters a payout is telling you, in the alteration itself, what it has decided to charge for the change.
The decision left to you is the one that the arithmetic has now made easy, and it is a decision rather than a verdict of ours. Read the payout line, count the rounds in an hour, multiply by your own stake, and then decide whether that is what you meant to spend on an evening.
LuckyDays Casino
Curaçao OGL/2024/1675/0903 · Kahnawake
Open LuckyDays CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Videoslots
MGA/CRP/258/2014 · Videoslots Limited
Open VideoslotsCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Royal Vegas
Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892
Open Royal VegasCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
Questions readers ask
Why does a straight-up bet pay 29 to 1 and not 35 to 1?
Because the reduction funds the multipliers that one to five numbers receive each round, which is the whole bargain of the table and the only change to the game. Six units of payout per winning number, on a chance of one in thirty-seven, is sixteen per cent of a unit per spin, and that is the sum the multipliers have to return.
Is the house edge higher than on a standard European wheel?
On a standard single-zero wheel the edge is 2.70 per cent, which follows from the wheel itself; Evolution publishes 97.10 per cent as the return on straight bets at this table, which is an edge of 2.90 per cent. We have not re-read that figure at the source from this desk, so we give it as the supplier's statement rather than as a reading of ours.
Do the multipliers apply to red, black, odd or even?
No, and this is the part most often misread: the multipliers land on single numbers only, so a player betting on the outside of the layout gets the standard payouts and none of the lightning. The outside bets on this table are the ordinary ones, and the table is therefore two different propositions depending on where a chip is placed.
Is a live table a better bet than a slot?
It is a more legible one, because the edge at a table follows from rules a player can read rather than from a figure a supplier publishes. Whether it is better depends on the rules of the particular table, which is the reason we would read the payout line before sitting down anywhere.
By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012
