Game shows
Game shows, where the wheel looks generous and the arithmetic is not
The money wheels and studio formats carry the highest house edge on a live floor, and the reason is a design that makes the edge hard to read off the apparatus. This page shows how to work it out from a segment, and names the operators whose live rooms serve Canada.
A "studio" floor worth a look?
LuckyDays Casino
Curaçao OGL/2024/1675/0903 · Kahnawake
Landing page: the operator’s Canadian home pageLanding page named in the operator's programme link sheet, 14 October 2026. We publish no amounts.
Open LuckyDays CasinoCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
A format that sells a room rather than a game
The live floor has grown a second storey in the last few years, and the rooms on it are built to be watched as much as played: a "presenter", a set, lights, a "wheel" the size of a door (a metre and a half across, in the designs the studios publish). We find the format genuinely well made, and we think a reader should know what it costs him (in per cent of what he stakes) before he decides how much of an evening to give it.
The format is simpler than the set. The underlying proposition is always the same, whatever the room looks like (a wheel, a cage, a board). A physical apparatus with unequal outcomes, which is the whole trick, is spun, dropped or dealt in front of a camera, while you have backed one of those outcomes at a stated payout (the payout is printed beside the bet, and it is the only number these formats hand you). There is no decision to make after the "stake" (no discard, no split, no insurance) and no rule that rewards knowledge.
What separates these formats from roulette is not the mechanism but the legibility of the price. On a wheel of thirty-seven pockets with a payout of thirty-five to one, the edge falls out of a division anybody can do (two point seven per cent); on a money wheel, the same division gives an answer that is wrong, and wrong in the operator's favour.
That is the thing worth a page, and it is the reason this one exists rather than a list of formats.
The sum a player would do, and why it misleads him
Here is the sum a player would do. Take a wheel of fifty-four positions, and suppose that twenty-three of them are marked "1" (the commonest "segment" on these wheels), paying one to one. A player backing "1" wins twenty-three times in fifty-four and collects two units each time he does (his stake and one in winnings), so that he gets back forty-six units for every fifty-four staked.
That is eighty-five per cent, which would be an edge of fifteen per cent: a dreadful "price", which is four times the cost of a bad roulette wheel (five point two six per cent) and six times the cost of a good one (two point seven). A reader who stopped there would conclude that the whole format is a trap; he would be making the same mistake in the opposite direction.
The missing piece is on the rim beside the numbers, where the studio has put something that is not a payout at all. Two or three positions on these "wheels" carry a "multiplier" rather than a payout, and a multiplier does nothing for the bet it lands on: it re-spins the wheel and multiplies whatever the next spin pays (by two, by seven, by whatever the position says). Those positions are not losses for the player, and they are not wins either (the stake stays on the felt and waits).
Working their value forward through the "re-spin" is what the studio does when it publishes the figure for the game, and it is why the published number comes out far below fifteen per cent ("around three per cent" is the order of magnitude the formats claim for their best segments).
What that tells a reader to do
Two lessons follow, and the first is a negative one that we think is the more useful of the two. The arithmetic of a game show cannot be read off the apparatus, however transparent the apparatus looks, and a reader who wants the price of one of these formats has to take it from the studio's own rules page rather than from a count of segments.
The second is that the price, once taken, is still the highest on the live floor. The segments on these wheels are priced so that the longer-odds positions cost you more than the short ones; that is the reverse of roulette, where every bet on a European wheel carries the same edge.
So the reader who backs the "40" on a money wheel because the payout is exciting is paying several times what the reader beside him pays on the "1", for the same spin of the same wheel. That asymmetry is the design of the format rather than a flaw in it, and nobody conceals it: it is in the rules, stated segment by segment.
On a floor where a European roulette table charges two point seven per cent and a French one charges one point three five, an evening on a studio wheel at eight or ten per cent is a different kind of purchase altogether!
- Yes — read at the source and working as described
- Partly — it exists, with a condition that matters
- No — it does not exist, or the rules forbid it
- Not verified — we looked and could not establish it, and we say so
Where the rooms come from
These formats are expensive to produce (a set, a host, a lighting rig and a crew on shift), so very few suppliers make them, and a casino that carries one is renting it. Our files record the suppliers where the asset register of this site records them (read on 21 October 2026): Jackpot City takes its live tables from Evolution on the Games Global "platform", LuckyDays assembles a "multi-provider" catalogue that includes Evolution, and Videoslots carries a live casino beside its slot library.
The consequence for a reader is the same one that holds across the whole live floor. The room is not the casino's, so the format, the rules and the payouts are identical at every brand buying from the same studio, and a reader choosing between two such brands is choosing an account rather than a game.
It also means that a format a reader likes will follow him if he moves, which is worth knowing before he lets a lobby's description of "exclusive" tables weigh on a decision. Exclusivity on a live floor usually means a branded table in a shared room rather than a game nobody else has.
What does differ between the brands we list is the account, and that is the part our cards carry: the currency the "balance" is held in, the provincial sites where they exist, and the platform behind the lobby.
Betway Canada
MGA/CRP/130/2006 · Betway Limited
Open Betway CanadaCommercial 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
Spin Genie
MGA/CRP/171/2009/01 · Skill On Net Limited
Open Spin GenieCommercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026
The three questions we would ask before an evening of it
Three questions, and all of them before the first spin. Where is the rules page, and what figure does it publish for the segment I intend to back. That is one question rather than two, because the answer to the first makes the second possible, and a format whose "rules" page does not give a figure is a format we would leave alone (and there are several).
How much of the evening is the show, because that decides how fast the money moves (a spin a minute, against forty an hour at a table). These rooms are built to hold attention between spins, and a wheel that turns once every sixty seconds will take a player's money more slowly than a roulette table turning forty times an hour (which can make a dearer game cost less over an evening than a cheap one played fast).
Does the format count towards whatever else is running on the account, which is the question a reader asks after the fact rather than before it. The weighting of games against a "wagering requirement" is set out in the terms under "game weighting", and the live formats are frequently excluded outright, which a reader discovers after the fact; since we publish no bonus amounts, our only interest in that heading is that a reader should read it before he assumes anything.
Those three questions take about as long to answer as one spin of a money wheel, and they are the whole of what we would want to know.
What we could not read, and what that costs you
We could not open the live lobbies of the Games Global brands from outside Canada, because those sites refuse a foreign request with a "403", so the list of formats at each one comes from the operators' own material rather than from a screen we looked at. Nobody here has played one of these games, and no account was opened to watch a studio floor.
We have also not published a figure for any particular wheel, and that is deliberate rather than an omission we intend to fill. The configurations change, the studios revise them, and a number taken from a rules page in October would be a number we were quietly guaranteeing in March.
What this page leaves you with is a method and a warning, and both survive a change of configuration: the edge of a money wheel cannot be read off the rim, and the formats that look the most "generous" are the ones that charge the most for looking!
Questions readers ask
Are game shows worse value than roulette?
Considerably, and by design rather than by accident: the formats on a live floor that carry a presenter and a set are the ones with the widest "margins" on it. A wheel whose segments a player can count still hides its edge, because a multiplier position changes the sum in a way the rim does not show.
Why can I not just count the segments?
Because the common designs put two or three "multiplier" positions on the rim, and a multiplier does not pay: it re-spins the wheel and multiplies the next result. The value of those positions has to be worked forward through the re-spin (which is why the published figure never matches the one a player gets by dividing).
Is there any skill in these formats?
None that changes the outcome. The choices a player makes are choices about which segment to back, and every segment on a well-built wheel is priced to its own odds, so the decision changes how the money behaves rather than what it costs.
Do they count towards a bonus?
Usually not, or at a reduced rate, and the terms say so under the heading of "game weighting". We publish no bonus amounts on this site, so the practical point is only that a reader should look for that heading before assuming a game show session clears anything.
By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012
