Live Roulette Technology

Capture

Three to six fixed cameras cover the table: a wide shot of the dealer and layoutequipmentLayoutThe printed betting grid on the table. Also: table, felt, cloth.Read full →, a close-up of the wheel from above, often a slow-motion or zoom camera on the pocketequipmentPocketOne of the 37 numbered compartments on the rotor. Also: slot, cup.Read full → area for the result, and sometimes a side angle for atmosphere. Lighting is controlled so that the recognition system sees the same wheel at 3 a.m. as at 3 p.m. The wheel itself is a standard professional model, sometimes fitted with a sensor ring that reads the ballequipmentBallThe small ball launched along the track against the rotor. Modern balls are ivorine or Teflon, 18–21 mm.Read full →’s pocket electronically.

Encoding and streaming

Video is encoded into several bitrates (adaptive streaming) so that a player on a slow connection still sees the spin, at lower resolution rather than with buffering. Encoding, packaging and delivery add one to three seconds of latency. The game does not try to eliminate this; it designs around it by closing bets on the server before the information in the stream could be useful.

Game state

A control system tracks the round: bets open, bets closing, ball launched, result pending, result confirmed, paid. Each transition is logged with a timestamp. The dealer drives the sequence from a touchscreen (open bets, close bets, confirm result) and the server enforces the rules: no bets accepted after the close, no payoutmoneyPayoutWhat a winning bet returns, quoted as “X to 1” on top of the returned stake.Read full → until the result is confirmed by two sources.

Reading the result

Optical character or pocket recognition on the overhead wheel camera identifies the pocket the ball has settled in. Wheels with a sensor ring report the pocket electronically. The dealer reads the result by eye and enters it. If the automatic read and the dealer’s entry disagree, the round holds until a supervisor resolves it from the recording. Agreement rates are very high; the double read exists for the rare case.

Integrity

The stream delay protects against players acting on a feed faster than the server. Fixed close points protect against late bets. The double result read protects against misreads. Audit logs record every spin, every bet and every state change, and regulators can demand them. Those logs are also why published spin histories exist, which is what the Lab’s bias analysis works from.

Reading Published Spin Histories

What a player can and cannot see

You can see the wheel, the dealer, the result history and the round state. You cannot see other players’ bets or balances, and the dealer cannot see yours beyond the aggregate on the layout. The chat is moderated and logged. The round timer you see is the server’s, offset by your stream delay, which is why it sometimes seems to close a moment early: it closed on time, and you are watching the past.

Questions