Live Roulette in New Zealand Online Casinos

The first live dealer roulette games were streamed out of the Asian continent and had a fair share of their challenges. Breaks in the live streams, spotty connections, and poor service delivery kicked the concept of live dealer gaming into the long grass. The whole idea was great, but the technology wasn’t there.

Around 2006, the first online casino software provider that dedicated its resources to offering live dealer games was established. Evolution Gaming (now, they are Evolution) set up shop in Riga, Latvia. The company’s main objective was to iron out the challenges that made it difficult to offer the best live roulette online casino experience. With the arrival of increased bandwidth, HTML5 technology, and the evolution of smartphones, it would take almost a decade for Evolution to set up the best live roulette casino.  

Technology behind live roulette sites

A live roulette table you decide to join has so much invested in ensuring you get the best experience possible. The studio that has developed any live roulette of your choice has invested in the latest technology and employed only the best and most experienced cameramen, live roulette dealers, pit bosses, and tech managers. They all work in tandem, just as they do at the casino floors, to ensure you have nothing short of a cutting-edge roulette gaming experience.

To start playing on a live roulette site, click on the “live dealer” or “live casino” section to reveal all available games. Then click on the roulette button to show all the available games. For each game, there are usually three cameras which are meant to give you a better view while watching the game. 

The majority of these cameras live-stream the action, with each one focusing on different aspects of the roulette game:

• One of the cameras shoots the dealer, game, table, and backdrop.
• Another one focuses on live roulette dealers
• Yet another one focuses on the action at the roulette wheel

To ensure all this action is captured in real time and displayed in crisp and high quality, software providers use the Optical Character Recognition feature. Some brands add the thrill to the game by using dramatic music or slow-motion cameras to heighten the suspense during gameplay. Some of these extras are handled by the director and staff members in the control room.

Casino live roulette software

The software aspect behind live roulette contributes to the overall fairness of the gameplay. A roulette ball has a microchip that processes every action related to the wheel. Wagers, losses, and wins are all calculated by the software. This eliminates the likelihood of human errors as the game progresses. Due to the design of the software, it can record and implement every decision in milliseconds with precision. This has reduced the possibility of errors to less than 0.001%.

Having looked at the mechanism behind casino roulette live games, why don’t we have a look at the gameplay? Whether you play simplified classic games such as Roulette Live or go for game shows such as Lightning Roulette and Live Football roulette, the rules of engagement are the same and easy to follow:

• Pick your desired bet amount. It must be higher than the set minimum and lower than the maximum required.
• Place your bet by moving a roulette chip over the desired area on the table. If you wish to wager, say NZD100 on number 17, pick an NZD50 chip and click twice on number 17.
• Wait for the ball to stop and see if you’ve won your bet.

One of the beauties of playing casino roulette live is that you can place as many bets as you wish. However, this must be done before the dealer announces “no more bets.” You can’t place any more bets after the countdown on the screen reaches zero.

Types of bets on a casino roulette live table

There are a few types of bets you can place at a casino roulette live table. Here’s a complete breakdown of each bet and its respective payouts:

• Straight bets: pays out at odds of 35:1
• Split bets: 17:1
• Street: 11:1
• Corner: 8:1
• Five number: 6:1
• Basket: 6:1     
• Line: 5:1
• Dozens: 2:1
• Columns: 2:1
• 1-19, 19-36 bets: 2:1
• Even/Odd: 1:1
• Red/Black: 1:1

Table limits are the minimum and maximum amounts you can spend playing casino roulette live games. Given that there are hundreds of online casinos with live roulette, you can expect different table limits. The figure usually ranges between NZ$0.5 to highs of NZ$5000. However, if you are a high roller, you can always visit the VIP section where there are higher limits, which can sometimes start from a low of NZ$5 to NZ$10,000.

Why are there table limits in live roulette in New Zealand? Online casinos with live roulette put the limits to protect themselves from going bust when high rollers visit their tables. Any online casino with live roulette may significantly lose its profit if they’d let players spend as much as they want on a roulette table.

For example, imagine a player who has wagered NZ$10,000 on 17 and wagered the same amount on 2nd 12 (dozens bet), black, odd, and the second column. If the ball lands on 17, the casino will have to pay out up to NZ$410,000 in profits to the lucky player. If there are ten such lucky players in a day, it means NZ$4.1 million per day. This can be too much even for some of the big brands online.

While there are tens of live dealer roulette games from different software providers, they are broadly categorised into three. These include the ones described below.  

Live European roulette

Live European roulette has a wheel with 37 pockets, labelled from 0-36. This one has a house edge of 2.7%.

Live American roulette

Unlike the live European roulette, the American version has 38 pockets due to an extra double zero (00). Because of this extra zero, the house edge in live American roulette games is 5.26%.

Live French roulette

Live French roulette has the same layout as that of the live European roulette wheel. There are, however, a few differences.

For example, there’s an extra oval-shaped betting section on the table referred to as a racetrack. It’s here where you can place the four extra called bets, Voisins du Zero, Tiers du Cylindre, Les Orphelins, and Jeu Zero. Live French roulette also has the La Partage and En Prison rules. Thanks to these rules, the house edge on even money bets is reduced to 1.35%.

Online casinos with live roulette are usually powered by a few live game providers, which work closely with dealers, cameramen, and other technical staff to recreate the land-based casino experience online. They use state of the art HD cameras to shoot the action from the roulette wheel straight to your device. This way, you can bet without having to travel to the casinos.

While the industry has many live dealer software providers, a few stand out in the New Zealand industry. These include Evolution, Playtech, LuckyStreak, and Pragmatic Play.  

Evolution roulette in New Zealand casinos

They are the true leader in the live casino industry, delivering all sorts of games to casinos across the world. Founded in 2006, Evolution quickly became famous and in their first years of operations, they had already signed contracts with the big players. Today, they are found in almost 90% of live dealer casinos and continue to offer innovative games.

A few examples of innovative games they’ve introduced in the roulette field include Football Live Roulette, Lightning Roulette, XXXTREME Lightning Roulette, Double Ball Roulette, Dual Play Roulette, and many more. These are just a handful of games they’ve managed to get creative with, from which other software providers have borrowed a leaf.

Because of the milestones they’ve achieved and the change they’ve impacted in the industry, they’ve won several awards including the 2010 EGR Live Casino Software Supplier Of The Year, which they’ve managed to defend since then.

Playtech roulette in New Zealand casinos

Playtech’s main objective has been to develop content and software for land-based venues and online casino platforms. Founded in 1999, the company has more than 5000 staff and operates in more than 12 different countries. It is considered one of the most successful software developing companies given the sheer number of games it has to offer.

For example, in the live roulette niche, it has ten games, which are streamed from their 8500- sqm-capacity studio in Riga. If you decide to play some of their games out of New Zealand, you’ll be able to pick from games streamed straight from UK’s Coral Casino.

Playtech’s Quantum Roulette is the equivalent of Evolution Gaming’s Lightning Roulette. Other popular titles include Age of God live roulette, Spin and Win live roulette, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire live roulette.  

LuckyStreak roulette in New Zealand casinos

LuckyStreak is no different from Evolution Gaming and Playtech in terms of operations. The company was founded in 2014 in Israel and its studios operate from Latvia. The best live roulette games in New Zealand are Auto Roulette, Dual Roulette, and a few other games. Their collection may not be as numerous as Playtech’s or Evolution’s but enough to keep you entertained. The games also have many interesting aspects such as instant screen results, HQ video, which you can adjust to high or low, and the autoplay mode.

Pragmatic Play roulette in New Zealand casinos

Pragmatic Play is one of the several Swedish-based online casino software providers. While its headquarters are in Sweden, the brand has offices across a few European and Asian countries including India, the Philippines, the UK, Malta, and Gibraltar.

The company is relatively young, but has strong roots in the development of online casino content. It was founded in 2015 but existed as early as 2003. Since then, they’ve managed to develop more than 100 games, which include a few casino roulette live games.

Pragmatic Play’s Mega Roulette is the equivalent of Evolution Gaming’s Lightning Roulette. It also has other variations of roulette including PowerUP, Auto-Roulette, and Speed Roulette. Players who speak German, Italian, and Russian can also play at the German, Italian, and Russian roulette tables.

When it comes to offering highly engaging games that capture the experience of the brick-and-mortar casinos, live roulette in New Zealand never disappoints you. With the sheer variety of games available, you can start playing your favourite version of roulette from the comfort of your home at recommended casinos. Sign up today and put those live roulette betting systems into practice as you play against real professional dealers. You will agree with us that the experience is as engaging as that at land-based casinos.