Live roulette casinos offer the most popular evolutions of online roulette that we have seen since its inception, and for good reason. The many technologies and innovations that make it possible in the first place allow live roulette games to bridge the gap between the physical and the digital in a way that cannot be achieved by any other method that we know of. It is, by most metrics, the best way to play roulette online.

Best Live Roulette Casinos in Canada

With so many live roulette providers competing for players' attention, however, it's important to understand how to separate the wheat from the chaff and find the best live roulette games on the Internet. 

Our in-house experts have reviewed the best live roulette casino sites that Canada has to offer. We at Inside Casino love to play live dealer roulette online as much as you do, so we have poured our industry experience and expertise into finding, reviewing, and documenting these live roulette games for your convenience.

What is Live Roulette?

At its core, live roulette is no different from the typical online roulette games you already play. Bet, spin, win, and repeat - the cycle is the same in a live roulette game as it would in any of its many other forms.

The difference, of course, lies in what goes on on the other side of your computer or phone screen. Instead of a roulette table made of computer graphics, though, when you play live casino games you get a real table (wood, felt, and all), a real roulette wheel, and even a real dealer keeping the pace of the game going just like they would at your favourite land-based casino.

All of this is sent to your computer or mobile casino device as a live camera broadcast where you can see the dealers and the live roulette table. This live stream is set alongside the game's user interface that lets you place your bets and, in some cases, even interact with the dealer.

How Live Dealer Roulette Works?

The most fascinating thing about live dealer roulette, arguably more so than the strategy of roulette itself, is how the "live" aspect of the game is executed. And, as we will find out, the answer to that is delightfully complex and just a technological marvel worth admiring on its own merits. To better understand all of the interconnected pieces that make playing live roulette possible, we will break things down into four key parts.

The Studio

The first core component of all online live roulette casinos is the studio that hosts each game. Each live dealer studio is effectively its own live broadcast set equipped with cameras, microphones, bright studio lighting, and the prompters and equipment that the croupier or dealer uses to interact with the people playing roulette on the other side.

Each live roulette table setup usually requires its own set of equipment, and depending on the capabilities of the operator. Top studios like the ones at Evolution Gaming casinos, will usually contain anywhere between 5 to 10 sets housed in a single building that broadcasts their games simultaneously. In some cases, live roulette tables have used actual land-based casinos as the backdrop of their sets.

The Table

The next item on our list is, of course, the gaming table, where all of the action, as well as a little bit of magic, takes place. Whether you are playing American roulette or at a European roulette casino, their live roulette tables are largely identical to the tables you’d find in a traditional brick-and-mortar casino. The tables might have a little more going on beneath the felt depending on how the live game’s creator has the roulette game set up.

The reason for this ties into the software that acts as the bridge between the players and the live roulette casino. At the time of publishing this article, there are two popular ways of going about this: the first method is to simply use a regular old table from a typical land-based casino, then use image recognition software through the studio cameras that tracks game objects (such as betting chips and the roulette ball) as they move around while playing live dealer roulette.

Alternatively, the roulette table, wheel, ball, and betting chips could all be embedded with sensors that would digitally detect the presence and location of these game objects, which is especially useful in the case of tracking which pocket on the roulette wheel the ball landed in.

The Dealer

Whether the game is played at a land-based casino or online, the role of the dealer in live roulette is essentially the same: moving the bettors’ chips to their desired locations, spinning the wheel and ball, keeping track of player payouts, and clearing the table to begin the process all over again.

Except that, instead of physically present players around the table, the dealer replies to player wagers in accordance with instructions displayed on prompters in the studio and communicates with the players through the chat function built into the game software if it is available.

The Software

Even though all of the fancy equipment that we’ve covered so far serves their key roles in making great live dealer games, all of them are rendered ineffective if the casino software connecting the players to the studio is not up to par.

This is especially true in the case of live dealer roulette as the game handles a large volume and variety of information all at the same time. For instance, the software has to keep track of the type and amount of each player’s wager and communicate this information to the dealer. Second, the software also has to ensure that the location of the chips on the live roulette table and the roulette ball as it falls into the wheel is correct. And finally, the live roulette software also has to do secondary calculations to update the real money balances of each player in the game.

Now take all of this processing and do it in real time while also translating information back and forth between camera broadcasts and a digital game interface and now you understand the amount of effort and refinement that goes into such a game to make it work smoothly.

Live Roulette vs. Online Roulette

Live roulette has, without a doubt, become the new craze in terms of gameplay and design trends, with real money casino sites believing that live roulette is the future of the game. 

And in a lot of ways, live roulette does bring a lot to the table compared to “regular” online roulette. For instance, the visuals of a live broadcast of a human dealer at a physical roulette is much more realistic than even the best computer graphics. 

Having a live dealer working the table each round also takes the experience of live roulette much closer to that of playing at an actual casino than any fully-digital game could ever hope to achieve since the dealer can and does interact with the players in real time. By contrast, a typical online roulette game wouldn’t even have a dealer present because the game’s built-in RNG code ensures the correct roulette odds are met and handles the randomness of the outcome of each bet.

What We Look For In Live Dealer Roulette Casinos

As we have covered earlier, pulling off a great live dealer roulette experience is not easy by any means. There are so many interlocking parts that combine together to give you the live roulette experience that is not enough for a live casino to simply specialize in one specific characteristic. For this reason, we only start to consider a live casino as one of the best if they managed to fulfill the following criteria:

Variety: With gamblers from Canada having a range of preferences in terms of game choice as well as speaking different languages, the best live roulette casinos should have a strong selection of roulette tables and their accompanying live dealers to accommodate these varying tastes.

Game Quality: As should be expected of any online casino game, we at Inside Casino pay very close attention to the actual quality of the live roulette games offered by the casino. In particular, our reviewers take a look at the visual fidelity of the cameras, and the responsiveness of the game’s interface 

Service: Although a lot of the focus when it comes to live roulette casinos is on the quality of the game itself, most of your online casino experience actually happens outside of the game. It is for this reason that our reviewers take a close look at the quality of the services that the casino website offers to its customers afterward. These services range from simple details like how easy the menus are to navigate and how easy the tutorials are to understand and follow, to much more significant and involved qualities like how quickly the casino’s customer service team responds to requests and concerns.