Lightning Roulette: How It Works, the Odds and Where to Play

The Best UK Casinos for Lightning Roulette

14 of our fifteen ranked casinos carry Evolution’s live lobby, which is where Lightning Roulette is streamed from; the one that does not is left out rather than listed with a game it cannot offer.

The columns are the figures each operator publishes for its live lobby: how many game shows and tables it carries, and the stake range at the live tables. Lightning Roulette opens at or near the bottom of that range at every one of them.

Open a row for the rating breakdown; a figure an operator does not publish is left blank rather than estimated.

How a Round of Lightning Roulette Works

A single-zero wheel, a dealer, and one twist: before the ball drops, lightning strikes up to five numbers and multiplies anything bet on them straight up. Everything else is roulette.

1. Place Your Bets

   The ordinary roulette layout: straight-up numbers, splits, streets, corners, lines, dozens, columns and the even-money bets. Only straight-up bets can win a multiplier; the rest pay their usual odds.

2. Lightning Strikes

   When betting closes, between one and five numbers light up as Lucky Numbers, each with a Lucky Payout of 50x, 100x, 200x, 300x, 400x or 500x. They are drawn at random by a certified generator, not by the dealer, and they change every round.

3. The Ball Drops

   The dealer spins a real wheel in Evolution’s studio. The winning pocket is the one the ball lands in; the lightning only decides what a straight-up win on it pays.

4. A Straight-Up Pays 29:1, or the Multiplier

   A straight-up bet on a number that was not struck pays 29:1 rather than the usual 35:1. A straight-up on a struck number pays the multiplier on the stake instead, from 50x to 500x. Every other bet pays exactly what it would at a standard wheel.

5. The Round Settles

   Winnings land in the balance as soon as the ball settles, then the betting opens again. The Lucky Numbers do not carry over, and a number struck last round is no more or less likely to be struck or to win this round.

What the Lightning Pays, Bet by Bet

This is the whole arithmetic of the game. A standard single-zero wheel returns 97.30% on every bet, because each pays as if there were 36 pockets and there are 37. Lightning Roulette keeps that for every bet but one.

The straight-up bet is where the game is different, and the figures explain how the multipliers are paid for. At 29:1 a straight-up win returns 30 chips instead of 36, which on its own would be a return of about 81%. The Lucky Payouts hand most of that back over the long run, and the published figure settles at 97.10%.

In other words, the multipliers are not a gift on top of roulette. They are six chips taken from every ordinary straight-up win and returned, unevenly, as occasional 50x to 500x wins.

Whether your number is struck in a given round depends on how many are drawn: one Lucky Number gives each number a 1 in 37 chance of carrying a multiplier, five give it about 1 in 7. The ball still has to land there, at 1 in 37 either way.

The Four Things Worth Knowing About the Multipliers

What Each Bet Costs

Lightning Roulette has two prices. Every bet that covers more than one number costs 2.70% of the stake over the long run, the same as any single-zero wheel. A straight-up costs 2.90%.

The difference is small, two pence in every ten pounds, but it is the whole premium for the chance of a multiplier. There is no bet on the table that returns more than a standard European wheel would, and one that returns slightly less.

Over an evening of a hundred spins at a pound a spin, that is about £2.70 expected cost on outside bets and about £2.90 on single numbers, before the swings that the multipliers add in either direction.

Lightning Roulette Results, and What They Cannot Tell You

Search for Lightning Roulette and much of what comes back is results: the last hundred numbers, which ones have been struck most, how long since a 500x paid. It is accurate as history and useless as a forecast.

The wheel has no memory, and the generator that draws the Lucky Numbers has none either. A number that has not been struck in three hundred rounds is not due; a number that paid 500x last round is not spent.

What a results history can legitimately tell you is the pace of the table and how often the bigger multipliers appear in practice, which decides how much of an evening is spent waiting for one.

For the odds themselves, the payout table above is the whole story, and it does not change from one round to the next.

The same point is made at more length on our live roulette page, where the whole range of live wheels is compared, and in the roulette guide, which shows with a practice table why a history of results predicts nothing.

Playing It Well, in Five Steps

1. Check the Information Panel First

   It has the return for each bet, the maximum payout your casino applies per round, and the stake range. The minimum stake at the live tables in our table runs from a penny to ten pence; Lightning Roulette usually opens at the lower end.

2. Decide Whether You Want the Multipliers at All

   If your game is outside bets, nothing here is different from a plain European table and a French one with La Partage is cheaper. The lightning only matters if you bet single numbers.

3. Size the Straight-Ups for 29:1, Not 35:1

   Most single-number wins pay six chips less than at a standard table. Stake them as the cheaper payout they are, and treat a 50x or 500x as the occasional event it is, not the reason the chips went down.

4. Set the Deposit Limit Before You Sit

   A round comes every forty seconds or so. Ninety spins an hour at £1 on three numbers is £270 an hour through the table, whatever the lightning does.

5. Read the Bonus Terms Before You Opt In

   Live roulette is often weighted at 10% or 0% towards welcome-offer wagering, and some offers exclude live tables altogether. Playing with a bonus open can mean the bonus never clears.

Lightning Roulette Terms, in Plain English

Lucky Number

One of the one to five numbers struck by lightning each round. A straight-up bet on it is paid the Lucky Payout instead of 29:1 if the ball lands there.

Lucky Payout

The multiplier attached to a Lucky Number for that round: 50x, 100x, 200x, 300x, 400x or 500x the stake on that number.

Straight-up

A bet on one number, paying 35:1 at a standard wheel and 29:1 here unless the number carries a multiplier.

Outside bets

Red, black, odd, even, high, low, dozens and columns. They pay standard odds at Lightning Roulette and are never multiplied.

Single zero

A 37-pocket wheel with one green zero, which is what Lightning Roulette uses. The 2.70% edge on every bet but straight-up comes from that one pocket.

La Partage

The French rule that returns half an even-money stake when the ball lands on zero, lifting those bets to 98.65%. Lightning Roulette does not use it.

XXXtreme Lightning Roulette

Evolution’s 2022 sequel: chain lightning strikes more numbers and multipliers reach 2,000x, at the same 97.10% straight-up return and the same 29:1 base payout.

Maximum payout

The most a casino will pay one player in one round, set by the operator and printed in the information panel. A multiplier above the cap pays the cap.

RTP

Return to player, the share of every stake the bet is built to return over the long run. Lightning Roulette returns 97.30% on every bet except straight-up, which returns 97.10%.

Game weighting

How much a game counts towards clearing a bonus. Live roulette is frequently weighted at 10% or 0%, which is the first thing to check before playing with an offer open.

Where to Go Next

Live roulette sitesEvery live wheel compared: European, Immersive, Speed, French and Lightning, and which casinos carry the most of them.

Crazy TimeEvolution’s money wheel with four bonus rounds, from the same studio and with the same rule about results history.

How to play rouletteThe bets, the layout, the zero, and a practice table that shows why no number is ever due.

In Short