What are Your Chances of Winning on Wheel-Based Casino Games?

A spinning wheel that pays a prize when it lands on a certain segment remains one of the most popular gambling games, but how does it work and what are your chances of winning? There are many new games of this type but we need to go back to the creation of the roulette wheel to fully understand the design principles. 

The Basic Rules

These games are designed to give a random outcome on every spin. This is either done by spinning a physical wheel or by using a digital wheel that’s controlled by a random number generator. In both cases, there’s no way of knowing what the result of a certain spin will be. However, over a lot of spins, the law of large numbers means that the results should be spread evenly across the wheel. 

Imagine a wheel with just two segments of equal size. Playing ten spins could see a variety of results, but if you play thousands of spins the results should come to around 50% in each segment. The Adventures Beyond Wonderland live game by Playtech is an example of how wheels are now used in live-streamed casino games. Designed to be fast and entertaining, the gameplay involves betting at which number the wheel will stop. It has segments with 1x, 2x, 5x, and 10x win multipliers, as well as bonus sections.   

How Roulette Works

The best example of how wheel-based games work comes from the timeless roulette. This game was invented by Blaise Pascal in the 1600s and has remained popular over time thanks to the clever gameplay. Virtually all of the bets in this game have the same odds of winning in the long term. If you place an even money bet on red or black, the odds of winning are just under 50%, with the casino creating a small house edge of 2.7% thanks to the zero pocket. The double zero on American wheels increases the house edge to 5.26%.

The same principle applies when you bet on a single number. Payouts on this bet are 35 to 1 but since there are 36 numbers plus a zero on the European wheel, the same house edge we saw on the even money bet is present here too. This means that players can decide whether to try and win big on a single number or take a steadier approach with even money bets, all with the same house edge.

Image: "Wheel of Fortune" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by pds319.

Other Casino Wheel Games

The emergence of live-streamed casino games has led to a lot of new games featuring wheels being launched. Money Drop Live and Mega Wheel Live take the same principles we’ve looked at in roulette and add their own twist to them. Money Drop has numerous segments going up to 2,500x as well as a section that triggers a bonus game. Mega Wheel comes from Playtech’s next-generation live studios and keeps things simpler, with nine numbers shown across a total of 54 segments.

Wheel games like these are designed to be entertaining while also giving you a fair chance of winning by making sure that each spin is completely random. They’re generally simple to understand so you can see at a glance what you need to do to win.