A live dealer game is a real table game, dealt or rolled by a human dealer, streamed on video to players who bet from a screen. The cards, dice and wheels are physical. The betting, timing and settlement are handled by software that reads the result and pays the bets placed in the window before it.
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Live Dealer
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How does a live dealer table work?
The dealer runs the game in a studio or on a casino floor while cameras stream it. Players see a betting window on screen, place chips before it closes, and watch the result. Card games often use scanners or optical recognition to read each card, and dice games use cameras or sensors to read the dice, so the software can settle every bet at once. The rules of the game are set out in a help or rules panel at the table.
Are live dealer games the same as table games in a casino?
The core games are the same: blackjack, craps, sic bo, baccarat and roulette all appear. The details can differ. Live blackjack tables may use eight decks and side bets, live dice games can have their own paytables, and some studio games add multipliers or bonus rounds that change both the payouts and the house edge. The game's rules panel and paytable decide the price of each bet, just as the rule card does on a casino floor.
What should I check before I sit down?
Read the rules panel: the number of decks or the dice paytable, what a blackjack pays, any commission, table limits, and how a disconnection is handled. Check who licenses the operator and the studio. Then compare the house edge of the bets you plan to make. The edge comes from the rules, not from the camera.
How does the Paper cover live dealer games?
Live dealer stories explain a table the same way our other sections do: one question answered in the lede, then the rules quoted from the published game rules and the math worked from them. For the games themselves, see our craps, blackjack and sic bo sections.
Where should I start?
If you know which game you want to play live, start with its section, since the rules and odds carry over. Then read the live table's own rules panel for the differences.