"Reveal Roulette"

Good evening everyone.

When I was in California in the spring, I noticed a strange type of roulette wheel at a California casino. It was not the typical Californian form of roulette that used cards (for those who don't know, California casino games legally cannot only use dice or balls), rather there were two concentric wheels that rotated.

So, today I learned that this was actually Reveal Roulette, and you can see what it looks like in the link. It is really really hard to explain how it looks like or works, but from what I understand there is a middle circle with 38 spots most of which are empty, with four blue, four pink, four yellow, and four gold. You can play normal roulette on it but there are also side bets options. From what I found online, this form is played in several casinos, and it is just used for double zero roulette.

I decided to quickly find the house edges.

The two bets for Blue and Pink both pay out 7 to 1 if the chosen number aligns with that color.
So let's do some math
(4 × (7 + 1)) / 38
(4 × 8) / 38
(32 / 38)
84.21% RTP or 15.79% house edge

Next, you can guess a number, and a green (100 for 1) or gold (300 for 1) comes up, you get a lot of money. But let's calculate the house edge.

((100 × 4) + (300 × 2)) / (38 × 38)

(400 + 600) / 1444
1000/1444
69.25% RTP or 30.75% house edge

Hmmm maybe I misunderstood the game or did the math wrong (highly unlikely) but I kinda get the vibe that California does not have laws regarding maximum RTP (can anyone provide insight)? I met someone at G2E who had a California-only pay table for his side bet which had around a 50% RTP...

Has anyone else seen this side bet or roulette wheel type?

Clarification: a California roulette wheel can use a ball; it's just that the wheel's spots cannot have numbers - instead, how it usually works is, there is a special deck of 38 cards with the 38 numbers on them, and the felt has two spaces for cards, one red, and one black; the wheel has an equal number of red and black spaces, and whichever color the ball lands in determines which card's number is used. Saying that California roulette cannot use a ball is like saying that California craps cannot use dice.

To be fair, when Jerry Brown was governor (the second time around), most of the compacts his administration approved had two added conditions: no roulette (including electronic forms), and no games that used physical dice. I know at least one casino that had this, but renegotiated with the Newsom administration to get rid of the restriction.

From the looks of the game, I am surprised that it is allowed. The reason most craps and roulette games in California use cards is, California's Constitution requires it.

I think I was specific enough with my wording when I said that the games cannot “only” use dice or balls. I have seen a casino in California where they roll dice which correspond to randomly shuffled cards with pictures of dice on them.

I heard that this mechanism uses magnets (not sure if this is true), which isn’t covered by California laws.