Stand by a roulette table for fifteen minutes and you notice how little of that time the wheel is actually moving. When the ball drops, the croupier sets a small marker called the dolly on the winning number, and from that second nobody but the croupier touches the layout: losing chips are swept off, winners are paid stack by stack, and only when the dolly lifts can anyone bet again. On a busy Saturday in one of the big rooms around Leicester Square, that can take longer than the spin did.

Most of the evening actually happens in that pause. The person next to you explains what they were doing with that chip on the zero, the drinks arrive, and you decide whether to stay for another one.

A physical table is mostly a question of where you’re standing. The rail gets the wheel, the second row gets the backs of heads, and anyone further back is asking a stranger to put a chip down for them, or giving up and going to find the bar, which is not the worst outcome. It’s the same with restaurants, or at least the rooftop kind. A rooftop gets written up for the walk in before anyone mentions the food, which is what happened with the summer terrace at Alto on here this month, and a roulette table in a packed room works the same way. Where you stand matters more than the game.

There’s an etiquette that comes with it too, none of it written down: don’t lean on the rail, don’t reach across a stack that isn’t yours, don’t talk to the croupier while the ball is running. You learn it by getting it wrong once.

A studio table gives everyone the best seat. There’s a camera over the croupier’s hands and another down at ball height, so when you play a live roulette game you see the ball drop better than anyone leaning on the rail. There’s no dolly either, because there’s no layout full of chips to protect: nothing to sweep, nothing to stack, and the result is settled the moment the number is confirmed. Evolution, one of the big studio suppliers, says its fully automated wheels get through 60 to 80 games an hour.

The pause is still there, just in a different place. At a table you bet, then you wait while other people are paid. On a stream the only waiting is a countdown before the spin, and once the ball lands the round is already over. You can still have a drink, obviously, but you’re fetching it yourself and there’s nobody next to you explaining what they were doing on the zero.

The room costs you a whole evening and a good deal of waiting while other people get paid, but you get the company. The stream needs a phone, and gives you the croupier’s view and the result straight away. If you’re going out for the night, it’s the room. If you actually just want to watch the wheel, the stream shows you more of it.