In the world of online casino gaming, there are designers and then there are designers.

Most titles are made by the former. Perfectly respectable, playable, and decently-made, these games provide the ‘average level’ gaming experience that makes up the bulk of the market.

Playtech, however, definitely belongs in the latter category!

A powerhouse firm headquartered on the Isle of Man, this company now boasts live dealer studios in Estonia, Manila, and Romania, as well as table games streamed from Spain. Their catalogue is strong across the board of live games, offering something special to fans of Blackjack, Roulette, Slots, Three Card Brag, and much more, as well as impressive suite of B2B services.

In Greatest Cards Show, however, they turn their attention towards the game show style of gaming, a quickly growing approach to live play that includes Wheel Games and much more.

This is hardly their first foray into live game show style titles, but it might be their best offering in the genre yet! Let’s zoom in for a proper look at what makes this title worth a player’s while.

Since wheel-based, TV show-like games have been booming of late, it shouldn’t be surprising to see a top firm like Playtech put its best resources into making a major contribution to the genre. After all, unlike the standard online casino fare, a great title in this vein depends a great deal on creativity from the design team, as well as attention to detail!

It’s not as though a game title can fall back standard rules, or on hundreds of years of gaming history!

When it comes to originality and attention to detail, though, there’s no question that the designer has hit the ball straight out of the park here. The title is definitely worth trying out just for the novelty of it alone.

The most obvious attribute about this title – the one that will immediately jump out to a gambler trying it for the first time – is the carnival-like atmosphere. At times, it almost feels like an old-time traveling circus has come to town, complete with a fortune teller, a sword swallower, and, of course, games of chance.

The question is…

… does the gaming substance make this one worth returning to again and again?

Despite the name, The Greatest Cards Show doesn’t use any actual cards in its gameplay!

Instead, each round of betting is based on the spin of a large wheel – a horizontal one, like a Roulette wheel. The wheel has 54 segments: one for each card in a 52-card deck, and two jokers on top of that.

Base play is absurdly simple: players try to predict which wheel segment will land. Players can bet on any number of segments per round: some possible bets include the seven of spades only; all spades; all sevens; or all 51 cards in the deck except for the seven of spades! As in Roulette, the player has total freedom.

Each bet that correctly predicts the winning wheel segment pays 40x.

Take note, however: unlike in Roulette, total wagers are not divided by the numbers you wager on, but additive instead. That is to say that, if you choose to bet on 13 wheel segments (say, all of the spades in the deck), you’re actually placing 13 separate bets, each one with an identical stake. Any winners would pay 40x the size of the bet; all other bets would be lost.

Now, it’s already been mentioned that each winning bet pays 40x, and also that there are 52 possible wagers (not counting the jokers, which cannot be bet on). It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to determine that these aren’t great odds. A 1-in-52 chance to win, with only a 40x payout?

And yet, this title’s all-important RTP comes in at a very respectable 96.67%. How can we square this circle?

You guessed it: the bonus round is the key to it all.

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There are three different bonus games to be had here, and all three are very much worth waiting for.

First is the Spotlight Bonus Game. If a player makes a winning wager on a wheel segment marked with a silver outline (up to 12 randomly selected tiles per round will appear with a silver or gold outline), it’s time to step into the spotlight! The winning card will appear on screen as an anthropomorphized character, and walk towards one of three spotlights – the result will be a win multiplier ranging from 50x to 2,000x!

Winning bets on tiles outlined in gold trigger the Light Show Bonus Game. Players get their choice among three colors, after which a new 5×4 grid will appear on the screen. Each section of this grid will yield a random win multiplier between 50x and 5,000x. The player’s chosen color will then bounce around on the grid, until it comes to a stop, revealing the bonus round’s payout.

Last (but definitely not least) comes the Joker Bonus Game. This may be triggered any time the wheel lands on a joker segment. When this occurs, the wheel will spin again to determine which players get to take part in the bonus round – participation will guarantee extra profit, but the course of the bonus game will determine just how much.

Players choose which of the four suits to back in a kind of juggling battle royale. The four suits will each attempt to juggle for as long as possible, with the winning suit delivering a win multiplier of 1,000x (and the lowest possible bonus still a handsome 100x the stake).

So how big can these payouts really get?

Very big indeed, it turns out!

So big that, technically speaking, this title has no maximum payout. If the Joker Bonus Game is triggered multiple times in a row, all of the payouts from the final mini-game will be multiplied together. This could theoretically happen many times over, resulting in astronomical payouts – although the chances of it happening are indeed vanishingly small.