Snakes & Ladders Live is a long overdue live casino entertainment game. And who better than Pragmatic Play to produce it with their experience using dice to determine the outcomes in entertainment games?
The game was first launched in May 2023, using shooting dice as the main game mechanic. In a major revamp in July 2024, these were replaced with a big 54-segment wheel and with some other minor changes, Snakes & Ladders Live has become an even better gambling game.
The big Wheel contains instant win prizes and access to two bonus rounds. One is the familiar-looking Snakes and Ladders board game, and the other is the Snake Totum, where the higher you climb, the more you can win.
Like the classic board game we played as children, the theme is about Snakes & Ladders, where climbing ladders is good, while you avoid the snakes.
Random multipliers can boost payouts up to a maximum of 20,570x.
In this article, I review Snakes & Ladders Live, explain how to play, investigate some playing strategies, and compare the game to other Live Entertainment games. If you want to get a flavour of the game more quickly, try watching my review video, where I demonstrate how to play and show each of the bonus rounds in action.
Snakes & Ladders Live has transformed from a rather complicated-looking game into one where each part is clearly defined, and the rules are easier to understand. Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect.
Snakes & Ladders will appeal to anyone with a soft spot for childhood board games. It will undoubtedly bring back memories of rolling a die across the carpet sat around the board with your family. I remember games taking ages as you climbed the ladders and the snakes sent you back down the board. The snake by the last square always seemed to get you!
Gamblers will like this game, too, as it’s not too volatile, and the bonus rounds occur frequently enough to keep your interest. Out of nowhere, a few rolls of six can have you climbing the Totum pole or racing up the board for decent multiplier wins.
Snakes and Ladders Live is played by placing bets on the outcome of the spin of the 54-segment big wheel. Instant win prizes are awarded when the wheel stops on a numbered segment or initiates one of the two bonus rounds if it stops on one of those segments.
The game has four phases:
Based on the game rules and my playing experience, I’ll describe each of the stages.
There are eight betting options: Numbers One, Two, five, and ten and four for the bonus rounds 1 Life Totem, 2 Lives Totum, 3 Rolls Board, and 5 Rolls Board 2.
Place a bet on one, some or all of the betting options.
If you’re looking for some guidance on the best bets to play, take a look at my betting strategies below, as they will help you enjoy the game more and improve your chances of winning.
If you’re playing for a long time, I recommend using the Autoplay facility to set up a recurring bet. Place your bets on the grid, click Auto Play and select the number of spins you’d like to play.
You’ll also have to set a win-and-loss limit before you’re allowed to activate the auto-spins.
Using this ensures you don’t miss any game rounds and, more importantly, helps you manage your bankroll.
You can stop autoplay at any time. Otherwise, it will run until you have run out of spins or money!
Once betting time has closed, the camera focuses on an area above the wheel where two reels spin.
The reels will stop on one of the symbols and a multiplier value.
The multiplier value gets applied to the symbol segments on the wheel.
The presenter spins the wheel following their standard operating procedure by alternating the direction of every spin.
The wheel has to make two complete turns to be a valid spin. If it’s less, it’s deemed a No-Spin, and all bets are refunded. The same applies if the flapper rests between two segments on the wheel.
The wheel eventually slows and stops due to the friction of the flapper. The segment directly below the flapper is the winner.
Everyone with a valid bet gets a payout if it’s a number.
If it’s a bonus round, everyone playing that bonus will enter the round. Otherwise, you sit and watch as the game unfolds until the next betting time opens.
There are two Bonus rounds in Snakes & Ladders
The Snakes & Ladders Bonus Round can consist of three or five Rolls of a dice.
The Snake Totum consists of unlimited dice rolls, but you enter with either one life or two, which is dependent on the segment result on the big wheel.
The big wheel landing on the 3 or 5 Rolls Board segments triggers the bonus round.
The Snakes & Ladder Bonus round offers more opportunities for a decent-size win than the Totum Bonus round.
Your objective is to climb as high as possible up the board, collecting as many multipliers as possible. Three rolls give you three dice rolls, and five rolls give you five. Every time a six is rolled, another dice roll is added, making it possible to reach the top, accumulating lots of multipliers as you go.
The board consists of 64 squares in an 8×8 grid. Each square is assigned an initial multiplier value, which increases if the bonus segment had one of the multiplier boosters active when it was won.
The board has a set pattern of Ladders and Snakes. If you land on a ladder, you climb up and win the value of the tile you land on. If you land on a snake, you slide down and win the tile’s value at the bottom.
You continue climbing up the board for however long your dice rolls last.
The Snake Totum is a column made up of 66 vertically stacked tiles. The tiles contain either a multiplier or are empty.
You enter the bonus round when the wheel stops on either the 1 Life Totum or 2 Lives Totum on the big wheel.
The lives are significant because landing on an empty tile uses up your life. If you have one life, the first empty tile you land on will end the game for you.
You can land on two empty tiles before the game ends if you have two lives.
The dice get rolled, and you climb up the totem, collecting the value of the tile you land on. The higher you climb up the totem, the more empty tiles you have to navigate past. You keep going until you’ve reached the top tile or run out of lives, whichever comes first.
Your multiplier payout is the total of all the tiles you’ve landed on.
If there was a boosting multiplier on the big wheel when you won the bonus round, all initial multipliers get boosted by that amount.
The good news is the RTP for Snakes & Ladders is roughly the same as other entertainment game shows, with an Optimal RTP of 96.66%.
Parts of the game have slightly different RTPs, which you can see in the reference table. The differences are minor, so you’ll not notice the differences.
The RTPs are balanced evenly across the game; this was my experience when playing.
You seem to get frequent Bonus rounds. They occupy 16.66% of the wheel. The Number 1 has the most wins, covering 42.5 % of the wheel.
The payout on the Snakes and Ladders Board is 5300x, while the Snake Totum has the highest possible win of 20,570:1
| Segment on Wheel | Number of Segments | Hit Frequency | RTP | Payouts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 23 | 23/54 = 42.59% | 96.66% | 1:1 – 20:1 |
| 2 | 11 | 11/54 = 20.37% | 96.48% | 2:1 – 40:1 |
| 5 | 7 | 7/54 = 12.96% | 96.59% | 5:1 – 100:1 |
| 10 | 4 | 4/54 = 7.41% | 96.58% | 10:1 – 200:1 |
| 1 Totem | 4 | 4/54 = 7.41% | 96.46% – 96.54% | 1:1 – 20,570:1 |
| 2 Totem | 2 | 2/54 = 3.70% | 96.51% – 96.54% | 1:1 – 20,570:1 |
| 3 Rolls Board | 2 | 2/54 = 3.70% | 96.52% – 96.54% | 6:1 – 4,100:1 |
| 5 Rolls Board | 1 | 1/54 = 1.85% | 96.54% | 10:1 – 5,300:1 |
There are no parts of the game where decisions are required from Players – apart from placing the initial bets.
As such, there is no strategy to play Snakes & Ladders Live.
The game is about the Bonus rounds, so that’s one easy decision. Place bets on all the bonus round options.
You shouldn’t ignore the Instant Win bets on the numbers. These bets come in the most frequently, so if you want to turn your bankroll over, you can’t forget these.
Another reason not to ignore the number of bets is the Multiplier booster at the start of the game. If you get a multiplier on Number 1 for 20x, that’s 23 segments on the wheel – just under half that will pay 20x! Ignore the numbers at your peril.
Do you bet on all of them? – well, no, you shouldn’t.
If you follow trends, you may wish to bet on some more than others or increase your bet on one position. But you must monitor your bankroll and adjust the bets accordingly if you lose too often.
So, my strategy for playing is to bet on all Bonus positions and the Number One, and I make sure my Number one bet wins enough to cover my losses on the bonus bets.
I expect I will have a winning bet at least 60% of the time. It will either be a Number 1 or a bonus round.
My Number 1 win must cover my bonus losses on that spin, so it has to be at least a 3-unit bet if I bet No.1 and the four bonus rounds. That’s a total of 5 units bet for a return of 6 if Number One wins.
That bet keeps me slightly ahead when I win.
If a bonus round comes in, I know I have to clear 5x to break even, which I should manage most of the time. Then, it’s about being in it when the bigger payouts occur, and that is what this betting strategy achieves.
This is a less aggressive strategy. If you want to become more volatile, I suggest adding a one-unit bet on Number 10.
At last! A game that provides some great statistics of what’s happened in the past.
A rolling summary across the bottom of the screen and in-depth statistics for each game part.
You can display the statistics for up to the last 500 rounds.
I recommend you study statistics before playing, as you’ll understand how the game plays and how often the bonus rounds appear.
The recent results show up to the last 500 game-round results. For each, you’ll see if there was a win, what the win was, and the payout generated.
Statistics also show the percentages for each result type: Numbers and Bonus Rounds.
The Bonus Round statistics give information about each round, including the number of rolls, the ending tile and the final multiplier payout.
This covers all the Snakes & Ladders Bonus rounds and the Snake Totum.
The Rolls statistics indicate how often each of the dice totals come in for each of the bonus rounds.
You can see the percentages for The Snake Totum and the Board Game listed separately.
Pragmatic Play Snakes and Ladders Live is very easy to play, as the player only needs to make an initial bet.
Once you’ve placed your bet, sit back, relax and enjoy.
Watch as the game unfolds, and keep your fingers crossed that you get a nice win.
In terms of tips, here are a few that will help with your enjoyment of the game.
When considering the Pros and Cons, I’ve considered all aspects of the game and whether I enjoyed playing.
So where do Snakes & Ladders fit with other Entertainment games? Does it compare well?
Let’s take a look and see how it compares.
Snakes & Ladders is a big wheel & dice game. Only Pragmatic produces game shows that use dice. Their other popular game is Boom City, which has more bonus rounds and uses a central board to deliver the results from dice rolls. Boom City makes a traditional use of the Dice. In contrast, Snakes & Ladders use standard dice in the bonus rounds and a big wheel for the main qualification/instant win phase.
Snakes & Ladders has two bonus rounds, Crazy Time, Funky Time, Adventures Beyond Wonderland, and Sweet Bonanza Candyland have four. So you get a bit more variety in other games.
The maximum multiplier of 20,570x is impressive. While other entertainment games are uncapped, they’re unlikely to reach 10,000x. Wins are capped on them all at £$€500,000.
I’ve mentioned that RTP-wise, 96.66%, is in the same range as other entertainment games.
How does this play? I think it’s a simple game that will suit a selection of players who like watching the dice roll and seeing the counter move up a Snakes & Ladders Board to collect multiplier wins.
I’ve already mentioned the other gameshows you can play, but let’s look at the alternative Dice games with multiplier wins.
Snakes & Ladders Live is available at casinos with Pragmatic Play Live Casino Games.
My personal Favourites are Leo Vegas and Bet Victor.
Pragmatic Play has cracked in this significant revamp of Snakes and Ladders Live. They have changed no part of the game. The result is an easier-to-understand game with clear outcomes, better payouts, and bonus rounds where you feel you could win something.
The big change is the addition of multipliers at the start of the game. This mechanic resembles the Mega Wheel and the Top Slot in Crazy Time. It can boost payouts by up to 20x, which will greatly benefit the bonus rounds.
Players will like the replacement of the dice tubes with the big wheel. It’s a familiar game mechanic that everyone understands, and while the former was innovative, it didn’t deliver an excellent playing experience.
Both bonus rounds have been tweaked. The Snake Totem is easier to understand with the “lives,” making it far more enjoyable to play.
The showpiece bonus round of the snakes and ladder board is less complicated. Your wins are there in front of you, and all you need is a nice run of dice rolls. A six gives another roll, so reaching the top doesn’t seem hard to achieve.
I think this version of the game will prove to be more popular in the long run.
Snakes & Ladders Live is a live dealer entertainment game show where you can gamble on the outcome of dice rolled. The game has two bonus rounds, a Snakes & Ladders Board and a Snake Totum, where you can win Multipliers payouts on your bets. The maximum win is 20,570x, so this game has plenty of potential.
Snakes & Ladders Live is very easy to play. You place a bet and watch it unfold before you. No player participation is required.
The RNG determines the multipliers’ value and placement on the Snakes and Ladders Board and Snake Totum. All other aspects of the game are live. You see actual dice being rolled and flipped to determine the results.
There is no strategy to win Snakes & Ladders, but you can bet in several ways, which I discuss in more detail here.
The overall RTP is 96.66%, but the range across the game is between 96.46% to 96.66%.
Payouts are capped at 20,570x in the Bonus rounds. There is no upper limit on how much you can win, but casinos will have a maximum bet that effectively caps the payouts.
You can play Snakes & Ladders at casinos with Pragmatic live dealer games. My personal favourite, and the one I recommend, is Leo Vegas.
While Snakes & Ladders and Boom City use dice, they are different games, so comparing them isn’t easy. Snakes & Ladders is more accessible to play and understand than Boom City.
Neil Walker
I’m Neil Walker, and I created this site to provide information on everything related to Live Dealer Games. I do extensive research, play and test all the games, and author all the content. I’ve appeared in the media and presented at conferences—you can read more about me on my About Page. I’ve been doing this full-time since 2014, and I am trusted for my straightforward reviews and honest opinions.
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