Sudoku is a Japanese puzzle game that has taken the world by storm in the last couple of years. Thousands of people play it every day and the New York Times runs one in its puzzle section. According to Wikipedia.org, there’s even a World Sudoku Championship annually. It is therefore not surprising that casino Sudoku has recently become an offering in several online gambling circles. Namely, there’s a Sudoku offered by casinos powered by Rival Gaming software, and one in casinos running Cryptologic.
If you’ve never played Sudoku, it’s basically a 9 x 9 grid with a few random numbers interspersed throughout. The puzzle solver’s job is to fill in the empty squares with the numbers 1 through 9 in such a manner as to have 1-9 in every row, column, and box of 9 squares with no numbers repeating. The more numbers already revealed to the solver, the easier it is to solve. Clearly, this would a hard thing to translate into a gambling game, so I had to see how the game had been translated. The Rival version was the easiest to find in a play-for-free mode (I decided not to waste real money on a game that might not turn out well).
What I discovered is that the Rival Gaming casinos offer what is more akin to a keno game. There are 9 empty squares. You place your bet, hit a button, and numbers appear in the squares. Winnings are awarded according to specific number combinations. The highest winning configuration is to have all numbers 1 through 9 show up in order. Other winning combinations include having 1 through 9 show up in any order, as in the original Sudoku game, and getting a specific number of matching digits. As far as Sudoku goes, the only real similarities between this and the original are the 1-9 concept and a grid. However, the graphics are interesting enough and each round is very short so it’s the sort of game to play if you want to wager through a lot of money quickly.
In general, I hope the Cryptologic version of Sudoku has more to offer. Unless you like to lose your bankroll quickly, I would not recommend this particular game. ..especially not if you enjoy playing the original Sudoku.