About Me

I started this website back in 2008.

I was looking for a way to make money on the Internet, and online casinos appeared to be an ideal opportunity for it.

Roulette was the game I was drawn to the most. I guess it's because it's the coolest game in the casino. Plus, all you need to do to win money is be able to predict where the ball is going to land. Seems easy enough. Surely it's just a matter of intuition and possibly a little mathematics (both of which I like to think I have in abundance).

However, it wasn't long before I realized that making money from playing roulette online wasn't going to work.

As it turns out the mathematics of the game is watertight, and there is nothing you can do to augment it in your favor (see house edge for the details). It was a disappointing revelation, but at least it allowed me to rule out online roulette as a way to make money. I'm forever grateful to the websites that explained this to me at this time.

So I ended up playing online poker instead. With poker you're playing against other people instead of the casino, so it's actually possible win money over the long run.

Nonetheless, even though I knew roulette was unbeatable, I was still fascinated by the game. And if I'm interested in something, I want to know everything about how it works. I don't want there to be anything about it that I don't know or don't understand, and there were still some things about roulette that were foreign to me. I mean, what is Voisins du Zero anyway?

So I started making this website.

I learn the most when I try to explain things to other people, so I set out to explain everything I could about roulette. I also like trying to take complex things and explain them in a way that's simple to understand.

This is what I've got so far.

Privacy.

I use the following tools to track the number of visitors to this website:

• Google Analytics
• Statcounter

You can block them by installing an adblocker extension like uBlock Origin. Their main job is to block advertising, but they also block most forms of analytics and javascript tracking too. You might find this useful for privacy, because Google is able to track your movement across the Internet if each of the websites you're visiting has Google Analytics installed (and you don't block it).

I also use your IP address to help determine your location so that I can let you know if an online casino accepts players from your country. I don't store this information though. Here's the IP address that you're giving me:

127.0.0.1 (United States)

You give your IP to every website you visit (so that the web server can send pages back to your computer). If you don't want websites to get your actual IP address, I would recommend using a VPN.

A VPN basically encrypts and routes your traffic through a middle-man server, so websites only get to see the IP of the VPN you're using. I like PrivateVPN, but other popular options are NordVPN and Mullvad.

Website funding. (affiliate disclosure)

I can't stop anyone from playing roulette online. So if you are determined to play roulette, you might as well play at a decent online casino that is actually going to pay out if you win.

So I've listed and reviewed what I think are the most reliable online casinos for you to choose from.

I receive a small percentage commission if you visit a casino using a link from this website. Ideally I'd like to receive a commission for every person that I persuade not to sign up to an online casino, but unfortunately there is no system in place for that yet.

So in other words, this website is funded by the money you lose when playing roulette online (if you sign up to a casino through one of the links on this site).

I'm not unaware of the dichotomy of receiving money from something that I'm trying to advise against.

About me.

My name is Greg, I'm 36, and I'm from the UK. And yes, the weather is terrible, but my teeth aren't as bad.

I don't play roulette online for a living. I like writing, programming, making websites, and drinking tea instead. I think the thing I am best at is explaining how things work, so I try to do that as often as I can.

When I'm not doing any of that I like walking, reading, and trying to play the guitar. I'm not particularly good at the latter, so please don't ask me to bang out a tune if we're in the same room as a guitar.

In terms of reading, my favorite author is Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment is an absolute masterpiece. It's also a strange coincidence that he happened to have a fascination with addiction to roulette himself.

My favorite programming language is Ruby.

About this website.

I made this website by hand (I know, it looks like it, doesn't it). It's constructed using straightforward HTML and PHP.

I'm not particularly great at the design part of web design. Ultimately I like building websites that load quickly and don't break. The only "design" element of this website is in the layout of the articles. I think space, colour, and symmetry go a long way toward making something that looks good.

Also, I used Tachyons for the page layouts, and it has been an absolute revelation for me in terms of CSS styling. If you've ever built a website before and found it annoying having to jump between HTML and CSS, Tachyons is the cure. It basically allows you to stay within the HTML at all times by using classes to design the pages. It seems a bit backward at first, but it's seriously worth it. Here's a video of the creator.

But anyway, here's a list of the tools and software I used in the development of this version of the website (which was also updated in 2020):

• VSCode - An excellent editor. I'm a big fan of Vim and Emacs, but when you're working across a website with multiple different files and programming languages, a GUI editor like this is a life saver. I really like the Emmet extension that comes with it.
• PHP - The programming language I'm most fluent in (although I wouldn't admit this during polite conversation at a tech meetup). It's not the prettiest of languages, but it works and it's perfect for constructing web pages.
• Tachyons - This is CSS framework that allows you to design pages without having to get stuck in the CSS yourself. I can write CSS, but it's a joy to not have to switch back and forth between HTML and CSS when you're writing a page.
• Javascript - Just vanilla javascript for the interactive tools and charts on some of the pages. I'm better at PHP, but for some things javascript is the only option.
• Tooltip.js - Lightweight javascript tooltip library created by Matthias Schuetz. I like it because you can just add the data-tooltip attribute alongside the default title="" attribute (the default for tooltips in HTML) to transform it in to a faster and better-looking tooltip, like this.
• Tabler Icons - Free and open source vector icons. Easy to search and find an icon you're looking for.
• Inkscape - Open-source program for creating and editing vector images (SVGs).
• SVGO - Handy command line tool for optimizing SVG files (i.e. removing all the metadata inserted by Inkscape).
• PurgeCSS - Removes unused classes from CSS files. Useful if you're using a CSS toolkit like Tachyons and you're not using all of the classes that come with it.
• Google Charts - A nice chart library. Gets the job done without any fuss.
• Ubuntu - I switched from Mac/Windows to Linux in 2014 and I haven't looked back. It really opened up a new world of programming for me. I've done my fair share of distro hopping, but I came back to Ubuntu because it has all the software I need and works without the need for configuration.
• Mousepad - A simple text editor. Perfect for writing. It's basically Notepad on Linux.
• Mercurial - It's like Git but a bit simpler. I like it as a version control system (i.e. reverting back to an old version of the website after I've broken something) when working on a solo project.

If you're interested in making your own website, I'd highly recommend giving it a go. All you need to do is write some HTML and upload it to a server, and hey presto, you've got yourself a website. There's no need to get bogged down with all the latest frameworks and whatnot; all of the other technology is just there to try and make things easier or to make pages more interactive. Some of the most helpful websites I've ever visited are made using plain HTML.

So just write some words, wrap them in HTML, and you're good to go.

Why the name "Roulette Star"?

I originally called the site "Roulette Planet". I just wanted a generic name for a website covering everything about roulette, and putting the word "planet" after it seemed pretty cool idea at the time.

But after a few months I realized that something was wrong with the domain name. Someone had owned it before me and used it for spammy purposes (I didn't know about this when I bought it), so the website I was now building on it was struggling to get visitors from search engines due to its questionable history.

And working on a website without people being able to see what you've built — no matter what you do — is deeply disheartening.

I thought the easiest way to solve the problem was to move to a brand new domain that didn't have any issues. I'm sure I could have worked and waited to fix the problems with the "Roulette Planet" domain, but I don't like to wait and hope for the best if there's something proactive I can do. It was a minor leap to go from "planet" to "star", but it was short and snappy and celestial, so that's what I went for.

Thankfully it did the trick, and I've stuck with "Roulette Star" ever since.

Greg.