Over the holidays, while I was slacking from doing important computer work, I ended up at a casino. While there, I won a few bucks on my favorite game, roulette.

Upon returning home, I looked for a roulette app, and there are plenty! But they have the “to play, I have to pay or give away all my info” issues. So I decided to try and build my own!

Ok, so I decided to have an LLM build me one. I used Claude Sonnet 4.5, ChatGPT, Claude Code Sonnet 4.5, and Claude Code Opus 4.5. While they all could tell me the rules and details of how American Roulette works (includes double zero), many could not reliably program the game…

I admit, maybe I was the problem. Maybe I didn’t create the proper prompt, or give it enough details. Which is weird, cause when I said “build it”, after the LLM provided the details, I thought the LLM could handle it.

Another admission, I did not properly document this process. I didn’t expect it to be such an undertaking. Nor that I would be writing a blog post about it…

The short version is I asked multiple LLM to build a web based roulette app, and they fell short. Even when having a conversation with them and being specific about what I wanted changed, it still could not handle it. It was not until Claude Code Opus 4.5 was it able to be completed.

All this just to say, there is a difference in level of ability between LLM. As Opus consumes more tokens than Sonnet, it is considered more advanced. Depending on your needs, the value received from not having to go round the block more often could be worth the additional cost.

At the time of this posting, I did not fully flesh out the details such as independent (it is currently stored in the browser) long term storage for previous numbers, user bank and accurate spin display (ball does not land on actual number that is selected).

But for a “first” attempt, it finally turned out decently. This was an impromptu thought that took me down a quick rabbit hole. Do not know if I have the interest to see its full potential as there are a few other things I want to take a look at more deeply.