Made for the BBN, the online game ‘Big Blue Roulette’ has its roots in Corbin
Earlier this spring, Daniel Reeves was playing the NBA-centric online game “82-0” when he was struck by the beaming light of inspiration.
“I was like, ‘Man, I’d love a Kentucky version of this,’” Reeves recalled Tuesday.
So Reeves, a 30-year-old married father of three who works for Immanuel Baptist Church in Corbin, began to inventory his assets.
He had begun computer coding as a hobby and had become skilled enough that he had recently created a college baseball app.
“I just decided ‘Well, I think I am the one who can do this,’” Reeves said.
Thus was born “Big Blue Roulette,” the University of Kentucky men’s basketball and football online game that has become a mini-sensation among a segment of the BBN.
In the two weeks and two days since “Big Blue Roulette” went online, “We’ve had over 120,000 players,” Reeves said. “It’s been pretty amazing.”
How the game works
If you go to https://big-blue-roulette.vercel.app/, you are prompted to “spin the year roulette.”
What will come up is a Kentucky men’s basketball roster for a season between 1950-51 and 2025-26.
You will pick one player off that team, and then slot him into the appropriate position — point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward or center.
The game lists multiple positions for many players. You can use Dan Issel at center or power forward, for instance. However, you can’t insert a player into a position in which the game does not have him listed.
Once you have “spun the roulette wheel” five times, you will have a team filled with former Kentucky players from five different seasons.
The game’s algorithm will then project a season’s record and NCAA Tournament outcome — say, 32-8, Elite Eight — for your team. It will even evaluate strengths and weaknesses for your quintet.
The goal is to go 40-0 and win the national championship.
As someone who got hooked on “Big Blue Roulette” early in its existence, building a team that the algorithm dubs worthy of a perfect season is not easy.
In constructing the game’s algorithm, Reeves said “I kind of took the last 30 national champions. ... and kind of based the algorithm off what made them successful. What kind of things were important to winning games; what point values were important; how much assist values were weighted.
“Then, I kind of plugged in all the UK players (statistics) and just kind of played with the algorithm for a while. There were some things that had to be tweaked. And it’s still not perfect.”
Interestingly, the players from the one real-life Kentucky team that came agonizingly close to going 40-0 — John Calipari’s 2014-15 Wildcats who reached the Final Four with a 38-0 mark before losing — are not a good draw in “Big Blue Roulette.”
The game evaluates players’ values by their individual statistics in a given season. Because the 2014-15 Cats were so deep, Calipari used a two-platoon system much of the season, which depressed the players’ stats.
Conversely, having Issel from his junior (averages of 26.6 points, 13.6 rebounds) or senior (33.9 ppg, 13 rpg) seasons on your “Big Blue Roulette” squad is a great boost to building a Final Four team.
Yet, in the real world, none of Issel’s three varsity seasons (1967-70) ended with Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament national semifinals.
“It’s hard to program nuance,” Reeves said.
Spreading the word
To get the word out about “Big Blue Roulette, Reeves, a Paul Laurence Dunbar High School alumnus, relied largely on social media promotion and word of mouth. The game got a boost when the official X account of the Kentucky men’s basketball program posted about it.
“That was really cool,” Reeves said.
Scott Jennings, the Kentucky-based CNN political commentator, also posted on X about having played “Big Blue Roulette.”
“That one was pretty wild to me,” Reeves said. “... That’s probably the most famous person I’ve seen playing it.”
“Big Blue Roulette” is free to play, although there is a “Buy Me a Coffee” button where one can make a financial donation if one feels so compelled.
By popular demand, Reeves has added a football version of “Big Blue Roulette.” That game is limited to offensive skill players because, Reeves said, other football positions lack the statistical breadth to reflect a player’s true value.
“Deone Walker is not going to have a ton of individual stats,” Reeves said of the former UK star defensive tackle, “but, obviously, he had a big impact on games.”
In addition to the fun that has come from creating a UK sports-oriented game that has already gotten him on WLEX-TV’s “Big Blue Tonight” and the “Bleav In Kentucky” podcast, Reeves said there has been one other major benefit from the success of “Big Blue Roulette.”
“I was born in 1996 a month after (UK’s 1996 men’s basketball NCAA) championship. So why in the world would a 30-year-old like me be talking about (1970s Kentucky standouts) Jimmy Dan Conner or Kevin Grevey?” Reeves said. “Through this game, it’s been cool to learn so much about the influential players from before I was born.”
