Laura Stovall

I started out writing stories. For five years that meant picture books, a collection of bedtime stories and more readings in libraries and bookshops than I can count. It taught me the rule I still work by: if a sentence has to be read twice, it isn’t finished.

Casino writing found me in 2023, when a friend asked me to rewrite a page of bonus terms in plain English. The original ran to 2,400 words and hid a 40-times wagering requirement in the eleventh paragraph. My version fitted on one screen and put that number in the first line. I’ve been translating small print ever since.

At SpyRoller I write the country guides and the pages on licences and safer gambling. That means reading what the law actually says rather than what other websites say it says: the Gambling Commission’s guidance in Britain, Ontario’s registration rules, New Zealand’s Online Casino Gambling Act and Ireland’s Statute Book, section by section, with the date I read it written down. When a rule is in the law but not yet in force, I say so.

I check every casino the way a reader would meet it: logged out, through a connection in the country I’m writing about, with its terms open in another tab. When a casino’s sign-up form disagrees with its own terms, the page says so. Where a casino lacks the local licence, the guide says so plainly, with what you give up by playing there.

Away from casino terms I still write fiction, and I draft almost everything longhand first, usually in a café with a notebook and a pot of tea that goes cold.