Cunning People Play Poker

Vesper Lynd: So, you're telling me it's a matter of probability and odds? I was worried there wasn't chance involved.
James Bond: Well, only if you assume the player with the best hand wins.
Vesper: So there will be what you call bluffing?
James: You've heard of the term? Then you'll know that in poker you never play your hand, you play the man across from you.

—Casino Royale (2006)

Poker is a game, played by blue collar and white collar alike, for developing skills for strategy, such as calculating odds, reading an opponent's Body Language, concealing one's own, or learning to bluff skillfully. It also requires a savvy player to learn the necessary skills to detect when someone is cheating. Unlike chess, where you can't win if you don't have the pieces, poker allows a victory even if you have nothing, so long as you can convince your opponent that you have something.

As such, you'll often see cunning characters playing a game of poker with allies, or even with enemies.

Compare with Smart People Play Chess. It is reasonable to suggest that people that play chess tend toward Book Smart while people who play poker tend toward Street Smart. That being said, it isn't outside the realm of possibility to find a skilled Chessmaster who is skilled in both games.

See also Pastimes Prove Personality. Compare No Poker Face for those who are less good at poker. Compare, and may overlap with, Professional Gambler. May involve Hustling the Mark. Compare with Bad Guys Play Pool. Also compare Games of the Elderly for another stereotype about games. See also Hollywood Board Games, when characters are characterized for the board games they play.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Moriarty the Patriot: Clever, cunning William James Moriarty is seen playing poker with Moran—and winning flawlessly against him even as a child to win Moran's backstory from him. In fact, there's even a light novel story that features William cheating someone else at poker because Moran was cheated by him.

Films — Live Action

• Enforced in Finder's Fee. The guys' games are usually light and fun, but when Tepper gets a chance at some real money (millions of dollars thanks to Avery's lottery ticket), the games, especially between Avery and Tepper, become increasingly cunning and manipulative.
• Every incarnation of James Bond, who could be the Trope Codifier, has him at one point playing poker against either the Big Bad and/or their Number Two. His cunning nature and other skills always guarantee that he wins.
  • The plot of Casino Royale (2006) concerns the newly minted Double-O agent James Bond as he faces off against the devious terrorist financier Le Chiffre in a high-stakes poker game. Le Chiffre proves to be a formidable match for Bond as he not only manages to get him knocked out of the tournament briefly but also manages to have him and love interest Vesper nearly killed several times away from the table.
  Bond: In poker, you never play your hand, you play the man across from you.
• Maverick: Brett Maverick is a very successful poker player. He's also very skilled at getting himself out of dangerous situations. For example, he arranged to have a group pretend to be there to accost him in order to make it appear that he had decent fighting skills, thus getting a more ruthless gambler who was accusing him of cheating to back down. The whole film is him either playing poker very well or scheming to get past his opponents with some skill.
• Ocean's Eleven: Danny and Rusty display their conning skills, and their ability to work together when they trick a group of novice gamblers out of their cash over a game of poker.
• Solo: A Star Wars Story establishes the course of Han and Lando's relationship through the rest of the franchise over a game of Sabacc (think space poker). This demonstrates Lando's cunning and shows off Han's wit as well. Also, Lando cheats (but the film ends with Han cheating him right back).

Literature

• The Final Reflection: Ambassador Tagore teaches Captain Krenn to play poker as they discuss whether his wits will suffice to convince the Klingon Empire to negotiate with an Actual Pacifist. Later, Krenn borrows the phrase "You didn't pay to see those cards" while playing a potentially catastrophic diplomatic game with the Federation.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Hagrid won a poker game against Professor Quirrel. The prize is a Norwegian Ridgeback egg. Professor Quirrel gave Hagrid the egg just to get him in trouble since breeding dragons is illegal. Also, he was possessed by Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who is cunning in every way.
• Star Wars Legends: Sabacc features quite prominently in the original expanded universe continuity as well, and the more cunning characters usually know how to play sabacc.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy:
    • While on the planet Abregado-rae Han Solo joined a game that Fynn Torve was part of in order to distract local security forces looking to arrest Torve for helping run food and other essentials to the hill tribes.
    • After rescuing Torve both Han and Lando Calrissian filled Torve in on how Han came to own the Millennium Falcon - namely that the two had been playing sabacc for several hours and Lando had run short of cash, so Lando offered him the pick of any ship from his spaceship sales lot, figuring that Han would go for one of the newer luxury ships instead of the old freighter Lando had quietly been upgrading on the side. But Han instead picked the old freighter upon winning the game.
    • Trying to obtain ships for Talon Karrde Han approached General Drayson but had little success in talking him into loaning a ship to Karrde. Leia suggested to Han that he challenge Drayson to a game of sabacc for a ship, but Han remarked he wouldn't know what to do with a whole fleet of ships.
  • Jedi Academy Trilogy: Han and Lando play a number of sabacc hands in a rematch of the original game where Han won the Falcon. Lando ultimately won but then gifted the Falcon back to Han as a token of their friendship.
  • Darth Bane: We see just how cunning the future Sith Lord is when he takes on a group of Republic officers in a game of Sabaac. Unusually, Bane actually becomes more effective as he and other players get angry, with the implication that he is subconsciously using the Dark Side to win.

Live-Action TV

• Castle: Castle and Beckett have both been shown playing poker, and both are very good at solving crimes in their own right. In addition, Castle's most frequent poker partners are fellow real-life writers, who often are able to listen to Castle parse the clues of a case and then give him some insight into the solution.
• In episode 4 of GARO: Makai Senki, the Horror du jour possesses a high-profile underground Poker player. It's able to completely hide its nature until it's forced to play dirty, at which point it attacks Kouga. The latter subverts the trope, as while he is definitely cunning, he has no idea of how Poker is played or what some terms mean, leading the people at the table to think he's mocking them when he says a good hand was a bust.
• Leverage: Nate has already been established as The Chessmaster. But when a group of Irish Mob thugs try to strongarm the woman who owns McRory's, Nate challenges the leader to a poker match with three members of law enforcement who knew Nate's criminal father and gets the Irish mobster to confess to several crimes in front of the cops.
• The Mentalist: Patrick Jane is a very skilled poker player, being versed enough in reading body language that he is able to determine when someone is bluffing or not, going so far as using a high stakes game to get a killer to reveal himself.
• Perfect Strangers: After Balki loses all of his money playing poker to Gorpley, Larry challenges Gorpley. Larry has a reputation as a Know-Nothing Know-It-All. That reputation is not undeserved. However, he happens to be an excellent poker player, and engages in a case of Hustling the Mark by banking on that reputation and getting Gorpley to bet even his car. Larry lets him off the hook as far as his car goes, but does win back Balki's money.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: Invoked in "The Corbomite Maneuver" when faced with Balok's incomprehensible mothership threatening to destroy the Enterprise, Spock contextualizes their situation as a game of chess and concludes Balok has declared checkmate. Captain Kirk changes the game to poker, and then bluffs that Enterprise has a defense feature that will ensure that if it's destroyed, Balok's ship will also get blown up.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: It was not uncommon to see several of the characters engage in poker matches over the course of the series. Interesting opponents, too, as Data could, if he so desired, shuffle the cards in any order he wanted, and he had a Poker Face by default. Geordi's VISOR would allow him to actually see what anyone was holding (though he claimed he never peeked until after a hand). Counselor Troi could tell via her empathic abilities if someone was bluffing. And Worf, as The Stoic, was very skilled at a Poker Face. And despite it all, the consummate player was usually Will Riker. Riker's cunning was frequently put on display, such as when he was given command of the USS Hathaway during a war game and was able to surprise the Enterprise crew with a clever sensor trick, and trick a group of Ferengi by making a split-second warp jump. One episode had Wesley join the game and get pasted, much to Geordi's amusement.
    Geordi: You may get straight "A"s in school, but there's a lot you need to learn about poker.

Video Games

• Bioshock 2: An audio diary tells the story of Sofia Lamb playing poker games as a demonstration of her collectivist ideals. On occasion, rather than seeking to win every match like a typical player, she identifies which player would benefit the most from winning and goes out of her way to make sure that player wins everyone else's chips, including her own, showing she has the means of manipulating other people to the next level.
  Sofia Lamb: I win nothing but the feeling of conquest over myself, and the wealth of my competitors is slowly reshuffled according to their needs.
• Far Cry 3: Towards the end of the game, Jason Brody and his ally Sam Becker are invited to a poker tournament by Hoyt Volker. Whilst they're playing together, Hoyt waxes philosophical about the aim of playing poker with Jason and Sam, before suddenly stabbing Sam to death in a lull in the gameplay, and revealing that he knew Jason and Sam were undercover among his Privateers from the start, which means all of Jason's efforts to trick him, including torturing his own brother, served only to satisfy Hoyt's sense of humour. Hoyt then forces Jason to continue playing just to rub it in his face, turning the tournament into an Absurdly High-Stakes Game.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: In their off-hours, the Tempest crew play poker against the ship's engineer, Gil... and he consistently beats everyone, much to their extreme aggravation. He even leaves a datapad claiming to give away his tells just to mess with their heads. A side-quest has Ryder meeting him for a friendly game. If Ryder doesn't get assistance from SAM and tries winning on their own merit, they lose.

Visual Novels

• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: Phoenix, in his more cunning "Hobo Nick" period, is shown to be a very good poker player, with him being shown to have become something of a low-key poker all-star.
• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Celestia Ludenberg, the Ultimate Gambler, is shown to be extremely talented in lying to get what she wants or to trick others, with her official artwork additionally showing her with a deck of cards surrounding her, hinting at this trope.

Webcomics

• Freefall: Florence is one of the smartest characters in the cast, being an FTL engineer, and is implied to be very good at poker, with a thought about her uplifted wolf nose being able to smell humans' emotional states. In this◊ comic, she bluffs the table into folding when she had a pair of 3s. In contrast, Sam thinks he's a cunning master thief, but poker is not his game.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: In "Almost Got 'im", Batman's rogues, many of whom are well known for creating elaborate death traps, are playing a "friendly" game of poker while talking about how they almost got Batman. Turns out Batman had an ace up his sleeve, as he was impersonating Killer Croc.
• The Christmas Tree: Mrs. Mavilda is an evil orphanage owner who always blows the mayor's donation money on poker games. Despite never winning, the fact that she's even using it to gamble at all reflects how crafty and manipulative she is, tricking the mayor into thinking the kids are taken care of and going to great lengths to try and get rid of the kind-hearted Judy.
• The Owl House: The antagonistic character of Tibbles Grimhammer is established in his debut episode as a devious trickster character when he manages to hustle Eda the Owl Lady, herself a trickster character, in a magical card game called Hexus Hold-Em.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: One season one episodes show the commanding crew of the USS Cerritos playing poker much like their Enterprise counterparts. Noticeably, however, each player opted to fold each hand, showing an averseness to risk-taking. When Beckett Mariner, who's been forced into it, tries going all in, she's shouted down.
  Shax: YOU CAN'T GO ALL IN! THIS IS A FRIENDLY GAME!
• Star Wars Rebels: One episode opens with Zeb losing the team droid, Chopper, to none other than Lando Calrissian in a game of Sabacc. This establishes his characterization in the episode as a cunning shyster and manipulator as he joins the crew of the Ghost on an impromptu mission in exchange for Chopper.

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