Out Gambitted / Literature

• Animorphs:
  • In the finale, Visser One's plan worked well. Tom's worked even better. Jake's worked best of all.
  • David was never really more than a Big Bad Wannabe, but he was still able to run circles around the Animorphs for the first half of Book #22, and they (and he) even thought he'd killed Tobias at one point. They let him think they're beat and will give him what he wants, but they've already devised a plan in private thought-speak.
• Book of the Dead (2021): Even though Tyron specifically mentioned that he had noticed rising tensions and suspected something would happen, Filetta still tries to lead an ambush to assassinate him, to tie off the loose end that he represents to their business. Tyron promptly reveals that he brought dozens of minions and an artefact that floods the area with opaque smoke, giving him time and space to start casting area debuffs. None of Filetta's people survive.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist King Pryderi of The Chronicles of Prydain makes an alliance with resident Evil Overlord Arawn in an attempt to conquer Prydain and put an end to the infighting and bickering between lords that has long plagued his land. After he has conquered Prydain he planned to make Arawn into his servant by virtue of his superior army. Too bad for him, Arawn is well-known and feared for his evil trickery and, too late, the King realizes that the Death Lord has outmaneuvered him. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't live long after.
• If you are a character in the Codex Alera, you should try to avoid going up against Gaius Sextus. Even if you seem to win against him, he's probably still using you somehow or other. Witness Lord Kalarus, whose plan to make himself a Load-Bearing Boss and blow up half the countryside was foiled by Gaius walking into the heart of his territory and detonating the volcano himself, or Lord Aquitaine, who almost got his wish to be First Lord when Sextus legally adopted him as secondborn to Tavi, leaving the country in the most capable hands possible between his death and his grandson's return. Also, chronic traitor Invidia eventually learns that, if you betray everyone you've ever worked with, people will eventually notice. And when you try to do it again, they'll leave you stranded in the woods. Naked.
• In Courtship Rite: Joesai manan-Kaiel, by Storm Master Tonpa of the Mnankrei clan. Joesai has planned to make people think the Mnankrei are responsible for the Death Rite on Oelita the Gentle Heretic; when Tonpa realizes he's being framed, he not only comes up with a way to put the blame back on the Kaiel, but to make them take the blame for destroying the local grain store, which they had originally planned to make look like an accident.
• In the Daemon novel Freedom, this turns out to be the case: The villains thought that they had finally managed to pull one up on Sobol by breaking into the Daemon and exploiting flaws in the code. It turns out he'd planned for this, knowing no system is secure, and purposely placed those flaws there. When the villains attempted to use them the Daemon detected it and, now knowing precisely who was attempting to hijack the system, proceeded to wipe out their finances.
• Black Arthur in The Demon's Lexicon thinks he's been very clever indeed: he first managed to make a deal with a demon in return for unprecedented power by providing the demon with a human body that will not deteriorate — that of his infant son — and when that plan went awry thanks to the baby's mother running away with him, allowing him to grow up among humans as Nick Ryves with no memory of his true nature, he managed to lure Nick into a magic circle and trap him there, counting on Nick's demon nature and their original bargain to win out. Unfortunately, what Arthur didn't count on is that Nick's adopted brother Alan is a lot better at this than he is: most of the events of the book are part of Alan's plan to get Nick trapped in just such a magic circle, so that he could then set him free in a way that would ensure he could never be bound by another magician.
• Lord Vetinari every Discworld book, to the point where he has prepared his own deepest dungeon for when he will be thrown in when he is overthrown.
• Dune, being a millenial tale of galactic intrigue that accumulates Gambit Pileups like some books accumulate minor characters, has numerous examples of this trope.
  • In the first novel, the Emperor travels to Arrakis to "put down the Fremen rebellion" once and for all and to severely discipline the Harkonnens he was using as his tools. The Guild travels there to safeguard their precious Spice, having foreseen a crisis with their oracular powers. Paul Muad'dib, however, has become a Messianic Archetype possessed of far greater powers and takes advantage of having all his enemies together to pull a surprise attack that winds up with him dethroning the Emperor and taking his place.
    • Even earlier, the Atreides were themselves victim of this when they knowingly walked into the Harkonnen trap on Arrakis, counting on their superior training and potential alliance with the Fremen to see them through. What Leto failed to realize was that the Emperor was backing the Harkonnens and the sheer amount of money both were willing to spend to defeat him.
  • In Dune Messiah, the Bene Tleilax construct a complicated gambit involving forcing Paul to discredit himself out of love for his consort, Chani. Paul, of course, has anticipated this, but it's the loyalty of the ghola Duncan Idaho, whom they were counting on to either kill Paul (forcing Alia to make the same choice) or recover his memories, showing Paul what could be achieved with Chani, that allows Paul to evade the trap.
  • In Children of Dune, Alia, now possessed by the Genetic Memory of Baron Harkonnen, plots to have Paul's children assassinated to cement her rule. Meanwhile, the Bene Gesserit are trying to manipulate the children into returning to their control. Leto II, however, by willingly embracing his father's messianic role, successfully discredits Alia and becomes the God Emperor.
• The events of Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain were all orchestrated by the Council of Egos, who intend on enslaving Mollusk under instruction of a Future-Mollusk sending them instructions with the anti-time radio. Except it was all devised as a trick by Future-Mollusk, tricking them into building a Lotus-Eater Machine that traps them all in a dream-state while Present-Mollusk goes off scot-free, creating a Stable Time Loop.
  Zala: This plan of yours seems needlessly complicated. There must have been a simpler way than to put yourself through all that.
  Mollusk: If it were too simple, the Council would never have believed it. It had to be reidiculous, even unnecessary, in order to fool the Council.
• Done in the ninth book of the Everworld series. Senna Wales, the witch who has been previously pulling all the strings and guiding the other characters along has the tables turned on her when her mother, Anica Wales makes a deal with Merlin to capture her. Their plan is to lure Senna out in the streets of Egypt at night, separating her from the others of the group who could potentially help her, forcing her to confront them alone, leaving her to face Merlin, a mage even stronger than she is and with a thousand years of experience, with Senna's mother there to lend her witch powers in case Merlin somehow fails while the entire city they're in is under the control of the Amazons, who are allied with Senna's mother. And just to make totally and completely sure that Senna has no escape and is caught like a rat in a trap, Merlin brings a dragon to the party for back-up. And then Senna, Magnificent Bastard that she is, instantly readjusts her plans, fools them both, uses Christopher as a decoy, tricks Merlin into wasting his magic, uses all of her powers as a witch and a gateway to their full extent, and she wins. The battle ends with Merlin exhausted and running in defeat, his dragon dead, the Amazons driven from Egypt with their queen no longer among the living, and Anica begging her daughter for forgiveness. Basically, Senna faced two mages who are Crazy-Prepared and vastly more experienced than herself, with no prior warning or prep time, and thwarted them. She's that good at Xanatos Speed Chess. After the confrontation is over, Senna is heavily exhausted by clearly enjoying the victory, and comments to Anica, "You underestimated me."
• One of the Gor books had a character warn the fellow kidnapping her that she planned to scream. He admitted that was an excellent plan. When she opened her mouth to scream, though, he stuffed in a wadded-up scarf, gagging her. "I, too, had a plan — a counter-plan. My plan, which I have now put into effect, was clearly superior to yours."
• Harry Potter:
  • The entire, seven book series plays this trope mostly straight: Voldemort makes Plan 1. Dumbledore, along with Snape, makes Plan 2. Voldemort goes down. For example, Voldemort wants to kill Harry. Dumbledore guesses (and therefore knows) that if Harry dies at Voldemort's hand, then Harry will just come right back to life, and Voldemort will be weaker. That was the plan for two books. See also almost anything Dumbledore does, from leaving Harry at the Dursley's, to giving Hermione the time-turner, to going to the cave in book six, to trusting Snape and having him as the mole, to having Snape kill him. Though in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Dumbledore admits he was outgamitted by Voldemort in the short run when he acknowledges that his hiding of information made it considerably easier for Voldemort to trick Harry.
  • In the "Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump" section of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the charlatan finds himself outwitted when he tries to make Babbitty Rabbitty do his bidding.^note  To elaborate: Upon meeting Babbitty Rabbitty and discovering that she's a real witch, the charlatan coerces her to use her power to help him perform acts of magic, dismissing her question of concern that her magical power has its limit. When the moment does come in which Babbitty can't fulfill the king's demand on the charlatan, the charlatan decides to use her as The Scapegoat to escape the king's wrath. Unfortunately for the charlatan, Babbitty makes a false claim while hiding within a tree stump about the power of immunity against the king's weaponry that the wizards and witches possess that everyone else in the story is too ignorant to be able to refute, resulting in the king's executioners readying themselves to test the "theory" on the charlatan. Forced into the Sadistic Choice of either coming clean about his falsified claim of being a wizard or dying by the executioners' weapons, the charlatan confesses to the king and his executioners about his deceitful schemes and is then taken away into the dungeon.
• In Helm, Arthur de Noram is no match for the man he tried to conspire with, Siegfried Montrose.
• "His Last Bow" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is about a spy, Von Bork, who's been outwitting the British in and out and is about to return to Germany at the outset of the First World War after having already given his government a wealth of information about just about everything. He just needs that final piece on British naval codes from his Irish-American informant... Who promptly captures him and reveals himself to be Sherlock Holmes in disguise, having come back from retirement at the government's request for long enough to assume this role and play against Von Bork. Oh, and feed him and his government false information all along.
• About halfway through Hollow Places, Austin blackmails Warden Tim White into stopping his guards from abusing the prisoners by threatening to release a recording of him bribing a judge. This plan backfires months later when the Warden obtains a security video of Austin breaking into the judge’s apartment to obtain said recording.
• How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom:
  • During the Elfrieden occupation of Amidonia's capital Van in volume 3, Amidonian General Margarita Wonder, who had surrendered with Van's garrison, asks to sing on King Souma Kazuya's first variety show on the Jewel Voice Broadcast from Van. She sings Amidonia's national anthem, which calls for the recapture of the land taken from Amidonia in the two countries' last war, hoping to inspire Patriotic Fervor and resistance to the occupiers, expecting to be executed afterwards. Instead, Souma says there's no law in Elfrieden against singing another country's national anthem and applauds her performance, proving he's the furthest thing from the tyrant the House of Amidonia made him out to be.
  • The occupation of Amidonia is ended with a peace treaty negotiated by the Gran Chaos Empire, where Amidonia is required to pay reparations. Souma withdraws, arranging things such that either the returning Prince Julius Amidonia will have to abandon Amidonia's irredentism or ruin his country further. What neither they nor the Empress expect is Julius's sister Princess Roroa to exploit Julius's political weakness to foment a revolt in favor of annexation by Elfrieden. Julius is forced to flee the country, and Roroa pledges herself to marry Souma, uniting the countries. Lampshaded by Souma, who laments to Empress Maria after all's said and done that "We were all outwitted by a little girl."
• The Hunger Games: For all President Coriolanus Snow's talk about destroying Katniss's image so the unhappy districts would have nobody to rally behind, Plutarch completely played him for a fool.
• Minor example from Kitty and the Silver Bullet: Kitty, trying her hand at being a Chessmaster, tries to use Detective Hardin and the Denver PD as an Unwitting Pawn to take down Carl for her. Hardin turns it around by being fashionably late to the fight, thus making Kitty bait to trap Carl into an assault charge. They're on the same side, though, so it's all good. Bigger example from the same book: Rick's attempt to unseat Arturo is thwarted by Mercedes, with the help of a spy in his ranks. But then Arturo becomes the Spanner in the Works by opting for Redemption Equals Death, thus leaving Rick in control of Denver anyway.
• The Lord of the Rings: Sauron, the guy who when taken prisoner by the Númenóreans was in control of them within a year, out-gambits almost everyone during the War of the Ring. He anticipates Saruman's betrayal and gives Denethor the right information to draw the wrong conclusions, but just as Gandalf planned, Sauron simply couldn't imagine that anyone would try and destroy the One Ring instead of claiming it for themselves. In the end Sauron is actually right that no one can summon enough willpower to actually destroy the Ring. However, Illúvatar out-gambited Sauron by setting things up so that Gollum would destroy the Ring by accident.
• Magic Ex Libris: At the end of the third book, some of the Porters take advantage of Johannes Gutenberg's death and Isaac's breaking the locking spells on prohibited books to mass-duplicate an automaton and power the copies with the Ghost Army. When they're interrupted and drawn away, Isaac, fearing both a Porter civil war and the Porters' enemies behaving like Cornered Rattlesnakes, plants a bomb inside the automaton's head that will exorcize any ghost in the blast radius, and gives the detonator to a colleague because he knows the rogue Porters will focus on him.
• Anyone in The Mental State who thinks that Zack State is just a gullible youth tends to end up in this situation. Most of the antagonists are simple-minded brutes, but there are a few who actually have an objective and a plan for achieving it. The best examples are Harry Jacks, Commissioner Viceman and Saif. They all underestimate Zack's deviousness and ruthlessness.
• The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest has an immensely satisfying occurrence of this against all the (many) people who have screwed over Lisbeth for all of her life.
• The Mistborn trilogy is basically a Gambit Pileup by the end, so naturally a lot of people end up Out-Gambitted, In roughly chronological order Preservation out-gambits Ruin, trapping him, then Ruin out-gambits a lot of people by changing prophecies in order to try to get somebody to free him, then Kwaan and Rashek out-gambit Ruin by figuring out his deception and killing Alendi so that Rashek can take the power of the Well of Ascension for himself, becoming the Lord Ruler, and stopping Ruin from getting out. Then Kelsier out-gambits the Lord Ruler in order to kill him. Ruin out-gambits everyone again to get Vin to go to the Well of Ascension and free him. After that it turns out that the Lord Ruler had prepared for the possibility of his death and Ruin's release and prepared storage places for people to hide to protect them, and hid the atium stockpile, which contained most of Ruin's power where Ruin couldn't get at it. Then it turns out that Preservation had planned for everything, in spite of having had most of his mind destroyed when he trapped Ruin thousands of years before, and he managed to get Elend and his army to destroy the atium stockpile, keeping the power away from Ruin, meanwhile he'd also arranged for Vin to take his power, and perform a Heroic Sacrifice to kill Ruin.. And really there are other examples, these are just the major ones.
• In Nightmare Alley, the evil Lilith does this to Stan spectacularly, firstly by seducing and controlling him and then, once Stan has began conning the wealthy Ezra Grindle at her suggestion, by keeping the cash results of their con in her safe where she secretly replaces the five hundred dollar bills with singles. When Stan takes the money back, discovers what she's done and attempts to confront her, she tells him he is deluded and is projecting his sexual feelings for his mother onto her and then tries to have him committed to an institution. He narrowly manages to escape and has to go on the run as a result of her duplicity, sinking into alcoholism and depression.
• Sergey Lukyanenko's Night Watch (Series) novels are made up of Gambit Pileups by two Great Others, the Light Geser and the Dark Zabulon. They've been doing this for decades. It helps that they're able to foresee the probabilities of future events very clearly.
• In the Outbound Flight novel Survivor's Quest, the Vagaari turn out to have a rather large gambit involving Obfuscating Fawning Idiocy. But, it's revealed, the Chiss planned for this all along, letting word leak out so that the Vagaari formed their plan in the first place, setting up safe spaces for their crew, inviting along Jedi and 501st stormtroopers and not letting the Vagaari see what they could do. All to make that nomadic people of slavers strike, satisfying the Chiss Martial Pacifism so that they could seek out and attack the Vagaari. After it's all over Mara Jade looks at that plan in disbelief, and says that Thrawn's fingerprints are all over it. But Thrawn is dead, and his clone was destroyed.
  • In Isard's Revenge, Ysanne Isard neatly out-gambits both the New Republic and her clone, who is aligned with a former Imperial warlord the New Republic is campaigning against. She builds a secret lab near one of the warlord's bases she knows the New Republic will attack, researching yet another Imperial superweapon. The New Republic instantly seizes on it as justification for their invasion, while the warlord protests that he had never heard of the lab until the New Republic "found" it, making both sides look worse due to the Golden Mean Fallacy. This leaves both sides nice and distracted so Isard can launch her real plan, stealing the newly-repaired Super Star Destroyer Lusankya from under the collective nose of the New Republic fleet. Unfortunately for her, two astromech droids managed to escape her clutches, allowing some pro-Republic smugglers and a New Republic Intelligence agent to set a trap for Isard to stroll right into.
  • At the climax of The Thrawn Trilogy, the New Republic plans on striking at the Imperial shipyards at Bilbringi, but try to play Thrawn by not-quite-as-secretly making plans for an attack at Tangrene. Thrawn sees through the Rebels' ruse and prepares accordingly, but gets surprised by the Smugglers' Alliance, who assumed that the New Republic was attacking Tangrene and planned their own strike at Bilbringi that just happened to coincide with the New Republic offensive. In other words, a cunning plan was defeated by a cunning-er plan but rescued by a botched plan — and even then it could've gone the Imperials' way were it not for a critical Bodyguard Betrayal.
  • The overarching plot of Mercy Kill: the head of Galactic Alliance intelligence is a traitor and has turned one of his crack teams, the Wraiths, loose on a co-conspirator, hoping for one of two outcomes. Either they expose the conspirator and the head of Intelligence can figure out how and patch the leak, or they don't and both men are safe. Face Loran, head of the Wraiths, comes up with a suitably brilliant counter-scheme: suspecting his boss from the outset, he creates two teams for the job and reports on the activities of a third that is completely fictitious. Sure enough, the head of Intelligence warns his ally about the fake Wraiths, implicating himself and warning Face to bring hidden backup to their confrontation.
• Vizzini from The Princess Bride is a very notable one.
  • If you pay attention to the Man in Black's challenge, he says "Where is the poison? The contest ends when you choose and we drink." In other words, under the literal rules of the game, even if Vizzini had figured out they were both poisoned, he still would have drank and died. Unless he decided to Take a Third Option and NOT DRINK.
  • Really, the whole scene is Vizzini trying several different gambits. First, he tries probing for information, trying to get Westley to unknowingly give away some hint of which cup is poisoned. (The book version of Westley does start becoming agitated and concerned that Vizzini may figure out the whole setup, while the movie version stays cool and lets Vizzini ramble away and go on tangents.) When that fails, he gets Westley to look away and then switches the cups. Before drinking, he carefully watches Westley's reaction to see if there's any hesitation on Westley's part. When Westley doesn't hesitate to drink, Vizzini figures that Westley thought that he was reaching for the "safe" cup, but due to Vizzini switching the cups, now Vizzini has the safe cup. Had Westley hesitated, Vizzini would have inferred that he was now holding the poisoned cup and tossed it aside. Of course instead Westley had poisoned both cups and was exploiting his Acquired Poison Immunity.
• Done in The Queen's Thief. The Magus of Sounis frees Gen, a low-born thief who stupidly brags about his successes, from prison and forces him to steal Hamiathes' Gift so the king can use it to claim rightful rulership to the throne of neighboring kingdom Eddis. Except that he's been played since BEFORE the start of the book by Gen, or rather Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis and the Queen of Eddis' COUSIN, who knew that the Magus knew where Hamiathes' Gift was, pretended to be a commoner of Sounis and purposely bragged about his skill to draw the Magus' attention so that he'd be hired to steal it, and once he did, stole it a second time in such a way to make the Magus think he had lost it, and finally returned it to his queen, securing her rule.
• The Big Bad of Raised by Wolves had a very simple plan: infect Chase with lycanthropy, then leave him in Stone River Pack's territory. Chase would be taken in by Stone River, where he'd make contact with Bryn — a former target who got away — and bring her back to him. Unfortunately for him, Callum, the pack's alpha, turned out to have precognitive abilities, a mastery of Xanatos Speed Chess, and a grudge against the Big Bad for what he did to Bryn.. Didn't See That Coming.
• In one RCN book, Daniel Leary's corvette Princess Cecile is being pursued by a privateer, Estremadura, that is continually dropping out of FTL right on top of him, too close for effective use of kinetic-kill missiles. Daniel fires missiles off in another direction entirely then tricks the privateer into dropping out of FTL directly in their path; they hit at terminal velocity and Estremadura is obliterated, a trick that only worked because the other pilot was so good.
• This describes every single one of Zhou Yu's schemes against Zhuge Liang in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Time and time again, Zhou Yu create schemes after schemes to kill Zhuge Liang. Zhuge easily saw through each one of them, making a fool out of Zhou Yu. In the end,he dies of illness and the reopening of an old wound, caused by the rage at Zhuge beating him time and again; knowing that he could never match Sleeping Dragon.
• Spider-Man: Sinister Six Trilogy: The Gentleman thinks he got away with his plan, only for the Chameleon to betray him, only for HIM to be caught by Doc Ock who had the exact same plan, then they're all foiled by Spider-Man when he gets Pity on his side.
• Crops up regularly in a A Song of Ice and Fire to practically everybody involved. Unsurprisingly, given its high concentration of Chessmasters and Magnificent Bastards, as well as those who aspire to be such meeting such things as pawns and random spanners.
  • More specifically, however; the prize for getting herself Out-Gambitted most regularly has to go to Cersei Lannister, particularly through the well-named A Feast for Crows.
• In Tales of Dunk and Egg, the Blackfyres historically got pulverized due to their own egos getting repeatedly used against them by the then-Hand, Brynden Rivers aka "Bloodraven". He outright won a war of wits, not just a battle, by undercutting each and every attempt they and Aegor "Bittersteel" Rivers made to gain the Iron Throne. If at a cost.
  • That cost, at least at first at a start of his career? Being called a kinslayer for killing his half-brother and his sons. How? During honorable melee battle at Redgrass Field, Bloodraven won at sword fighting by using his longbow and leading a hundred archers into raining arrows at rebel leadership. But even before the battle, he assasinated one of rebels' most capable commanders by disguising himself as a commoner and shooting the commander (Quentyn "Fireball" Ball) in the throat.
• John French's Thousand Sons novel Ahriman trilogy features several of these:
  • In Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman, having learned that his unseen enemy is his old ally Amon, travels to a desolate space station and summons a powerful daemon in order to question it about Amon’s plans. Amon predicted that Ahriman would summon that specific daemon, however, and pre-emptively bound it into his service. When Ahriman summons the daemon, it easily breaks free of his control and unleashes a horde of lesser daemons upon the station, forcing Ahriman and his allies to flee for their lives.
  • In Ahriman: Sorcerer, Ahriman’s lieutenant Sanakht conspires with Ignis to kill Ahriman and take control of his Chaos Space Marine warband. While Ignis recruits people to their cause, Sanakht sets up a Manchurian Agent that will cripple Ahriman’s flagship when the time is right, and accompanies Ahriman on his mission to retrieve the Athenaeum of Kallimakus. Sanakht knows the Athenaeum is guarded by blanks, which will prevent Ahriman from defending himself with his sorcery and give Sanakht (who is the better swordsman) a chance to kill him. Unfortunately for Sanakht, Ignis is loyal to Ahriman and has not only kept his master informed of the plot, but also fed the conspirators misinformation so that they will fire on each other instead of Ahriman’s loyalists during the coup. Ahriman’s own plans also require the destruction of his flagship, as this will tear open a Warp rift and let the warband escape from the Inquisitorial fleet that is pursuing them. Finally, Ahriman needs someone to act as a vessel for the Athenaeum, and by letting it possess Sanakht, he’s killing two birds with one stone.
• In The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, this is the only way that Kyousuke can fight against the White Queen, an omnipotent Eldritch Abomination. However, the Queen is far smarter than she normally lets on, and due to her twisted love for him, doesn't mind losing.
  • A good example of this is the fourth volume, when the Queen pretends to let Kyousuke use her sword as a handicap, but is in fact damaging the building in a way that would kill the people Kyousuke is trying to save. However, Kyousuke had already figured out that the building's design deviated from the original plans, so he knew that this wouldn't work.
  • The seventh volume is a back-and-forth example of this, ultimately ending in the Queen's victory. She pretends that her plan was to sabotage Kyousuke's attempt to kill her (which he 'discovers' and makes a counter-plan for), but she actually wanted him to succeed. She was able to survive through currently-unknown means, while Kyousuke's means of defeating her would become a threat to the world in its own right. As a result, he is now forced to work with her — her goal all along.
• In War of the Dreaming, this happens to Azrael's plan to free mankind from tyranny by destroying the magical realm's power over them, carried out by a complex line of murder, betrayal, backstabbery, and replacing Congress with shapeshifting doppelgangers. The counter-gambit to this is set up by Prometheus, who outmaneuvers him simply by having a son whose descendents will interbreed with humanity and spread the ability to Screw Destiny at much less cost.
• Whateley Universe:
  • the Intelligence Cadet Corps puts a tracker on one of the Masterminds and figures out where their secret hideout is; but Stopwatch is way ahead of them, using a fake hideout and planting false clues in it, so when the Cadets search the hideout, they leap to the wrong conclusion about the intended heist.
  • Diamondback's plan for her Combat Final relied on Hekate backstabbing her — it would have worked out for both of them if she didn't, but would work much better for Sandra if Hekate decided to cheat. Kallysta obliging grabs the Villain Ball with both hands and pays the price for it.
  • She-Beast uses her duel against Nemesis to set up the Spy Kidz, by leaving a gap in her defenses that Nemesis could only know about if the Intelligence Cadets were spying on her (against the direct order of their faculty advisor) and passed it on to her opponent. Not only does she humiliate Nemesis, the Secret Squirrels get caught red-handed as a result.
  • The Bell Witch's plans for the Telechines' Astrolabe involved her getting the power and her daughter Nacht getting all the negative repercussions. Katie saw it coming a mile away and turned the tables on her.
  • Scapegrace manages to out-gambit three opposing supervillains and her own family, all with an eye toward achieving her desired Gender Bender transformation.
• In the historical novel Wings of Dawn: Waleran, spokesperson for not using the same gambit all the time, even when it does seem to be working.
• Witch King: This is The Reveal at the end. The protagonist Kai and deuteragonist Ziede were kidnapped and kept comatose for a year, which turns out to have been orchestrated by their dear friend Prince-Heir Bashat to prevent them from interfering with his plans to reform The Federation into The Empire. However, Kai had anticipated his aspirations five years earlier and already did the diplomatic work to ensure that the other leaders would vote down the plan. Bashat's ally is crushed to realize their betrayal was all for nothing.
• In The Witchlands, when Vaness is captured, she manipulates her captors to lead her towards Baedyed territory, as her recent (not yet publicly known) treaty with them should compel them to rescue her. Unfortunately, the Baedyeds aren't satisfied with the treaty and have already planned to murder Vaness, so the entire idea backfires on her.
• In Worm, Tattletale and Skitter outmaneuver Coil, having anticipated that he would betray them, and put him in a position that he cannot escape from, whereupon Skitter shoots him in the head.