History Main / TheMagicPokerEquation

* Subverted in [[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders part three]] of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure''. Jotaro, having never played a game of poker in his life, wins a game of poker against D'arby, an expert gambler, with not only his soul, but also the souls of his friend Polnareff and his grandfather Joseph as the stakes. Despite D'arby cheating to rig the hands, Jotaro manages to win with a bluff, psyching D'arby out using his FaceOfAThug and continually raising the stakes until D'arby can't risk calling it. After the game was over, Jotaro's hand was flipped over, and it was revealed that he had absolute shit. ... And humorously admitted that if he ''had'' looked at his cards, he would've freaked. Cue Avdol yelling at him.\\
D'Arby also seemingly takes pains to avoid this in the prior hand (assuming he was rigging it that well), where Jotaro is dealt two pair, which D'Arby beats with a simple higher two pair. Presumably, he wanted Jotaro to think the hands ''weren't'' rigged.

* ''Film/ABigHandForTheLittleLady'': In a high-stakes poker game, everyone gets monster cards on the same hand and raise the stakes to a huge pot, threatening to push sad-sack gambling addict Henry Fonda out of the game in spite of the fact that he thinks he's got an unbeatable hand. It turns out that [[spoiler:he's a con-man, but his con requires all of his marks to get huge hands at the same time. He, for his part, was running a stone-cold bluff and only wins because everybody else folds seemingly very strong hands]].

* Spoofed in the fourth ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' movie, "Into the Wild Green Yonder". Bender, who has a lucky robot's foot and always catches cards, and Fry, who can read minds, face off in the final hand of a poker tournament. Fry has two aces, but can't know Bender's hand because he didn't look at his cards. When it comes to showdown, Fry makes the absolute nuts, four aces, only for Bender to make five kings by being dealt a coaster called "The King of Beers".

** Comically [[InvertedTrope inverted]] when Mr. Burns wins a basketball team and millions of dollars in a single hand... which he wins with a nine-high. His opponent had an eight-high, which is one of the only two hands in poker (the other being seven-high) that it's ''possible'' for a nine-high to beat.
* {{Parodied}} in ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'' when Mariner, having been KickedUpstairs to a staff lieutenant position, has to take part in a senior staff poker match. She ends up going all in and winning just because she got frustrated with everybody else constantly folding.

* The concept of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_odds pot odds]] is almost non-existent in fiction, leading to players staying in the pot with very weak hands and catching their miracle card and win it all. This is often celebrated as a great play or the showcase of the true skill of the player, but in reality this is just pure dumb luck and a very safe way to go broke sooner than later. Also in draw poker, exchanging cards will often improve hands to a ridiculous degree, like having a small pair, exchanging three cards and picking up a strong full house or having nothing, taking four cards and improving to a straight flush.

* ''Film/{{Solo}}'': In Han and Lando's [[spoiler: first]] sabacc (think some weird hybrid of poker and baccarat InSpace) game Han gets a straight of staves, [[spoiler: but Lando pulls a card out of his sleeve and wins with a full sabacc. Before their rematch Han pickpockets Lando's sleeve and wins the Millennium Falcon fair and square.]]

* ''Film/{{Solo}}'': In Han and Lando's [[spoiler: first]] sabacc game Han gets a straight of staves, [[spoiler: but Lando pulls a card out of his sleeve and wins with a full sabacc. Before their rematch Han pickpockets Lando's sleeve and wins the Millennium Falcon fair and square.]]

* In ''Theatre/TheGrandDuke'', characters play a "Statutory Duel," a game in which the player who draws the lowest card is declared legally dead (letting them skip out of some unpleasant obligations). They fix the game ahead of time so that the loser draws a king and the winner draws an ace. CheatersNeverProsper, however, and at the end it's revealed [[spoiler:the ace is officially the ''lowest'' card]].

* ''VisualNovelDanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'': Celestia Ludenberg's Ultimate Gambler talent is explicitly ''not'' being good at probabilities and reading her opponents (she actually has NoSocialSkills) or even having a good poker face, she just wins every game of chance she ever plays because she's just ''that'' lucky.

* A term in the card game ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', ''mise'', sometimes refers to the critical gamewinning card drawn at exactly the right moment, usually without the aid of tutoring or library manipulating effects (unless you mise the ''tutor'' spell and use that to extract your winning card). Mising is referred to a ''lot'' in tournaments by article-writing professionals. Some pros have the superstition that mising happens more often during dramatic moments. It's a contraction of (the player) "might as well have" (drawn some specific obviously gamewinning card). There's also a joke card called Mise, which lets you draw three cards if you correctly guess the name of the top card of your library. The Unhinged version shows a rabbit monster using its own foot for luck while rolling dice, and the DCI promo version shows dogs playing Magic. The flavor text of the DCI version is: "Statistically mind-staggering as it might seem, the term "mise" was in fact coined simultaneously by over one thousand Magic players." In fact tournament level decks in Magic ''are'' more likely to draw the card they want than ordinary decks. Including cards that manipulate deck statistics is a critical part of design. A skilled player can often make decks in such a way that several cards in their deck can ''be'' the critical gamewinning card. ''Magic'' players going through their decks post-game might realize that the odds of drawing the card they need to win is rather high simply because, whatever the card, they could make use of it.

* Subverted in [[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders part three]] of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure''. Jotaro, having never played a game of poker in his life, wins a game of poker against D'arby, an expert gambler, with not only his soul, but also the souls of his friend Polnareff and his grandfather Joseph as the stakes. Despite D'arby cheating to rig the hands, Jotaro manages to bluff him out of the game by not looking at his hand, making it look like he ''might'' have used his powers to change his cards, adopting his usual poker face, and then continually raising until the stakes were just too high for D'arby to risk calling on. After the game was over, Jotaro's hand was flipped over, and it was revealed that he had absolute shit. ... And humorously admitted that if he ''had'' looked at his cards, he would've freaked. Cue Avdol yelling at him.\\

* Subverted in the first episode of ''Anime/RioRainbowGate'' when Rio won with a pair of Deuces. Her opponent was one card away from a flush or a straight but threw that hand away to try for four Queens. Needless to say it didn't quite work out that way and he only ended up with Queen-High.

** The Dean and Vernon each manipulate the cards in their final hand with both sides knowing the Dean is using a marked deck. Vernon deals the Dean two pair with one half of one pair in the hole. He deals himself a pair of jacks with a 7 in the hole. At showdown he flips up a third Jack for three-of-a-kind. The Dean flips over a Queen for a higher set and $2,000,000 pot. [[spoiler:The game was a con between the Dean and Vernon to rip off vernon's partners Tiffany and Charlie, who had each betrayed Vernon.]]

* In ''Rebel Dawn'', the last book of ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy'', Han wins the ''Millennium Falcon'' during the climactic hand of a sabacc tournament. His winning hand is "pure sabacc" - a hand of exactly 23, the second most valuable hand in the game. As a bonus, the cards used shift value at random, and Han's cards shifted from 0 (the worst possible hand) to 23 just before the final round of betting.

* In ''Franchise/StarWars: Literature/DarthBane: Path of Destruction'': The titular character is playing Sabacc against a Republic ensign. [[spoiler: They both get an Idiots Array (a two, three and an idiot) which would allow them both to win if the other hadn't gotten it. They both get a nine which was supposed to end the stalemate so Bane gets nine and the Ensign gets eight allowing Bane to win the hand and the pot. It is implied that this is because Bane is tapping into the Dark Side to change the probabilities.]]

* On ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode "The Goldberg Variation", the title character wins a mob game in this fashion. Which is actually justfified in-story, as he has ridiculous luck with the downside that something bad happens to someone nearby shortly afterward. He hoped to mitigate that problem by playing against mobsters, who probably deserved whatever they got.

* In ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'', Zeb is playing Lando Calrissian in sabacc and [[LostHimInACardGame wagers Chopper]]; both have hands which are implied in context to be very good: Zeb has a sabacc and Lando has an Idiot's Array (see Star Wars entries under Literature). Justified since Zeb wouldn't take a risk like that (and Kanan wouldn't back him up on it) unless he had something nearly unbeatable - but Lando still needed to win, [[AnthropicPrinciple or else there'd be no plot]] (it was strongly implied that Lando was cheating).

--> What was I supposed to do - call him for cheating better than me?

---> '''Dwight:''' Jim has a huge tell. Every time he has good cards, he coughs.
---> (Jim coughs, Dwight folds)
---> '''Jim:''' It's weird. Every time I cough, Dwight folds.

---> '''Michael:''' Why did you call there? I just went all-in without even seeing the cards!
---> '''Toby:''' I have a good hand.
---> (The dealer plays the community cards, Michael loses and stomps off.)
---> '''Toby:''' (To camera) I'm not much a gambler, but cleaning Michael out felt pretty good. I'm gonna chase that feeling.

---> '''Crooked Fight Promoter:''' That's a lot of dough-re-me, Kelly. I'm outta cash. What about these? (He reaches for something next to him.)
---> '''Drebin:''' No dice. (The CFP reluctantly puts away his pair of fuzzy dice.)

-->'''Stuart Millard''': Is it likely the producers wanted to prove that such an unbelievable hand could be authentically achieved, by re-doing the scene as many times as it took to draw the right cards for real? Perhaps there's a basement in NBC containing the reels for all 2.9 billion takes, which would explain why the cast were suddenly in their fifties at the end of the scene, with a now-bald Mario Lopez weakly proclaiming ''“I've got DVT, Preppy”'' from his backwards chair.

-->'''Chakotay:''' Battle stations!
-->'''Paris:''' ''(rushing to this seat)'' And I had a full house...

-->'''Velma''': Now where in hell did you get a royal flush?\\
'''Matron''': The same place you got four aces.

--> '''Tensaided:''' Well, it just goes to show that no matter how powerful and awesome one's deck is, there is always an element of luck with card games.

---> '''Commentator Randy Buehler:''' OH IT'S LIGHTNING HELIX! OH MY GOD!

* Subverted in ''Series/PoliceSquad'' During a poker game with the management of a boxer on the line, an undercover Drebin reveals his full house and starts to pick up the winnings. "Not so fast", one of the other players tells him. "I have a straight." Cue an argument about the rules of poker. (For the record, a full house does beat a straight.)
** The game also features a joke on the Open Stakes rule above. In a montage Drebin and a crooked fight promoter are tossing into the pot every type of currency from subway tokens to Monopoly money and property cards.
---> '''Crooked Fight Promoter:''' I'm out of dough-re-me. How about... (He reaches for something next to him.)
---> '''Drebin:''' No dice! (Cut back to the CFP holding a pair of fuzzy dice.)