The Gambler

"I never play nice, I'm the Devil's right-hand man!"

"You can think. Cards can't. They just lie there. You gotta make them work for you."

— Mr. Burt, The X-Files, "Improbable"

The gambler follows a card (or dice) theme, uses cards, dice, darts, coins and gambling implements as weapons, and is very well-versed in blackjack, poker, craps, slots, and all sorts of casino games. They rely much more on luck and cunning than on skill or outright power, and very seldom take it too hard on the occasions they lose, usually due to believing it was due to chance.

They tend to be slick, either elegant or gaudy, just like professional card players from the past, and are more towards lean and nimble than strong and resistant. One would be hard-pressed to find a particularly slow-witted person, or a grunt, in the position of the Gambler.

The entire theme around the gambler makes him usually either an Anti-Hero or an Anti-Villain, due to a view that they usually revere luck and chance over pledged allegiances, and that they will usually be too chaotic to be too specifically good or evil, with the Joker being a rather brutal exception to this rule. This trope is almost entirely populated by men, and it has been increasingly common as time goes by. See also: Death Dealer (using playing cards as weapons), as well as Born Lucky and Winds of Destiny, Change! (when the character has actual powers over luck).

In a video game, expect their skill sets to revolve around Gameplay Randomization even more than other characters, e.g. having Randomized Damage Attacks as part of their "luck" gimmick.

For actual gamblers, see The Gambling Addict or Professional Gambler.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Rein Sunamoto from Best Student Council, who serves as a member of the assault squad but fights by throwing playing cards. She once took out a basement full of paparazzi with them.
  • Also Rein's father, a traveling gambler who abandoned Rein at a young age, and who uses playing card sleight-of-hand to talk a troubled mother out of making the same mistake he did.
• Weaponized by David Swallow in Black Clover. He uses Dice Magic, with its power dependent on the number of pips rolled.
• Princess Chinchiro of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo Shinsetsu is a very rare female example of this trope.
• Kaitou Kid from Case Closed sometimes uses a gun (mostly in his own series, Magic Kaitou) that fires out razor-sharp playing cards. (That said, his day job is a stage magician.)
• Allen Walker from D.Gray-Man, who was raised to learn how to cheat in most of the perilous situations forced upon him by his master's heavy debts.
• Hiruma from Eyeshield 21 is interesting in that he gambles, is very good at gambling, but doesn't rely on luck. Instead, he uses his scary brain to take advantage of any situation. Or he uses his obnoxious personality to goad his opponents into losing. Or he counts cards. As long as there's a 1% chance he can win, he'll play.
• Tubalcain Alhambra from Hellsing OVA and manga is a vampire whose powers revolve around razor-sharp playing cards.
• Monaco and Macau from Hetalia: Axis Powers, whose descriptions and dialogue frequently allude to gambling. Monaco in particular is often illustrated surrounded by playing cards. Justified, as they're Moe Anthropomorphisms of places known for their casinos and gambling culture.
• Hisoka in Hunter × Hunter is first seen using playing cards to cut people with. When he has to go all-out against stronger opponents later in the series, we see him fighting using sleight of hand to trick his opponents.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • The D'Arby brothers from Stardust Crusaders, whose Stand powers allow them to take the souls of losers. Interestingly, the two use opposing styles: the elder brother, Daniel J. D'Arby, mostly makes use of cheating to win, and is very good at recognizing attempts by others to cheat as well. Daniel considers cheating to be an integral part of gambling, and that this still results in a perfectly fair game since his opponent (if they were good enough) could also catch him cheating and/or cheat themselves in a way subtle enough to avoid his detection. He's defeated by Jotaro performing the mother of all bluffs against him (no cheating happening). The younger brother, Terence T. D'Arby, relies more on actual skill at games and is a Living Lie Detector, so bluffing against him is impossible. So Jotaro beats him by cheating at the game and rubbing salt into the wound by saying Daniel would have seen through the cheat easily.
  • Kaato Higashikata from JoJolion, while never shown gambling, has several playing card motifs, such as her outfit having the back of playing cards on it, and her Stand taking the form of a deck of playing cards. Her name even sounds similar to the Japanese pronunciation of the word "card".
• The Gambling King from Ranma ½. He even has the same face as one of the king cards. Subverted as the Gambling King is an idiot who can only win against small children and the feeble-minded (i.e., Soun, but also Ranma, who can't keep a poker face to save his life.) Even then, he can only win by cheating, either through time-honored methods like hiding cards up his sleeves, to ceiling-mounted mirrors to spy on his opponent's hand, to using a motorized chair to drive behind his opponent and spy their cards from up close.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Jonouchi, naturally, uses quite a few cards that depend on chance, his deck having evolved from mostly Warriors with a few dice cards to one fully dependent on the chance-taking. (Although his dependence on it has gotten him in trouble a few times.)
  • Ryuji Otogi (Duke Devlin in the dub) follows a dice motif and likes to play games that heavily boil down to chance. Jonouchi's Duel Monsters deck gradually accommodated a few chance cards to balance his lack of powerful cards. There were a few times where either luck was not in his favor, or it was to the opponent's benefit.
  • Yugi's grandfather was also said to be a very lucky gambler when he was young, rarely losing. After winning every game of chance he knew of, he made a bet with himself that if he ever lost one, he'd retire, open a store, and wear overalls for the rest of his life. (At the time the series takes place, he runs a card shop and overalls are his standard attire. One can only assume he eventually lost.) He still made occasional small wagers, like betting his old friend Arthur a chocolate shake that he could find all the cards for the ancient Dragon combo before Arthur could.
  • One duelist who appeared in the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (who called himself "Boy" in the original, and "Pierre" in the dub) seemed to be so good at gambling that he drew a royal straight flush while playing poker. (In actual poker, the odds against getting that hand are astronomical.) However, in Duel Monsters, he wasn't very lucky at all, needing a card that gave him two chances at a coin toss in order to use any card that depended on chance; when he tried to use his Fairy Box Trap without said card, he blew it.
  • Charlie McCoy in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL was a duelist with cards that relied heavily on chance (most of them with a one-in-six chance of success), but had a rather unfair advatage: a Number card that gave him supernatural luck. He lost after Yuma discovered the clause that broke the spell it bestowed on him.

Comic Books

• 100 Bullets has an entire story arc is devoted to a dice throwing conman named Chucky.
• The Joker, from Batman, downplays this trope quite a bit in that he usually only dresses like a joker, and in that he's a sociopath. He does use the occasional playing card gimmick, however.
  • While we're on Batman, there's Two-Face, who does everything based on a coin flip. Also evil, though he is prone to flip back and forth at times considering his core gimmick and woobie backstory.
• The Flash: Double Down, a hard luck Professional Gambler who was cursed. Now he can turn his skin into razor sharp, magic playing cards, and speaks in gambling metaphors and puns.
• The aptly named Gambit, from X-Men, energizes playing cards to explode on impact and tosses them with precision at his targets. He could use anything if he felt like it (various incarnations have used chains, billiard balls, and an overturned bus), but playing cards are both convenient and stylish. The explosion is proportional to the size of the object, so cards, poker chips and other thematic objects are consistent and controllable.
  • That, and other adaptations of the character show that his fondness for cards and gambling isn't just for show. He's had both a sleight of hand and a history of indulging in card games on occasions. It all fits with his general risk-taking personality.
• Green Arrow: Death Dealer is a mercenary that uses playing cards as his motif and employs these cards as weapons and as trick cards.
• Green Lantern: The Gambler is a Golden Age villain and Master of Disguise who gets by mostly on luck. His grandfather was a riverboat gambler and bandit, and the primary inspiration for his villainous turn. He committed suicide after losing at a rigged casino. His grandchildren, the second Gambler and Hazard, follow much the same gimmick, though Hazard has luck powers.
• JLA (1997):
  • The Royal Flush Gang has always had a playing card motif, but not so much gambling... Except the Justice League version, who first appeared in an episode that took place entirely in Las Vegas. They were also Shout Outs to the Teen Titans.
  • In the Silver Age, two gambling aliens named Rokk and Sorban force Superman and The Flash to race to the edge of the galaxy and back, so they can settle a bet on which one is fastest. To keep things interesting, they imprison the rest of the Justice League, and promise to destroy the home city of the loser. (It turns out these are actually two of the Flash's arch-enemies, disguised as the aliens—who are back on their home planet betting on volcanic eruptions.)
• Justice Society of America foe Roulette is a rare female version.
• An occasional Spider-Man villain is Nick Powell, aka Chance. A high-demand Professional Killer who has become incredibly wealthy from his career, he not only loves to gamble, but has a unique way of billing his clients. He doesn't charge a fee at all, but rather wagers with a client against his success. To Chance, winning or losing a gamble really means nothing; it's the thrill of the gamble itself that matters.
• Villainess Casino from The Ultraverse. Her preferred weapons are razor-edged playing cards.

Films — Animated

• Writer and producer Tim Burton and director Henry Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas has Oogie Boogie, who is shown to base his actions off the roll of a die when torturing his captives. He also has a couple of game-based traps in his dungeon: a giant spinning roulette platform, monolithic cards with swinging swords, one-armed bandits with guns, and the base of spinning propeller blades resembles an 8-ball. Like The Joker, another rare example that manages to be outright evil - he even admits to being ready to cheat in his Villain Song.

Films — Live-Action

• Although the gambler was originally a villainous character in Westerns, Captain Thunderbolt steals from the rich to feed the poor. He even humiliates the Evil Brit colonialist officials by beating them at cards.
• Luo Tian-guang, the protagonist of the martial arts film The Casino, is a drifter and gambler who stumbled upon the titular casino, that turns out to be owned by Shanghai's most ruthless gang, and after rolling the dice once too many, ends up being knee-deep in a mob war.
• Ace, one of the gunfighters in the Quickdraw Tournament in The Quick and the Dead, is this, mixing card motifs, gun tricks, and lots of pompous boasting.

Literature

• Le Chiffre from about all versions of Casino Royale is something of a mathematical genius who uses his smarts to gamble about. It's when this doesn't work out so well for him that Bond steps in to deliver the killing blow.
• Matrim Cauthon from The Wheel of Time, a compulsive gambler so famously known for his impossible luck that when he becomes a general dice are on his standard.
  • Mat is almost a subversion of this, noting that he's so supernaturally lucky that games of chance don't really qualify as gambling. He's naturally pretty good, but a side effect of his Weirdness Magnet trait ramps this up, so much so that none of his friends will play cards or dice with him.
• Phileas Fogg from Around the World in Eighty Days makes a wager that he can circumnavigate the globe and make it back to London in exactly 80 days with contemporary 1870s modes of travel.

Live-Action TV

• Sneaky Pete: Marius and, to a lesser extent, Eddie, are gamblers.
  • Marius plans on running away at the very last minute to Pete's Aunt's place and pretending to be Pete. There are many hitches associated with this plan and Marius works with what he has and deals with problems as they arise. The whole thing was a huge gamble but it did pay off in the end.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): Steinhart from "The Grave". When he joins Johnny Robb in betting that Conny won't visit the grave, he describes gambling as his business. He seems to be good at it, as Mothershed says that the reason he can't bet either way is because Steinhart won too much of his money in a card game before Conny arrived.

Music

• Gorillaz: "Sweepstakes" turns Big Bad Sun Moon Stars into a villainous gambler, playing with the lives of the people who make bets with him.

Professional Wrestling

• WCW had The Gambler, a generic-looking wrestler whose only references to his alleged gimmick were 1) a satin ring jacket with "The Gambler" embroidered on the back, and 2) playing cards that he flashed at the camera before his matches. In later years he upgraded his ring attire, actually dressing as a riverboat gambler, but his perennial jobber status kept him from portraying the character with any more depth than that.
• Before the Gambler, there was Vinnie Vegas, who wrestled in WCW in 1992, using a finisher called Snake Eyes which The Undertaker still uses to this day. Vinnie was briefly part of Harley Race and DDP's stables before leaving WCW to become...Diesel.

Tabletop Games

• Deadlands: Hucksters are mages who cast spells by playing poker with demons, and most of their spells are card-themed.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • 3rd Edition has the Fatespinner and Luckstealer Prestige Classes. Both require training in the Profession (gambler) skill and have class features that revolve around manipulating both the players' and DM's dice rolls (which usually involves increasing/decreasing the difficulty of rolls or simply forcing rerolls).
  • 5th Edition has the Wild Card subclass for Rogue, which is centered around gaming sets that grant a Wild Card's Gambit to benefit the Rogue in various ways. The subclass also, at later levels, allows the Rogue to both escape while damaging their enemies within range and swap initiative orders with any one character they can see.
• Geist: The Sin-Eaters: Sin-Eaters of the Forgotten Threshold, having been offered their Bargain on account of their death by random chance, often pick up a gambling motif. That "the Curse" is one of the common Manifestations available to all Sin-Eaters is just icing on the cake.
• Kingdom Death: An entity by this name serves as the core monster of the People of the Dream Keeper campaign, where the survivors of the settlement are in his service and under his protection. He seems fond of finding ways to cheat the normal flow of the game.
• Pathfinder:
  • Nivi Rhombodazzle is the goddess of gamblers and games of chance, reveling in the thrill of uncertainty in the moment when a wager is made and the dice are cast. Her worship is most common among those for whom chance and uncertainty are major factors in life, and she's worshipped and prayed to through real or symbolic bets and wagers.
  • The Dealer is a character class by third party publisher Orphaned Bookworm Productions. They use combat cards as weapons; those are sharpened cards of bone, wood or steel that can be thrown like shuriken. They also get luck points which function similar to the grit of the Gunslinger and Swashbuckler classes. As long as they have luck, they get special abilities and can perform "Gambit" maneuvers in battle.

Theatre

• In Twice Charmed, Franco DiFortunato uses gambling motifs in his wordplay and songs.

Video Games

• Bug Fables gives us Carmina, a velvet ant Professional Gambler who has gambling as her primary motif. Besides her design featuring the Playing Card Motifs, she also uses playing cards and dice as a weapon, and she uses a roulette to determine what happens at the start of her turn.
• Sneff, from Chrono Cross, throws playing cards at his opponents, and two of his moves revolve around playing cards: Big Deal, in which he tosses an entire deck, and HP Shuffle, in which he shuffles the three numbers that make up his HP (091 might become 910, 901, 190, 109, 091 and 019).
• King Dice from Cuphead is the wicked, die-headed manager of the Devil's Casino. Although he works as an enforcer for the Devil, he does enjoy making bets with him. He bets that Cuphead and Mugman won't succeed in getting the soul contracts that the Devil wants, and when they do, he is not happy. He proceeds to fight Cuphead and Mugman, forcing them to play a dice game and fight his Quirky Miniboss Squad of living gambling paraphernalia.
• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Celestia Ludenberg got into Hope's Peak as the Ultimate Gambler because, despite being a high-schooler who has to gamble illegally because she's too young for anything legal, has made a name for herself by consistently winning gambling tournaments and cleaning out anyone who challenges her.
• Ace Visconti from Dead by Daylight is a charming old guy with a silver tongue who loved to gamble before he was taken by the Entity to it's realm.
• Nero from Devil May Cry 4 has several moves named after gambling terms (Double Down, Maximum Bet, Roulette Spin, High Roller), so he could technically count. Plus, he's the only one who has to play that damn dice game...
• In the MMORPG Dofus and its sequel Wakfu, the Ecaflip class is a based partially around gambling (with attacks that involve throwing cards or rolling dice, and spells that have completely random effects), partially around their feline nature. The class symbol is a single die in Dofus and a pair of dice in Wakfu, and their special class outfit is decorated with playing cards and card suits (including a cape that's just a giant ace of spades). Even their name is the French for "heads or tails" backwards.
• In The Elder Scrolls series' lore, Sai, the Deity of Human Origin God of Luck celebrated in the Iliac Bay region, is associated with gambling. Sai was Born Lucky, with the uncanny ability to spread good luck to others but not to himself. After he was killed in battle (while all of his fellow soldiers survived), he was resurrected and granted immortality by Ebonarn, the Iliac Bay War God, so that he may continue to spread his good luck and help to balance the world. "Sai's Disease" is essentially gambling addiction. Those afflicted are driven to incessant gambling, seeking proof of Sai's favor.
• Setzer, from Final Fantasy VI uses cards, dices, darts and slots in his attacks. His airship is named Blackjack. And he joins the party by losing a (rigged) coin toss. This clip shows how badass a Setzer can be: he's a wispy, Silver-Haired Bishōnen that sails his airship at top speed, unfazed by the wind as he stands at the rudder, who destroys a heavily-armed gunship by tossing a few sharpened cards at it. Ante up, indeed.
  • Final Fantasy VII has no distinct character classes, but Cait Sith can be considered a Gambler for the fact that his two Limit Breaks are based on rolling dice and spinning a slot machine, respectively.
  • Final Fantasy X's Wakka is normally the ranger of the group, being the only character capable of using long-range weapons. His Overdrive, however, involves spinning three reels to give him an attack with an added element or effect.
  • In Final Fantasy X-2, the Lady Luck Dressphere grants gambling-themed abilities such as Bribing Your Way to Victory, magical dice that damage enemies, increasing luck, and even Auto-Abilities that help with grinding. The main gimmick of this Dressphere, however, comes in the form of its Reels. Depending on the type of Reels used, she can use moves associated with other jobs. Once you've got the timings down, you're just owning things left and right with 7-7-7 being, more often than not, an instant win for battles.
    • Attack Reels: Shin-Zantetsuken is a group-wide One-Hit Kill, so she will make mincemeat out of any enemy not immune to instant death. Armor Break, Power Break, and Excalibur (which inflicts Holy-elemental damage) are learned by the Warrior, but with Lady Luck, you aren't lumbered with a slow-moving tank.
    • Magic Reels: Casting high-level White Magic (most importantly Auto-Life) and Black Magic (that being Flare and Ultima) is just a big "FU" to bosses.
    • Item Reels: She becomes an Item Caddy for rare items like Dark Matter. Megalixir+ and Mighty Guard+ are superior versions of anything the Alchemist or Gun Mage can muster up.
    • Random Reels: CONGRATS! alone makes using this Reel more than worth it thanks to its ability to automatically end most, if not all, regular encounters on top of free Gil and items.
  • Final Fantasy XI has Corsairs, who are gambler pirates. Word of God claims that they went this route due to market research revealing that gambling has a negative connotation in the US. Their Phantom Rolls boost specific stats by random amounts, and can be improved through a blackjack-like mechanic.
  • Ace from Final Fantasy Type-0 uses cards as his weapon and most of his abilities involve drawing cards in order to create some sort of effect. He has one ability that randomly allows him to attack, restore HP, or restore MP. He also has four other abilities that increases the likelihood of drawing a certain type of card for attacking, support, HP restore, or MP restore.
  • The Trickster class in Final Fantasy Tactics A2, who throw playing cards and use magical chants to, for instance, convince opponents that they've been poisoned (which is the same as poisoning them). The Tricksters fought in the mission to unlock the job are all dimwitted thugs though.
• Joshua in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, though he just has no luck at it. And he's a swordsman, so he doesn't use cards or such.
  • Although he is a swordsman in a class which specializes in critical hits, aka luck, in terms of actual gameplay mechanics.
  • Also we don't get to see much of his gambling luck; he knows how to cheat very well, even using normal coins.
  • In Path of Radiance is Makalov, whose only interests are gambling and doing as little work as possible.
• Johnny from Guilty Gear is one. He attacks using coins and his Instant Kill move turns the opponent into a Joker card before he slices them in half. Additionally, some of his move names have a gambler motif to them.
• Kingdom Hearts II - Luxord, the Gambler of Fate fits this trope to a T. He uses card based attacks, minigames which award currency, and his power to control time to engage Sora in a very unorthodox time-based battle involving timed reaction commands. He also possesses an advanced vocabulary and a classy British accent, which give him an air of sophistication. If one is skilled enough in his minigames, he can be defeated easily even in his data rematch in the game's remake, as his normal attacks are not much of a threat, and losing the minigames results in Forced Transformation. Of course, as the minigames in the data rematch can be quite difficult, Cutting the Knot may be advisable in some cases by just attacking him normally and/or using Reflega when he tries to lure you into a minigame.
  • The same goes for the Nobodies under his command - the appropriately named Gamblers. Gaining victory over them in their minigames causes them to take damage and drop currency and items.
  • The Juggle Pup Dream Eater in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] is a lesser example of this, rolling a die for one of their primary attacks, which will then proceed to attack a random target (be it friend or foe) based on which side lands face up.
• Oswald of The King of Fighters uses playing cards to cut his opponents. The names of his special moves are the names of suits and some cards (up to the level of Shaped Like Itself in the official movesets). The name of his Leader Desperation Move is Joker, and one version of his Four Suits DM hits, ideally, 21 times (an important number in blackjack, a card game). Furthermore, his color scheme is the one of playing cards: Black suit, red shirt (not that kind of red shirt) and glasses, white hair, and yellow tie for the details in the figure cards.
  • Just to drive the Gambler point home, he has a move called Ace that could either do very little damage and expose him terribly to his enemies, or done right, end with these.
    • This even extends into the game's soundtrack: "Joker" is the New Hero Team's theme (Oswald is on this team, by the by), "Queen" is the Rival Team's Theme, "King" is Adelheid's theme, and "Jack" is used for some sub-bosses.
• Twisted Fate of League of Legends is a mage with abilities named after gambling terms, many gambling-related quotes, and throwing cards as his primary weapon. One of his signature abilities is picking between three cycling colored cards to determine his next attack's effect. His ultimate ability shows the opponent's hand, so to speak, by revealing all enemy locations and allowing him to teleport a huge distance to either ambush a lone foe or escape from impending danger.
• In Left 4 Dead 2, Nick used to do this before the infection hit.
• Ronfar from Lunar: Eternal Blue uses dice and cards in some of his special attacks. Interestingly, he used to be a priest before indulging in games of chance.
• Mega Man X: Command Mission has Spider, who has the look of a gambler with a "well-dressed card shark" design motif with gloves, folded 'sleeves', tailcoat, and his nice hat. He also uses cards as his weapon, and his Limit Break requires a combination of luck and knowledge of five-card poker. The better your hand, the better the resulting attack will be. Oddly enough, he is never shown actually gambling, and while he'll make references to his cards, he mercifully spares us from any bad gambling puns.
• The South Korean's head honcho, Agent Mitchell Buford, in the first Mercenaries title. The folksy CIA man enjoys spinning Poker metaphors, beginning with the struggle for Kaesong which Buford warns they "can't afford to lose this early in the game." He later takes to calling you the "ace in the hole" and your final assignments the "last hand." This is contrasted with Buford's Chinese foil, Colonel Peng, and his love for chess metaphors.
• The Gambler class of trainers in Pokémon Red and Blue and their bowdlerized equivalents in later games use effective, inaccurate moves and Action Bomb attacks to fit their signature of relying on luck.
• Genjuro Kibagami of the Samurai Shodown series of fighting games uses gambling as his sole source of income. He is, apparently, an avid player of Hanafuda, and cards from the game figure heavily (though it would seem figuratively, at times) into many of his moves.
• One of the three semi-final bosses of Shadow the Hedgehog is an Eggman robot called the Egg Dealer, which selects its attacks slot-machine style... a fact that can easily be turned against it.
  • Eggman actually does this a lot. In Sonic X, he had all of his robots on cards, which he then stuck into a slot machine to pick which one to use. Also note that every single one was situation appropriate, and this was practically Once per Episode.
  • In Knuckles' Chaotix, Metal Sonic first fights by inserting himself into a large roulette nearby (which is normally used to pick stages to visit next). Four of the five spaces cause weapons to come out and attack the player character if the roulette lands on any of them, with the fifth disabling one of them. You have to disable all four weapons to defeat him.
• Tai Ho, member of the 108 stars of destiny in the first two Suikoden games. An unapologetic Deadpan Snarker, you must prove your luck to him via gambling in order to advance the plot of at least one of the games, and in the second game you must beat him at gambling in order to recruit him.
• Super Mario Bros. has some examples:
  • King Boo seems to have a love of gambling. In his debut in Luigi's Mansion the keys to the various parts of the mansion have playing card suit motifs. Later, in Super Mario Sunshine, he hides in Hotel Delfino's casino, where he battles Mario while holding a water-powered slot machine that can summon enemies, coins, or fruit.
  • Funnily enough, his worst enemy Luigi seems to have developed this in Super Mario 64 DS: the green plumber's whole mini-game gallery revolves around casino games he organizes himself.
• In Super Robot Wars, gambling is a frequent bad habit of Kyosuke Nanbu. He doesn't really use card-based attacks, but his Humongous Mecha's strongest attack is called "Trump Card" and his catchphrase is "I don't mind betting on the tough odds!" Of course, "the devil's luck" is practically his superpower, and he's frequently seen surviving impossible odds. Presumably, Fanon dictates he doesn't do too badly in poker either.
  • What's odd about Kyosuke's luck is it's mostly a plot-centered mechanic: it only kicks in during scripted events, and isn't a game mechanic like the "Luck" Spirit Command^*Doubles money earned for one attack, doesn't really fit this theme or the "Lucky" pilot skill^*When activated, the character automatically evades or makes a critical hit, regardless of normal chance to hit other characters carry.
  • Haken Browning from Spin-Off Endless Frontier makes up for every card and gambling pun Kyosuke didn't get to make. His attacks have names like Texas Hold'em, Five Card Stud and Jackpot, uses exploding cards in some of his attacks and his Overdrive involves switching his gun to "Klondike Mode". Unlike Kyosuke, however, he apparently cheats: one of his exclusive accessories is called "Loaded Dice". Naturally, after he met him, he plays with Kyosuke from time to time in The Moon Dwellers.
• Patty Fleur, of the Tales of Vesperia PS3 remake, uses many luck based skills and attacks, most notably her Mystic Arte, where you have a chance to heal everyone, max out everybody's Over Limit, or summon Barbatos to punish allies and enemies on field while also disabling items, amongst many other things. Also notable that it takes on the look of a gigantic roulette table with poker chips all around.
• Invoked with Whiskers from TinkerQuarry. His Essence, Risk, looks like a die.
• Before the zombie outbreak hit, Javier Garcia from The Walking Dead: Season Three was a professional baseball player and gambling addict whose addiction eventually got him kicked out of the major leagues.

Webcomics

• Homestuck: Vriska Serket is an interesting variation on this. She fights with a set of eight Infinity+1 Tabletop RPG dice, the Fluorite Octet, in keeping with her characterization as a quite literal Killer Game Master who loves high risk games of chance. The dice execute a wide range of highly unpredictable attacks when rolled. Her dice once belonged to her Famous Ancestor, leader of a fleet of pirates known as "Gamblignants", famous for their obsession with pure chance. They eventually died out because they took too many crazy risks. Although in her case, it's not really much of a gamble because she has all the luck. ALL of it. She can literally steal luck away from other people, making bad outcomes happen for them and good outcomes happen for her.

Web Original

• On the Dream SMP, Quackity plays into this throughout his "Las Nevadas" arc, being a cunning, manipulative man who takes high risks for high rewards, and is associated with poker to boot, though it should also be noted his persona during this arc is at least partially crafted on trauma.
• Tetras in The Motley Two (a fanfic of sorts of Homestuck), a descendant of Homestuck's Vriska, as described above. She also uses Wild Magic dice as weaponry, though her IMPERIAL DUET has powerful effects with both extremely low and extremely high rolls. Which is good, since she's unlucky and tends to roll low.

Western Animation

• On Batman Beyond, the Royal Flush gang were a villainous team example who modeled themselves off of playing cards. A different version was featured in a Justice League episode.
• Toad Liu Hai from DuckTales (2017) runs a casino named "The House of Lucky Fortune", enjoys making bets, and has a gambling theme in general, including magic that manifests in the form of play cards, as he is a spirit of chance and fortune that feeds on people's luck.
• In one episode of Jackie Chan Adventures (specifically, an episode parodying the James Bond series), Dr. Necrosis' Dragon had power over playing cards, and always spoke in metaphors and puns related to them. "The deck is stacked in our favor! We have the upper hand!" "Dealer calls a new game!" "I thought he folded..."
• The young squirrel in Frank Tashlin's Looney Tunes short "Now That Summer Is Gone" does this to his fellow young squirrels, in spite of his father's warnings not to on the threat of corporal punishment. When on his way home from the bank to withdraw some nuts for the winter, the young squirrel is tempted into a game of chance with a stranger only to lose it all to him. When the kid returns home and lays on a huge lie to his dad that he was attacked and robbed, dad reveals that he was the stranger.
  • Bugs Bunny can do no wrong at gambling but only using this Karmic Trickster ploy to get even with who wronged him or to deal with malcontents.
  • No money is exchanged in 1951's "Early to Bet," only a gullible cat's dignity and personal health. The Gambling Bug's bite gets the cat involved in a game of gin rummy with a bulldog, but every time he loses, he has to suffer physical punishments based on where a "penalty wheel" lands.
• Ezekial Clench of Samurai Jack was a Wild West style villain with a slight playing card motif; The spurs on his boots were shaped like spades, he had a card in his hat... Oh, and his cybernetic hands, the wrists of which had the playing card suits on them. The hands had a special ability depending on which suit was facing up. He's also a Bounty Hunter, and on the run from his ex-wife, so luck is a big deal to him.
• Poker-Face, from SilverHawks. His weapon is a staff that releases a card-suit shaped laser. His eyes are slots that change to match the occasion ($ signs when thinking about money, for instance).

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