YMMV / Spike's Gambit

• Awesome Music: The author put together a top-notch soundtrack of modern and classic songs.
• Designated Hero: Spike can be seen as this to some readers as they are greatly put off by his arrogant and stand-offish attitude, his need for revenge against Impossibly Rich, and most of all, the way he treats Twilight throughout the story.
• Faux Symbolism: Spike wearing a groom's tuxedo in a game of closed poker against Chrysalis. That is all.
• Growing the Beard: The plot grows darker when Impossibly Rich makes her appearance.
• Moral Event Horizon: Impossibly Rich's killing Spike's birth mother.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In "King Killer", Spike and Moon Dancer planned to overthrow Flim & Flam. However, it is never mentioned again after that. It would've been an interesting subplot with Spike working with the brothers in taking down Impossibly Rich, while at the same time he and Moon Dancer would secretly plan a coup on them.
    • It is, however, briefly touched upon in "New Looks and Pep Talks."
      Soarin: Just for curiosity, how did you figure this was a job for former casino employees? Why didn't you just get some regular heist guys?
      Moon Dancer: For the best reasons. One, a man with a criminal record can't get near Las Pegasus, much less the casinos.
      Pharynx: And how did you fit into all this?
      Moon Dancer: I was the planner. I'm the one who dreamed this whole scheme up, but not how to do it though. That's why I asked Spike; he worked out the tactics and the coordination.
  • Spike finding out that he's the Sparkle Siblings' half-brother, as well as reeling from the fact that his birthmother may not have been the pure, good-hearted patron saint he thought she was, would've made a pretty interesting plot twist. But nope, it was just a lie made up by Impossibly Rich to keep Twilight under her thumb.
• The Woobie: Even before this story began, Twilight started out trapped in a low-paying job and crap lifestyle, and she got a taste of the high life only to have it knocked from under her in the most brutal fashion, got up to her neck in gambling debts, got disgraced and repeatedly beaten (humiliated) by an old rival, isolated her family and friends, got arrested for a crime she didn't even commit, and ends the story without any benefit from her efforts.