The Gambler – These are a hard to predict, an often unreasonable group of people – Especially when they’re against you. When they’re on your side, you’d best consider what their actions are carefully, as one moment you could be riding around with a thousand gold, but then the next only have one piece left! Nevertheless, the gambler likes the payout – So if you’ve ever wanted to get a gambler on your side, consider who you’re hiring into your team and appreciate our Top 10 Gamblers in media.
Top 10
10) Danny Blue – Hustle
We thought we needed to at least begin the list with a series of films about gambling, but then we went one better. The BBC show Hustle was full of hustlers who would gamble for a living (or just for fun, really). They usually gambled alongside people to hustle them out of a lot of money – Usually targeting people who were not due the monies they received, such as other con men, or businesspeople who robbed innocents blind.
Danny Blue was the original and ultimately, one of the most loved characters from the cast of Hustle. In dramatic turns, Danny would often be involved in the more dangerous parts of the hustle, often making you fear for his safety. Granted, this is a series about con men, so you have to expect an element of risk. It only makes it in at number 10 due to the lack of geekiness, but hey, this was a damn good series which I’d heavily recommend you check out – As formulaic as the series could tend to be.
9) Geralt of Rivia
A slayer of monsters, hero of kingdoms and saviour of the people, Geralt is a superhuman subjected to extreme chemical mutation to make him the ultimate killing machine, purpose built to take down creatures the likes of which no mortal man should be able to confront. But he’s still human, and to remind us he comes equipped with a catalogue of vices. Drinking and drug abuse are harder for someone already pumped full of chemicals, but sex and gambling are always fun.
Because nothing says Hero of the Realm quite like taking a break every few hours to play dice with an old mate. Sometimes it’s a great way to juice someone for info, put them at ease while you subtly squeeze information out of them. Sometimes it’s a useful way to bankroll a new batch of potions, or maybe some books you need. Sometimes you just need to play games with money on the line because what else are you going to do while you’re drinking?
8) Faye Valentine – Cowboy Bebop
With a wanted bounty on her head, Faye Valentine is one of the members of The Bebop, the titular spaceship from the amazing anime, Cowboy Bebop. She’s self-centred and aloof, usually pretty lazy, letting everyone else get their hands dirty whilst she just relaxes. However, she’s not had an easy upbringing, which isn’t too unfamiliar a story to some of the crewmembers of the Bebop. However, she was hit pretty hard.
She was a gambler, an alcoholic, deeply addicted to smoking cigarettes and cigars and much more. She’s seductive, even though she doesn’t feel the trust in actually developing meaningful relationships – In fact, anything she can do to get ahead of the game, she will. Putting her in at number 8 feels a little low for the character, however even though we’re aware of how much of a gambler she is, she’s not necessarily defined by it. She’s definitely enough of a gambler to be included in this list.
7) King Dice – Cuphead
When gambling is your way of life, being the manager of a casino is the ultimate experience. However, what happens when you’re the manager of the Devil’s Casino? You become King Dice, of course! This die-hard-die-head is not only swanky in appearance, but in his persona too. He’s a casino manager from a bygone era, liking to get involved in the hustle and bustle of his nightlife, rather than sitting back and keeping an eye on the establishment.
Beat King Dice at his own game, literally, as he pulls in sentient cards to do his bidding. Along with this, with the roll of a D6, he can decide what your fate is – However, really, he’s not all that tough. But, the fact that he not only rolls dice at you, throws cards your way and seemingly is hiding plenty of aces up his sleeve, he’s not that hard. Well, compared to some of the bosses in the game. Great theme, though!
6) Luxord, the Gambler of Fate – Kingdom Hearts II
Fitting the Gambler moniker to a tee, Luxord is a devious member of Organisation XIII and is able to manipulate time and force people to play timed games. If his opponents fail to do this, then they suffer. Simple, really, as it’s a gamble for people to learn how to do this in their allocated time.
Throughout the games, we see Luxord playing games at tables, such as games of cards. The luck element of the games are the most thrilling aspect, so the gambler of fate as he’s well known as is hard to predict. There’s not much more to say, other than this guy knows how to use his words to not only confuse Sora and friends, but he can bind people into contracts they didn’t realise they were making.
5) Quark – DS9
While the Federation may be the picture of sweetness and light, the outpost Deep Space 9 has a rather flagrant seedy underbelly and criminal element centred around Quark’s, a bar named after its Ferengi owner and bartender. While the bar flaunts a legitimate front-of-house facade, no one is oblivious to the underhanded business transactions going on behind the scenes.
Nevertheless, dabo and tongo tables are a popular draw, and Quark is known to play a little himself, a fairly safe bet because he is the House, so wins one way or the other. We list Quark as a gambler, but he’s certainly more of an enabler, preferring risky business to dumb chance, and he’s also pretty merciless when he’s being cheated.
4) Harvey Dent/Twoface
The county prosecutor willing to flip a coin with your life. Harvey Dent rarely plays with odds other than 50/50, but even his own plans can be undone by his own obsession with duality and obedience to the coin toss. He’s grown more cruel and cunning over time, ensuring a no-win scenario no matter which of the outcomes is chosen.
For Dent, money is rarely on the line, preferring to play to higher stakes, human lives or a whole city for example. It makes for a somewhat unpredictable foe, but considering he’s sat across the table from the Batman he’s usually one of the easier villains to deal with; the rules of his game are simple, win/lose, live/die.
3) Twisted Fate – League of Legends
A swindler to the nth degree, Twisted Fate is one of League of Legends longstanding characters, as he was first introduced in February 2009 – He was one of the originals!
Even his ability names are a perfect fit for this Top 10 – His abilities are:
- Loaded Dice: Upon killing an enemy, Twisted Face rolls his lucky dice and getting bonus gold.
- Wild Cards: Throws three cards that deal magic damage to each enemy unit they pass through.
- Pick a Card: Cast once to shuffle, then cast again to choose a card. A blue card restores mana, red card damages units around the target. Gold card stuns enemies.
- Stacked Deck: Which increases his attack speed and does additional damage.
- Destiny: Can teleport anywhere on the map (within a large radius) and see everyone.
Picking Twisted Fate isn’t a huge gamble, but the gambler is well known and well loved within the community. Plus, he looks pretty cool!
2) Oogie Boogie – The Nightmare Before Christmas
The sound of rolling dice to me is music in the air. Cause I’m a gambling Boogeyman, although I don’t play fair.
Deep beneath land of Hallowe’en there’s a monster feared above all others. He still plays by the rules of the king, but he’s not interested in a fun and frightening All Hallows Eve, he’s just here to terrify, and send shivers down your spine. He’s Mister Oogie Boogie, he’s the meanest guy around, and he lives in a twisted fantasy casino.
With Santa strapped to his roulette table, he hosts his live stage show complete with swing music and death threats. Through it we get a tour of his backlit Las Vegas, complete with one-armed bandits that actually shoot you, pillars of dice and the skeletal remains of those who tried to cheat the house.
1) Gambit – X-Men
The clue is in the name, and in the playing cards into which he pours raw energy creating the concussive pulses of force that may be more iconic to the Cajun mutant’s character. Remy is also a career criminal, thief, assassin, also Death himself for a time.
The cards for him may be a throw-away, he considers the Queen of Hearts his “lucky lady” so he always keeps her for last. He’s a hustler at pool, a haunt at the poker table, but plays with the hearts of women more often than he does with cash. Given that he’s a crack shot with literally any object he casually picks up, darts may be a little unfair, but I should imagine he’d lose a lot of his winnings buying replacement boards.
Honourable Mentions
Ah yes, these gamblers and swindlers sure know how to capitalise on their successes. However, we have some more entries which we realised the decks were stacked against, however we’re cashing in on all these two more honourable mentions.
Telltale Poker Night Guests
Your favourite game and cartoon stars take a night off murdering or solving murders to sit down to a few hands of poker. Telltale’s other big gameplay style put a handful of well known faces around a table, to chat about life, and unlife, and adventure, while rinsing each other for cash. I mean, it’s just a regular poker game, but damn they went all out to make it more entertaining.
Oh, and also you can win a whole lot of useless but mildly interesting items for Team Fortress, Borderlands, and consoles, real life stakes! That means you’re on the list too! You filthy gambler you, with your nonexistent buy-in and entirely cosmetic winnings. (gambleaware.org)
Sonic – Sonic the Hedgehog
What do you mean that Sonic isn’t a gambler? He’s a huge gambler. I don’t care what you say, you can’t convince me otherwise. Want proof?
The above video is the Casino Zone. Yes, you were able to gamble big. Sometimes you’d be robbed of all of those hard earned rings and other times, you’d be rewarded for your gamble. Ultimately, this was a hugely creative zone which just about everyone remembers. And it’s not like there is only one instance of Sonic gambling, either.
No matter what you think, both Joel and I figured this was a perfect honourable mention. We’re certain that supersonic blue hedgehog is going to end up with a gambling addiction, as he has to fund his dirty habit of eating chili dogs.
Put your cards away and stop hiding that ace up your sleeve, for we’ve come to the end of the bidding stage. All bets are in, so now we leave it up to chance to see whether or not you’re going to be a winner. If you’d like to hit the jackpot, you totally need to vote for next week’s Top 10 list:
Thanks for joining us as ever, we hope you’ve not come out of this Top 10 penniless. However, what do you think about our Top 10 Gamblers? Do you think we’ve got the good ones in, or do you think we missed out some of the best Gamblers? Did we get the order right, was Gambit supposed to take top spot? As ever, let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or over on Facebook or Twitter.
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