History GambitRoulette / Literature

** Easily demonstrated in ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' with the original plot to destroy the Atreides, which they themselves are aware of and attempt to counter; while that doesn't immediately work and Duke Leto is killed, the basic Atreides plan is basically what Paul then uses later to not only claim his birth-rite as Duke but also take the throne. The fact that Paul even survives is due to the plan of TheMole Dr. Yueh, who anticipated that the Baron would not keep his word and wanted revenge. Not to mention Baron Harkonnen's own plans for the throne.

* ''Franchise/MistbornTheOriginalTrilogy'':

* In the ''Literature/DreamPark'' novel ''The California Voodoo Game'', Dream Park's security team catches on that one of the Game's tournament participants isn't playing fair and theorize that he's attempting a BatmanGambit to throw the win to Army. However, the suspect can't realistically expect to do this, given the sheer number of variables involved, which would make it this trope instead. As it turns out, the suspect is plotting another crime entirely, and only set things up to ''look'' like an attempt to fix the Game in order to deceive an [[UnwittingPawn accomplice]].

* In Niven and Barnes's ''Literature/TheCaliforniaVoodooGame'', Dream Park's security team catches on that one of the Game's tournament participants isn't playing fair, and theorize that he's attempting a BatmanGambit to throw the win to Army. However, the suspect can't realistically expect to do this, given the sheer number of variables involved, which would make it this trope instead. As it turns out, the suspect is plotting another crime entirely, and only set things up to ''look'' like an attempt to fix the Game in order to deceive an [[UnwittingPawn accomplice]].

** Exploited with the Infinite Improbability drive, a faster-than-light travel drive that relies on the fact that, from a quantum physics standpoint, it isn't ''entirely'' impossible for an electron to suddenly be several light years away- just unfathomably unlikely. By the same logic, it's not impossible for an entire atom to do the same thing. The Infinite Improbability Drive works by manipulating probability so that nigh-impossible things happen, specifically [[UpToEleven causing every atom in the entire]] ''[[UpToEleven ship]]'' [[UpToEleven to appear on the other side of the galaxy, exactly where you want to be]].

** Cassie's surrender of the blue box. She lets Tom steal it from Jake, counting on the gut feeling that giving Yeerks morphing power will cause mass defection in their ranks, as a Yeerks trapped in morph will have no need to feed from the Yeerk pool and thus no longer depend on the Empire. However, she doesn't reveal this to have been her intention until after the defections start happening, making it seem like impossibly good foresight (or worse, Cassie hedging her bets, since if it ''didn't'' pan out she could always fall back on the excuse she used before of [[CainAndAbel trying to keep Jake from killing Tom]]. Not to mention her plan created a ton of risks and threats that the Animorphs didn't have to worry about before, such as an ''entire army'' of morph-capable warriors as opposed to just one. While the roulette ultimately comes up in her favor, it exacts a heavy cost in life, culminating with [[spoiler:Rachel's death.]]

* ''Literature/TheHost'': Jared initially believes everything Wanderer does is proof that she's secretly a Seeker trying to infiltrate the group. This starts to annoy the others since he keeps it up way too long and even Jared starts to realize how ridiculous he's being.

** Easily demonstrated in ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' with the original plot to destroy the Atreides, which they themselves are aware of and attempt to counter, while that doesn't immediately work and Duke Leto is killed, the basic Atreides plan is basically what Paul then uses later to not only claim his birth-rite as Duke but also take the throne. The fact that Paul even survives is due to the plan of TheMole Dr. Yueh, who anticipated that the Baron would not keep his word and wanted revenge. Not to mention Baron Harkonnen's own plans for the throne.
** Leto Atreides II in ''Literature/ChildrenOfDune'' becomes Emperor on the strength of a plot that pits him against his father, aunt, and grandmother, all of whom are or were operating their own {{Plan}}s. The prize is absolute domination of humanity's future. The plot involves Leto faking his death, which was anticipated by both Jessica and Alia. Jessica sets up a test to see if Leto is possessed, which Alia knows about and infiltrates with her own instructions to have Leto killed no matter what. The method of their testing: overdosing him with spice, awakens Leto's prescient memories and forces him to choose his vision of the Golden Path without which humanity is doomed. Leto then confronts his father, Paul, who had earlier faked his own death in order to escape the curse of prescience, and wrests control of the vision from him, then proceeds to take the throne, killing Alia and utterly humiliating every other participant in the GambitPileup.
** Leto II then continues the trend in the [[Literature/GodEmperorOfDune next book]], which picks up at the end of his 3,500 year reign as God Emperor and details an incredibly complicated plan whose final goals are to produce a breed of human who is immune to prescience and to wean humanity off of its dependence on oracles. Furthermore, the product of this breeding program is intended to kill him in such a manner as to guarantee the continuation of the sandworms and the spice. ''Further'' furthermore, he manipulates human culture and society for 3,500 years to push humans to invent synthetic spice and no-ships (ships which shield the occupants from all prescience), to scatter to other parts of the galaxy upon his death, ensuring the survival of the species and ending their total dependence on the planet Arrakis (spice was previously only available from Arrakian sandworms, and necessary for all space travel). He succeeds on all counts.

** Also in ''Deathly Hallows'', Dumbledore's method of getting Harry to find the Hallows relies on random encounters - for example, Hermione only recognised the symbol in her book because she happened to meet Luna's dad at Fleur and Bill's wedding. The same goes for Harry finding out [[spoiler:he is a Horcrux]]; if he hadn't been there when [[spoiler:Snape died]] he would never have [[spoiler:made his HeroicSacrifice and Voldemort would've stayed immortal]]. To be fair, [[spoiler:Snape]] was supposed to tell Harry - that's why he asks that Voldemort send him into Hogwarts during the Battle - but didn't do so in time. That is why he is scared when [[spoiler:Voldemort tells him that he is going to kill him]] - he thinks he has failed. No excuse for the symbol, though Dumbeldore [[HandWave handwaves]] it by mentioning that Hermione wouldn't rest until she knew what it meant, so he assumed she would work it out ''somehow'', just not necessarily from Xeno Lovegood.

* ''Literature/MasterOfTheFiveMagics'', by Creator/LyndonHardy, has a heroic version. The fate of the world depends on a thaumaturge solving the puzzle of a castle in order to find an alchemical solution which will lead to a magical sphere which, when completed, will lead to the study of sorcery. After that, he has to come close enough to the chamber of a wizard in suspended animation to recognize the location, then awaken the wizard. Among the things that make this truly roulette: alchemy is a magical gamble, where one thousand starts can end in two successful potions, or none; getting the magical sphere correct depends on recognizing a faint difference, correcting the ritual for it, and finishing the crafting before the sphere explodes; the only reason Alodar is anywhere the tomb is because the ship he's on sinks nearby; and the plan finishes with what amounts to, "Hopefully, this person can save the world."

* A very common occurrence in [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks]]'s ''[[Literature/TheCulture Culture]]'' novels. The Mind {{AI}}s are frequently do this, especially when it comes to the activities of the Culture's two interventionary groups, Contact and Special Circumstances. May potentially be a subversion because Minds can think in Hyperspace and are so ridiculously intelligent and powerful that they can pull off such a plan easily.

* In Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/TheManWhoUsedTheUniverse'', we are given a human protagonist whose plan spans decades and encompasses both humanity and their greatest enemy. He grows up a poor orphan, often pushed around an beaten. His plan involved [[spoiler:becoming a brilliant newcomer on the criminal scene on a planet he was unknown on, staying utterly loyal to the crime boss of the planet so everyone would see he was trustworthy, makes himself so good that the Boss decides to get rid of the possible competition, determines exactly when the time comes for the Boss to kill him and kills the Boss instead (though it was stated that he had alternative plans if the Boss had just been loyal right back), steals all the access codes that control the gang's money so that they all agree to let him be the new Boss, is so good at it that is able to make their organization richer and more powerful than ever before, then go legit by betraying all but one man (his top people were given the offer to join him in going legit, but he couldn't tell them his plan, so they all rejected the offer to go legit too except one loyal man) to the police in exchange for the authorities declaring he was always a police mole and letting him keep the money, using his ill-gotten gains, his new social stature, and his new legitimacy to become a manufacturing magnate building ships for a war against humanity's alien enemy, locates an even greater threat to both humanity and their enemy who is far away enough that they won't be a threat for years or even centuries, plans an alliance to alleviate this threat and so protect both sides, uses his foreknowledge of this plan that is protecting humanity's enemy to allow him to get past a mind probe to see if he has or will betray humanity's enemy, thereby convincing the aliens to trust him implicitly as a mole (they only verified that he would be loyal to them, not that he would betray humanity, and since he planned on saving both sides he was arguably loyal to both), used his government contracts along with contacts on both sides to build a secret fleet of robot ships disguised as the greater threat he had discovered, built a fleet of real ships, went into battle with the robot ships thereby apparently saving both humanity and their enemy, burned off his leg to make himself a war hero, (adding some Xanatos Speed chest when his one loyal man suffered a heart attack, turning him into a war hero to show how much the protagonist had suffered in the battle), thus forging a lasting alliance between humanity and its current enemy that would be the real tool to save both sides from the actually existing greater threat when it finally reached their area of space, and used his incredible stature to back peace projects to ensure that the alliance would last and fulfill the part of the plan that he had needed to believe in to get past the mind probe.]] He did this just so that [[spoiler:he would be so respected that nobody could ever tell him what to do again]], then retired. His obsession was so great that when he married, [[spoiler:he chose his wife for how much she could forward his plans, then divorced her when he fell in love because that would give her too much power over him, driving her to suicide.]]

** Martin's actions in ''Literature/{{Changes}}'' play it straight. He engineered an incredibly complex plot, betrayed his entire organization and his closest allies, and became a ''triple'' agent in the hope of a grand masterstroke that would destroy his enemies. It ended up working, but if Harry hadn't been able to take on the ''entire'' Red Court, or if the Red King had stopped grandstanding for just ten seconds, it would have failed completely.

* ''Literature/NightWatch'': Revealed to be the entire point of the first two books in the series (''Night Watch'' and ''Day Watch'' respectively).

*** His monologue to Sansa in ''AFeastForCrows'' reveals Littlefinger to more of a XanatosSpeedChess player: he knows that he wants to get from point A to point B and does whatever he can to sow discord, trusting in his ability to thrive in the chaos, even if the chaos accelerates his desired timeline.

*** Once Cersei gets a point of view in ''AFeastForCrows'', the reader sees just how many of her attempts to be a {{Chessmaster}} go off the rails. In hindsight, the fact that her murder of Robert seemed to go according to plan is less proof of her ability to manipulate the world around her and more a combination of luck and [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality the necessity of setting Ned's death in motion for the story]].

** In ''Literature/AfterTheFuneral'', the entire murder plot hinged on every single member of the family not recognizing their own aunt at Richard Abernethie's funeral and believing that Richard had indeed been murdered. Even when one takes into account that none of the family members had seen their aunt in a long time, it still doesn't explain why they didn't notice that the murderer - with whom they spent several days in the same house - looked almost exactly like the 'Aunt Cora' they had recently seen at the funeral. It also stands to reason that after the real Cora's death, a family member would have to identify the body, thus exposing the deception. The murderer's plan to poison themself so as to appear innocent could also have colossally backfired.

* ''Evil Under the Sun'': The murderer/s not only rely on synchronizing their movements according to a very precise schedule, but also arrange for the body to be "discovered" before the actual murder takes place, while the unsuspecting intended victim is hiding nearby. There are a number of ways that could have gone wrong...

* ''After the Funeral'': Miss Gilchrist's entire plot hinged on every single member of the family not recognizing their own aunt at Richard Abernethie's funeral and believing that Richard had indeed been murdered. Even when one takes into account that none of the family members had seen their aunt in a long time, it still doesn't explain why they didn't notice that Miss Gilchrist - with whom they spent several days in the same house - looked almost exactly like the 'Aunt Cora' they had recently seen at the funeral. It also stands to reason that after the real Cora's death, a family member would have to identify the body, thus exposing the deception. Miss Gilchrist's plan to poison herself so as to appear innocent could also have colossally backfired.
* ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'' by Creator/AgathaChristie involves a person who not only wants to kill 10 people who got away with a crime, but to do it in a certain order (from least horrible crimes to most horrible), and to make the deaths fit a [[PoeticSerialKiller nursery rhyme that he/she happened to like]]. So many things had to go right: if a certain victim had not died last or had shot rather than hung himself/herself under psychological stress, or if someone had seen the killer after his/her "death", or if the doctor had been less gullible, or if a sea storm had not sprung up, preventing any rescuer from reaching Indian Island, or if the killer's body had not rotted enough for the time of death to be uncertain, etc., that it was almost impossible for everything to work out perfectly in the end. Yet it did. With the occasional PlotHole added into it, such as the gun having only the fingerprints of the last person to touch it, despite its owner also having handled it.
** TheFilmOfTheBook does away with the silliness with the result that the killer's plan ultimately fails, and the last two intended victims survive.
** There is another TheFilmOfTheBook (USSR, 1988) which repeats the book with one exception: in the end the killer, instead of wiping away all clues, just shoots himself/herself.

* Creator/FredSaberhagan's ''Literature/BookOfSwords'': The character of the Emperor (who also appears in companion series ''Literature/BookOfLostSwords'') is shown to be very nearly omniscient in his plans, including fathering several children to various otherwise unimportant women around the known world, some 10 years before the events of the first book. Justified since the Emperor is [[spoiler:G-d]].

* Successfully executed by TheChessmaster of ''Literature/TheAssassinsOfTamurin'', but without pushing WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief, due to the years of effort she puts into it and the fact that she's crazy.
* Subverted in the Literature/BelisariusSeries where Belisarius's answer to a Gambit Roulette is to keep adding pieces and confusion to the board until Link doesn't know whether it's coming or going. Also subverted (although not entirely successfully) in that Belisarius claims not to calculate in depth but instead to cause confusion and take advantage of the opportunities that arise from this.
* In Fred Saberhagan's ''Literature/BookOfSwords'', and companion series ''Book of Lost Swords'', the character of the Emperor is shown to be very nearly omniscient in his plans, including fathering several children to various otherwise unimportant women around the known world, some 10 years before the events of the first book. Justified since the Emperor is [[spoiler:G-d]].

* ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'': Hari Seldon plans 1000 years of history culminating in a new galactic empire and sets it in motion by creating an encyclopedia. He does this by using a fictional science called psychohistory which is calculating the probability of a specific development of the happenings based on how large masses of people reacts. The psychohistory is not exact and can fail to give an accurate prediction (ultimately it does, but Seldon created a second foundation in the case of anything not going along the plan) which only adds more to the Roulette part of the trope.
** This 7 book series is part of a much bigger plan by the psychic robot that lives in the Moon.
*** There are something like 3 different factions of psychic telepathic people (or robots) capable of predicting the future and manipulating it by subtly twisting people's minds and by carefully manipulating certain key individuals into situations where they'll behave in predictable ways, and all of them believe that they are the ones who are secretly controlling everything. The Second Foundation that's using the First Foundation as puppets to create their ideal future, the Gaia-like hivemind that is using the Second Foundation itself as their puppets to create its ideal future, and the robots themselves.