History Main / FixingTheGame

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* ''Literature/AngelsOfMusic'': In "The Mark of Kane", Kane has set up a casino where all of the games are rigged. He plans to use it to secretly distribute funds to his LegionOfDoom to allow them to put in motion their various schemes that will tip Europe into war. The Persian and the Angels re-fix the games so that all of the cash flows back to the casino. Needless to say, this does not go down well with the collected fanatics, zealots and madmen, who now think that Kane is trying to humiliate them and rip them off, and start extracting suitable vengeance.
* ''Literature/NickVelvet'':
** In "The Theft of the Lucky Cigar", Nick is hired to steal the cigar that a high roller keeps, unlit, in his mouth during a regular high stakes poker game. The client is convinced that the gambler is cheating and that the cigar is part of it. After stealing the cigar, Nick discovers a small vibrator in the mouthpiece. The gambler has a spotter placed on the opposite side of the room, who transmits the opponents hands via code through the mouthpiece with the gambler sensing the vibrations through his teeth.
** ** In "The Theft of Nothing of All", Nick gets caught up in a scheme to rig the drawing of the state lottery.
* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
** "Skifters" are Sabaac cards that can be made to change faces whenever the holder wishes, as opposed to when the deck's randomizer triggers as normal. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian are infrequently accused of using them.
** In ''[[Literature/TheGloveOfDarthVader Zorba the Hutt's Revenge]]'' Zorba wins Cloud City from Lando in a Sabaac game using cards marked with UV symbols on the back, which Hutts can see.
* The magician Caleb from ''Literature/TheRealBoy'' sells enchanted decks of cards that can be used to cheat, labelled "strictly for entertainment." It's illegal to use magic while gambling for money, so Caleb sells magic detection systems to casinos, and doesn't tell the owners that his own cards will go undetected.

* One episode of ''Series/{{Psych}}'' featured a ProfessionalGambler who got cheated at poker. Shawn then figures out that the game must be rigged, then he figures out how.
* Series/{{Angel}} accidentally lost his destiny and got stuck at the slots, feeding in money. Cordelia gave the machine a psychic nudge and Angel won.
* On ''Series/TheMentalist'' Jane is a skilled cheater though he usually just prefers to use mind tricks to win. In one episode he is banned from a casino for counting cards and later [[spoiler:tricks the murderer into implicating himself by beating him in a poker game. When the guy asks how Jane did it, Jane says "I cheated"]].
** Unlike the ''Film/{{Casino}}'' example and many others, when Jane is caught memorizing cards (which he's very good at doing), the head of security politely tells him that he may keep his winnings, but that he is no longer welcome at their establishment. After all, there's nothing illegal about remembering things.
* ''Series/{{Unforgettable}}'': the lead character has an [[PhotographicMemory Eidetic Memory]]; in an establishing moment she gets in trouble at an illegal casino for counting cards. She is presumably banned from all the legal casinos on the East Coast.

* ''Series/TheDukesOfHazzard'': One time the Dukes took on a crook with a Travelling Casino in the back of a semitruck. They rigged the roulette wheel and had Uncle Jessie play when they blew the horn.

* ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' features a poker game involving this in the episode The Two Horse Job as the team cheats a corrupt horse owner out of the only horse that he had left after burning down his own stable for the insurance payout.
* In ''Series/{{Tracker}}'' 'Eye of the Storm', Nestov uses his natural alien intelligence to do mathematical analysis and use it to cheat on the game he was playing.
* In the episode of ''Series/{{Monk}}'' where he goes to Vegas, he is able to consistently win at Blackjack at the suspect's casino, despite the dealer using multiple decks. Finally, the suspect declares him a card-counter and has security drag him out. Of course, Monk is naturally this observant, which is the reason why he's such a good detective.

* An episode of ''Series/NUMB3RS'' deals with a card-counting ring made up of college students. Then one of them ends up dead. Naturally, the feds suspect the casino manager. Turns out, [[spoiler:they were laundering drug money with the casino manager being in on the deal, only two of the students decided to come clean, and the third one wanted to get rich]].
* ''Series/{{Hustle}}'': In "Clearance From A Deal", the gang stage an elaborate con in order to fix the outcome of a roulette game.
* On ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', Felicity gets caught counting cards at a casino. Subverted in that [[spoiler:getting caught was part of the plan to infiltrate the casino and plant a bug on the owner's computer]].
* An early ''Series/MissionImpossible'' episode has the team break the bank at a casino owned by a dictator (who is forced to pay their winnings with money he'd set aside for an arms deal) using various cheats to rig the games in their favour, including a device that can measure where the ball on a roulette wheel will land before bets are closed.
* ''Series/TheDoctorBlakeMysteries'': In "Against the Odds", a bookie attempts to fix the results of the Ballarat Cup by arranging for the jockey riding the favourite (who is TrappedByGamblingDebts) to throw the race.
* ''Series/{{CSI}}'': In "Lying Down With Dogs", one of the suspects in the murder has been drugging the dogs involved in the [[BeastlyBloodsports dog fights]].
* ''Series/JessicaJones2015'': Kilgrave [[MindRape cheats]] at poker by simply ordering every single player to go all-in, and then telling them to all fold simultaneously, making him the winner by default. One of the players, who had annoyed Kilgrave earlier by lighting a cigar, confronts him as he's leaving to demand his money back. To which Kilgrave tells the player to [[HeadDesk bash his head repeatedly against a solid wooden column]].
* In one episode of ''Series/IDreamOfJeannie'', Roger cheats at craps by instructing [[OurGeniesAreDifferent Jeannie]] beforehand to make all of his dice rolls show a 7 or 11. It works swimmingly until Jeannie makes one of his dice rolls show ''double'' 7s.
* Nathan, from ''Series/{{Misfits}}'', uses his ''new'' powers (basically minor RealityWarping in the form of close-up magic) to do this in Vegas (in the webisode that shows what happened to him after he left the show). Like the ''Series/IDreamOfJeannie'' example above, it works pretty well until he makes an 11 [[TooDumbToLive with a 4 and a 7]].
* ''Series/BlakesSeven''
** In "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS2E11Gambit Gambit]]" while Blake and the others are playing hero, Avon and Vila play hooky to rob the [[ViceCity Freedom City]] casino with the help of MagicalComputer Orac. The casino owners then try to get their money back by conning Vila into a DeadlyGame.
** In "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS3E12DeathWatch Death-Watch]]", two planetary systems use a CombatByChampion in lieu of warfare. One side cheats by using a RidiculouslyHumanRobot that is [[RobotsAreJustBetter faster than its opponent.]] Actually the real plan is to expose the fraud and start a war for real. So before this can happen Tarrant challenges the android to another duel, and again Orac is used to hack into the computers so Tarrant knows which battleground he's entering, giving him a momentary advantage in setting up an ambush.
** In "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS4E11Orbit Orbit]]", two {{Mad Scientist}}s are playing VariantChess. When one gets checkmate, the other is suspicious and has the computer replay the last few moves, revealing that the 'winner' cheated.
* In the ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' episode "Double Down", the key to the mystery was that the General's injured son and his friends were rigging craps games, and the son wanted to go straight. The way they managed to keep uncaught was to not get greedy: they'd win one round with the loaded dice, then a second with the loaded dice while doing a double down to get a substantial amount of money, then switch back to using fair dice to cover up the cheating.
* In one flashback scene in ''Series/PersonOfInterest'', Finch tested the still in-development Machine's prediction algorithms by having it call his plays in blackjack. After winning a quarter of a million dollars in a single evening, he deliberately went against the Machine's advice and lost most of it in one hand to make it look like he was just a guy who had a lucky streak that ran out.
* In the ''Series/StarskyAndHutch'' episode "The Omaha Tiger", Huggy Bear runs mouse races. He gives the winner of each race a piece of cheese, and the extra weight causes it to come in last during the next.
-->'''Huggy Bear''': And that's how I fix- how I set the odds.

* Upon completing the BonusDungeon of ''VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria'', the plans of the GreaterScopeVillain for both that game and ''VideoGame/TalesOfZestiria'' -- which takes place in the same world but chronologically after ''Berseria'' -- are revealed to have been set up by the villains so that they would win. [[spoiler:The original seraphim made a bet with seraphim that descended down to Earth that seraphim couldn't live peacefully with humans. The stakes were that if the original seraphim won the bet, they would destroy both humanity and the descended seraphim; if the descended seraphim won, the original seraphim would leave both them and humanity alone. However, the originals cheated by placing a curse on the world that would cause humans who were exposed to too much malevolence to become daemons, and seraphim who were exposed to too much malevolence to become dragons. This effectively made it impossible for the descended seraphim to win the bet, plunging the worlds of ''Zestiria'' and ''Berseria'' into endless misery because the original seraphim didn't want to believe that humanity and seraphim could coexist.]]

* In ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'', Twisted Fate's passive is Loaded Dice, which grants him 1 to 6 gold for each kill. True to his character and the nature of loaded dice, he has a higher chance to roll high numbers. "Never lost a fair game of cards. Never played one either."

* The antagonists in ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeedPayback'' are a [[TheSyndicate syndicate]] called "The House", who control nearly every backroom deal and and high-stakes game in the [[VivaLasVegas Vegas]]-[[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed esque]] city of Silver Rock. By the start of the game, they've expanded their operations to rigging illegal street races for high rollers to bet on, paying off certain racers to [[ThrowingTheFight take the fall]] for others and [[spoiler:giving high-performance [[AutonomousAutomobiles self-driving car]] tech to the racers under their sway]].
* ''VideoGame/DungeonKeeper 2'': Running a Casino in your ElaborateUndergroundBase provides a valuable boost to your evil minions' morale but can become quite expensive, so you have the option of rigging the games to favour the house. Doing so makes your minions very unhappy when they catch on, so a {{Pragmatic Villain|y}} does this sparingly.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' centered on a plot by the Scarecrow to raise a lot of money gambling on sporting events ([[TheGimmick guess]] [[IKnowWhatYouFear how]]). He even drops the title "I fixed the games."
* Chode in ''WesternAnimation/TrippingTheRift'' tries to pull this on The Devil to buy time but Satan, being, well, ''Satan'', anticipates it and demands they play a variant of poker where the ''lowest'' hand wins.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Lisa's First Word", Krusty Burger becomes a sponsor of the Olympics, and runs a promotion with a scratch-off contest where customers win a free burger when America wins a Gold Medal. To be safe, his agent rigs the game so that the events on the tickets are the ones "Communists never lose." Unfortunately, [[DidntSeeThatComing the Soviet boycott of the Olympics]] means he loses a fortune because of it. (This is actually a ShoutOut to an actual UsefulNotes/McDonalds Olympic promotion which was just as ill-conceived.)

* In the ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' episode "Dungeons, Dungeons & More Dungeons", Grunkle Stan is playing the titular game for Dipper and the Author's lives and has to roll a natural 38 in order to beat the last monster. After he pulls it off, it turns out he attached a piece of gum to the opposite side of the die.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'', Arthur buys a ''Trivial Pursuit''-like board game. After his friends keep beating him at the game, he rigs the game by hiding its easiest question cards up his sleeve and then secretly placing one of them on top of the card pile whenever it's his turn.
* ''WesternAnimation/MrBenn'': In "Balloonist", Mr. Benn gets involved in a balloon race only to discover that one of the competitors, Baron Burtrum, has sabotaged all the other balloons, including Mr Benn's, which he has tied to a drain pipe.

* Daniel J. D'Arby of ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'' is a known gambler who has managed to hoard a number of souls, but the heroes discover that he's more than willing to cheat ("NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught" is his motto) after he captures the souls of Polnareff and Joseph. Jotaro manages to defeat him by psyching him out: D'Arby has a seemingly random little kid (who actually works for him) deal the cards and give Jotaro a crap hand. Jotaro gives a subtle demonstration of his [[FightingSpirit Stand]]'s incredible speed and keeps raising the pot his bet higher and higher, making D'Arby wonder if he'd used Star Platinum to change his cards faster than the eye could see. When the stakes get too high for D'Arby (Jotaro says that if he wins, D'Arby has to tell them about [[BigBad DIO]]'s Stand), the strain is too much and he "admit[s] defeat in his heart" -- and then it turns out that Jotaro didn't change his cards at all and still had the same crappy hand.
** This also comes up against D'Arby's younger brother Terence, who uses video games instead of games of chance. Terence's Stand allows him to mentally ask yes-or-no questions and read the answer in his opponent's soul, which allows him to outflank Kakyoin in a racing game. Jotaro pulls the psych-out again while trying to suss out D'Arby's Stand power, placing his hat so it blocks D'Arby's view of his face, but when that doesn't change the outcome he gets a good idea of what D'Arby is capable of. So he has Joseph use his Stand Hermit Purple to input entirely different commands -- so even though Jotaro ''intends'' to throw a fastball (and thus that's what D'Arby's Stand tells him), Joseph changes it into a curveball, rendering Jotaro completely unreadable and leading to his victory. And just to add insult to injury, Jotaro even delivers the elder D'Arby's motto after his trick is revealed.
* Weaponized by Sontenkun in ''Manga/SoulHunter'': inside his PocketDimension, opponents who accept his challenge and lose are tranformed into toys he can control, and only by beating him they can return to normal. However, since the dimension is under his control, no matter the game, he will always win. The heroes have to TakeAThirdOption with a rather [[CuttingTheKnot gordian solution]].
* ''Manga/KarakuriCircus'': [[DeceptivelyHumanRobots Automaton]] [[MeaningfulName Jack Gambler]] is a FatBastard who claims that he can only be fought by gambling against him in various games, and enjoys humiliating his opponents as they lose, boasting about his luck. However, as Ming-Xia finds out, luck means nothing against him, since he can actually control the result of each gambling game going on, so she just slugs him in the face with a Qi-powered punch while he's tossing the coin for the last bet.
* ''Manga/GambleFish'' is about an international illegal gambling ring where even ''presidents'' bet the fate of their organizations and countries on anything from TheMostDangerousGame to the flip of a coin, and the academy they funded to teach their kids how to gamble lives and futures away. Naturally, (almost) everyone cheats their way through the games.

* In ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'', cheating at cards is the rule rather than the exception. A poker game in a Lucky Luke comic will rarely result in getting anything else than either aces or twos at your hand.
* ''WesternAnimation/LaffALympics'' #13 (Marvel, January 1979) tells that Dread Baron and Dick Dastardly are brothers. In a flashback it shows them playing poker as kids, each trying to out-cheat each other by pulling out and displaying endless aces. Dread Baron pulls out a box with a million aces ("Acme Aces--for the discriminating cheat").
* ''ComicBook/{{Chassis}}'': Organized crime largely controls the betting on the Aero-Run, and their attempts to influence the outcome of races is a constant threat in the series. In the second miniseries, Chassis discovers someone among the select circle of high-rollers is fixing races.

[[folder:Films -- Animation]]

* In a FreezeFrameBonus in ''WesternAnimation/Madagascar3EuropesMostWanted'', all four penguins are playing cards with each other, and all of them (only three hands are shown, but it's easy to infer that Rico also had the same hand) have five aces.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* In ''Film/{{Hallelujah}}'', Hotshot has a pair of loaded dice that he uses to cheat Zeke out of his bankroll.

* The titular location of ''Film/TheCasino'', being owned by the mob, uses loaded dice to scam its patrons.
* ''Film/{{Rounders}}'' features gambling and two best friends. One is a ProfessionalGambler. The other is a cheat.
* ''Film/OceansEleven'' is a heist movie, but more than one person is a cheat. Danny finds Rusty teaching poker to celebrities. As soon as Danny sits down, the two of them rook the kids for a couple grand. Just for fun.
** The plot of the [[Film/OceansThirteen third film]] itself is the crew doing this to all of the games in Banks' casino after he screwed over one of the TrueCompanions. Not only do they get the money back but finacially ruining him[[note]]If the casino didn't make back the money Banks borrowed to build it opening night, he'd get kicked out of his own company.[[/note]].
* Brick Top likes to run crooked boxing matches in ''Film/{{Snatch}}''. Turkish doesn't which is the reason people like him. Then he ends up in debt to Brick Top. Unfortunately, Mickey doesn't know how to take a dive. And he ends up betting on himself, reversing the fix.
* Qui Gon Jinn in ''Film/StarWarsEpisodeIThePhantomMenace'' uses the power of the force to cheat at dice with Watto. Although the die used was already loaded in the first place.
* The Polish film ''Film/WielkiSzu'' is a story of a young man who becomes an apprentice to a cheater. It contains a quote that might serve well here "We played fair. You cheated, I cheated, the better man won."
* In ''Film/BadLieutenantPortOfCallNewOrleans'', the main character catches a star college quarterback buying pot and blackmails him into shaving points on his next game. [[spoiler:The quarterback can't go through with it and fakes an injury to get out of the game, but his team fails to beat the spread anyway.]]
* ''Film/TheCasino'': The titular casino is a scam used to cheat gamblers of their money, with the dice used being [[https://renklisheyler.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/the-casino-1972/the-casino-1972-beat/ loaded with weights]] to fix dice rolls.
* In a flashback of ''[[Series/ThePhilSilversShow Sgt. Bilko]]'', the titular character (played by Creator/SteveMartin) is known for rigging games and fights. He makes a deal with one of the fighters to take a dive, but his assistant screws up and pays the wrong fighter, who assumes that the payoff means that ''he'' should take a dive. The other guy then assumes that he'll be paid after the fight. The result is both guys circling each other for half an hour, afraid to land a punch. Finally, one of them punches the other out of habit... and both fall down. When Bilko's superior Thorne starts investigating, he finds the payoff in a locker belonging to the second fighter and confronts him about it. Just then the reporters burst into the locker room and take a picture that makes it look like Thorne is the one paying off the fighter. Thorne gets ReassignedToAntarctica and comes back bitter and itching for revenge.
** Naturally, since the movie is about Sergeant Bilko, he's portrayed as a good character, even though he does many illegal things for fun. Meanwhile, Thorne is merely trying to show Bilko for what he really is. Obviously, the film has to show Thorne going overboard and performing even more illegal acts than Bilko in order to establish him as the villain.
* In ''Film/TheHangover'', Alan reads up on card counting while they're driving to Vegas. When they quickly need a large sum of cash to [[spoiler:rescue their friend]], Alan suggests they win it at the casino. He starts counting cards and ends up winning the money. When the security is moving to get him, his partners fake a health problem to divert the guards' attention, allowing Alan to get away.

* In ''Film/SaveYourLegs'', Mark deliberately throws the match against the toymakers.

* In ''Film/ThingsChange'', Gino convinces a mobbed-up casino to let his friend Jerry win a game of roulette so that the old man gets a thrill before going to prison. Unfortunately Jerry inadvertently lets all his winnings ride and earns a huge jackpot that Gino will have to find a way to pay back.
* Unsurprisingly pops up in the poker tournament in ''Film/{{Maverick}}'', with Coop going around pulling players' hidden aces out and then throwing them overboard. Then it comes up in the final round when Maverick notices the dealer drawing cards from the bottom of the deck, and demands a new deck, dealer and shuffle.
* This turns up quite a bit for Film/JamesBond:

* ''Film/AustinPowersInternationalManOfMystery'' follows along the Bond parody by having Number Two cheat at blackjack by using the x-ray scanner embedded in his eyepatch to read the next card in the deck, hitting on 17 to make 21.
* ''Film/TheScarOfShame'': Louise helps Eddie win at poker by carefully manipulating the mirror in her compact to let him get a look at the other players' cards.
* ''Film/DestryRidesAgain'': Kent the crooked saloon owner, with help from Frenchy TheChanteuse, is scarfing up land in the valley by luring gullible ranchers into poker games and then cheating.

* ''Film/TheSting'' has Henry Gondorff joining Doyle Lonegan's poker game aboard a Chicago-bound train, and he's on a run. Lonegan tries to use a loaded deck after a break, and when hands are called, he has four nines. Initially, Gondorff had a hand of no value, but when he shows his hand, he has four Jacks. When Donegan asks Johnny Hooker (who is sent to collect his winnings) how Gondorff won, Hooker merely says, "he cheats." (How Gondorff cheated is never explained or demonstrated, but as a con artist himself, it's rendered academic.)
** Earlier it was explained that Lonegan's game used two possible brands of cards and it was known that when he cheated, he tended towards 8's and 9's, probably to make the cheating not appear too obvious. It was simply a matter of Gondorff using sleight of hand to switch in the proper cards.
* ''Film/TheBargain'': The roulette wheel that Sheriff Walsh gambles at is fixed, with a hidden lever that the croupier can flick to get the result he wants.

* In ''Film/RacketGirls'', Scalli fixes horse races by doping the horse (one of whom drops dead in the starting gate), and attempts to fix wrestling matches. However, all the wrestlers he approaches turn him down because "women's wrestling is a clean sport".
* In ''[[Film/FrancisTheTalkingMule Francis Goes to the Races]]'', Francis the Talking Mule and his sidekick Peter Sterling visit Colonel Travers and his granddaughter on their family horse farm. Peter soon finds himself involved in the world of horse racing and a crime boss and his men trying to "fix" races involving the Travers' horses.

* In ''Film/TheSleepingCardinal'', Roland Adair has been cheating in high-stakes bridge games. Moriarty uses this to {{blackmail}} Adair, and explains how he has been doing it to show that he knows everything and is not guessing. Adair is a skilled amateur conjurer, and can palm an entire deck of cards. He uses this skill to place a pre-loaded half deck on top every time he cuts the cards.
* ''Film/TheHeist1989'': As a distraction, Neil plans to get Ramirez to ride one of the horses, then fake a fall to cause the race to so Dancer will pick him up in the TrojanAmbulance. This actually a decoy plan, and once he is certain that Ebbet knows about it and has put plans in place deal with it, he switches it ensure that Ramirez wins.

* Skeeter Jackson from ''Literature/TimeScout'' loves to gamble, and he's not exactly an angel. After his HeelFaceTurn, he ends up in a beautiful Victorian casino and plays a few rounds of craps to "keep his hand in". After he walks away from the table, he says that he threw three sets of dice and all three were loaded. One with heavy paint, one with a mercury tumbler, the third with shaved edges. The person he's with is astonished and appalled. Then Skeeter sits down to play poker and relates an amusing anecdote about a guy with a device up his sleeve.
* In ''Literature/AubreyMaturin'', Jack Aubrey plays some whist in the second book of his series. He accuses the people he's playing with of cheating. As one is a SmugSnake, TheGamblingAddict, and a traitor, that's not implausible.
* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', Mat Cauthon occasionally gets accused of cheating. But he's [[WindsOfDestinyChange just very, very lucky]]. On one occasion he runs up against someone who actually is using loaded dice, but his BornLucky power is so strong he still manages to get a winning roll out of them that should have been nigh-impossible.

* In Creator/HarryHarrison's ''Literature/{{Deathworld}}'' series, the protagonist Jason [=dinAlt=] is a professional gambler, who uses his weak [[MindOverMatter telekinetic]] ability to cheat at dice. He claims he can cheat at the roulette as well, but stopping a big wheel is more difficult than a small die. At the beginning of the first book, Kerk Pyrrus asks him to win 3 billion for him. Unfortunately for them, the casino owner has connections in the planet's corrupt government. When Jason is on a big winning streak, the dealer keeps requesting new dice, hoping Jason's luck will change, culminating in him being given dice that are perfectly balanced... except for one side having an iron based paint, which means a magnet in the table will shift the odds firmly enough. With some quick thinking, Jason exposes the dealer by using a magnetic ashtray to reveal the rigged dice. A security guard tries to intervene, but Kerk breaks his arm. Finally, when Jason has won all he can, they barely manage to get off-world by getting aboard a ship from a planet whose people absolutely hate the local WretchedHive. Jason isn't shown gambling again.
* In Creator/WalterJonWilliams's book ''Literature/AngelStation'', the protagonists are down-on-their-luck [[SiblingTeam brother and sister]] named Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria (that is her full name). Maria is an "electronic witch", genetically-engineered with an ability to manipulate electrons with telekinesis. As a way of making money while they look for a contract, she plays a game (with a decent payout) that simulates navigating a ship through a field of black holes. Using her ability, she's able to win consistently by intercepting and altering computer signals before they appear on the screen. Ubu then suggests going for a big score and cheating at the roulette at a big casino on the titular space station. By that point, all casino games are electronic in nature, so Maria feels she has a good chance. She ends up winning a lot, but both are then taken to a back room, where it's revealed that the casino monitors all machines and detects any attempts at hacking them. Their only curiosity is the fact that Maria doesn't appear to have any equipment with her. They start beating on both of them. Even when Maria admits her ability, the [[CassandraTruth casino owners don't believe her]]. They are thrown out the back of the casino badly beaten and without their winnings.

* As with so many things, goes meta in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' books. The Guild of Gamblers regulates things like marked cards and loaded dice. It doesn't ban them, though, it ''standardises'' them. Therefore, any contest between two Guild members becomes a matter of skill and luck, since they have exactly the same advantages. Any contest between a Guild member and a [[TheCon member of the public]] ... well, that's their look-out.
** In ''Literature/WitchesAbroad'', a card shark tries to play Cripple Mister Onion against Granny Weatherwax, and several unfortunate accidents later is trying desperately to remember ''how'' you play Cripple Mister Onion without fixing the game.
* In E.E. Smith's "Masters of the Vortex" (set in the Literature/{{Lensman}} universe, but outside the main story arc), the main characters team up to destroy a mob boss's casinos across four separate solar systems, knowing the three on which he ''isn't'' located will send an interplanetary distress signal to the fourth, enabling the Galactic Patrol to seal the system and trap him. The methods involved include telepsychic card reading and card counting, with hints fed telepathically but anonymously to ordinary gamblers on the floor in such a way as to create improbable but untraceable winning streaks. No matter what the mobsters do - switch systems, shift them, even remove cheating entirely - they get utterly destroyed and are forced to inform their superior, [[spoiler:who is eventually caught]].
** It doesn't hurt the Patrol that the people in charge of the operation are a mathematical savant and a cybernetic engineer, both of whom are [[spoiler:telepathic]]. At one stage, they break a crooked croupier's system, openly tell him what they're doing, and offer to sacrifice a thousand-credit note to prove which one of them has broken it correctly.
* One short piece in the Literature/GauntsGhosts novel ''Ghostmaker'' features a thoroughly rigged guessing game that Sergeant Varl, the regimental piper Milo, and a few other Ghosts use to fleece other regiments of their money: Varl plays the crowd to hype things up and convince them that it's legit (by convincing them that he ''was'' rigging it but has lost control), the troopers act as shills to get the bets going, and Milo brings it home by playing, at first to lose and then, in the final, highest-value round, to predict a perfect win. Trouble arises when one of the other regiments starts a rumor that he's using [[SuperRegistrationAct unrevealed psychic powers]] to rig the game and [[StateSec an Inquisitor]] shows up.
* At the beginning of the Literature/JamesBond novel ''Literature/{{Moonraker}}'', Bond is asked by M to look into another member at M's club who is suspected of cheating at cards. Bond figures out how the man is rigging the game, and conspires with the club's management to rig it better, serving notice to the cheater that he's been caught out without embarrassing the club with a public accusation. Hugo Drax turns out to be the villain of the novel, and his behavior at the card table reveals his defining character flaw: he hates to be beaten at anything.
* In ''Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse'' by Creator/SheriSTepper, Marianne's sorcerous husband goes into a high-stakes game armed with a pair of dice he's enchanted to throw any number he requires -- even if the number he requires is 1.
* In ''{{Literature/Banco}}'', Papillon joins a man known as "Jojo the Craps" in conning miners out of their findings. Jojo's scheme involved dice that were very carefully filed to remove roughly a millimeter from the dice edge, allowing him to fix the game without being noticed.
* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes''
** "Empty House": Colonel Moran murdered his usual whist partner because he was about to expose Moran's cheating, which would get him banned from playing at any respectable club.
** "Silver Blaze": Straker tries to lame his master's prize racehorse so that Silver Blaze will lose the big race and Straker can win the money he needs to repay his debts by betting on a different horse, only to be killed when the horse doesn't cooperate.
* ''Literature/ShadesOfMagic'': The unspoken rule in the card game ''Sanct'' is for each player to cheat as shamelessly as possible without actually getting caught in the act -- an honest ''Sanct'' player is a bad ''Sanct'' player.

* ''Literature/NickVelvet'': In "The Theft of the Lucky Cigar", Nick is hired to steal the cigar that a high roller keeps, unlit, in his mouth during a regular high stakes poker game. The client is convinced that the gambler is cheating and that the cigar is part of it. After stealing the cigar, Nick discovers a small vibrator in the mouthpiece. The gambler has a spotter placed on the opposite side of the room, who transmits the opponents hands via code through the mouthpiece with the gambler sensing the vibrations through his teeth.

* In ''VideoGame/Persona5'', [[spoiler:the entirety of the events occurring are revealed to be a conducted fixed game by the god of control, Yaldabaoth, who rigged the outcome so that he will be able to TakeAThirdOption that will allow him to rule over humanity. For this to work, years before the plot began, he awakened Goro Akechi’s persona abilities that was to serve as the piece for the world leading into ruin if Akechi was the victor. Then he approached the master of the Velvet Room, Igor, and proposed the game to him. After that he defeats and imprisons Igor within Mementos and splits Igor’s attendant Lavenza into two halves with her memories erased. He then proceeds to impersonate Igor to lead Igor’s piece (the protagonist) into the outcome where neither he or Akechi was the victor so that he can allow himself to control humanity.]]

* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'', Ludo Bagman pays his debts with Leprechaun Gold, which disappears after a few hours. When that fails to get him out of his high number of gambling debts, he uses his position as a judge of the Triwizard Tournament to give Harry information he didn't have or give him inordinately high numbers of points.

** This also comes up against D'Arby's younger brother Terence, who uses video games instead of games of chance. Terence's Stand allows him to mentally ask yes-or-no questions and read the answer in his opponent's soul, which allows him to outflank Kakyoin in a racing game. Jotaro pulls the psych-out again while trying to suss out D'Arby's Stand power, placing his NiceHat so it blocks D'Arby's view of his face, but when that doesn't change the outcome he gets a good idea of what D'Arby is capable of. So he has Joseph use his Stand Hermit Purple to input entirely different commands -- so even though Jotaro ''intends'' to throw a fastball (and thus that's what D'Arby's Stand tells him), Joseph changes it into a curveball, rendering Jotaro completely unreadable and leading to his victory. And just to add insult to injury, Jotaro even delivers the elder D'Arby's motto after his trick is revealed.

** ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'' has Bond noticing an exiled Afghan prince named Kamal Khan taking a British gent for all he's worth in backgammon. He quickly figures out that Khan is using loaded dice that always come up double sixes (how nobody else caught on is a mystery). He offers to play him for double-or-nothing. Khan agrees. Bond invokes the "player's privilege" and uses Khan's dice to win. Instead of letting his Sikh [[TheDragon dragon]] beat up Bond (and cause a scene), Khan pays Bond but warns him to spend the money quickly.

* As with so many things, goes meta in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' books. The Guild of Gamblers regulates things like marked cards and loaded dice. It doesn't ban them, though, it ''standardises'' them. Therefore, any contest between two Guild members becomes a matter of skill and luck, since they have exactly the same advantages. Any contest between a Guild member and a [[TheMark member of the public]] ... well, that's their look-out.

* [[DeceptivelyHumanRobots Automaton]] [[MeaningfulName Jack Gambler]] from ''Manga/KarakuriCircus'' is a FatBastard who claims that he can only be fought by gambling against him in various games, and enjoys to humiliate his opponents as they lose, boasting about his luck. However, as Ming Xia finds out, luck means nothing against him, since he can actually control the result of each gambling game going on, so she just slugs him in the face with a Qi-powered punch while he's tossing the coin for the last bet.

* Qui Gon Jinn in ''Film/StarWarsEpisodeIThePhantomMenace'' uses the power of the force to cheat at dice.
** The die used was loaded in the first place, so it's more of UN-fixing the game.

* ''Film/StrictlyBallroom'': Head Judge Barry Fife rigs the Pan-Pacific Dance Championship so that Ken Railings will win and Scott Hastings will lose no matter how either of them dance. Wayne and Les try to confront Barry but he refuses to back down. When Scott and Fran make it onto the floor anyway the crowd reacts so enthusiastically it's clear they won't accept anyone else as the winner.

* Upon completing the BonusDungeon of ''VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria'', the plans of the GreaterScopeVillain for both that game and ''VideoGame/TalesOfZestiria'' -- which takes place in the same world but chronologically after ''Berseria'' -- are revealed to have been set up so that the villains would win. [[spoiler:The original seraphim made a bet with seraphim that descended down to the earthly realm that seraphim couldn't live peacefully with humans. The stakes were that if the original seraphim won, they would destroy both humanity and the descended seraphim; if the descended seraphim won, the original seraphim would just leave them alone. However, the originals cheated by placing a curse on the world that would cause humans who were exposed to too much malevolence to become daemons, and seraphim who were exposed to too much malevolence to become dragons. This effectively made it impossible for the descended seraphim to win the bet.]]

* Daniel J. D'Arby of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' is a known gambler who has managed to hoard a number of souls, but the heroes discover that he's more than willing to cheat ("NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught" is his motto) after he captures the souls of Polnareff and Joseph. Jotaro manages to defeat him by psyching him out: D'Arby has a seemingly random little kid (who actually works for him) deal the cards and give Jotaro a crap hand. Jotaro gives a subtle demonstration of his [[FightingSpirit Stand]]'s incredible speed and keeps raising the pot his bet higher and higher, making D'Arby wonder if he'd used Star Platinum to change his cards faster than the eye could see. When the stakes get too high for D'Arby (Jotaro says that if he wins, D'Arby has to tell them about [[BigBad DIO]]'s Stand), the strain is too much and he "admit[s] defeat in his heart" -- and then it turns out that Jotaro didn't change his cards at all and still had the same crappy hand.

** The [[Film/OceansThirteen third film]] shows what happens when you try to cheat at one of Willy Bank's casinos. Although, Bank's not as imaginative in this regard as Terry Benedict. The plot itself is the crew doing this to all the games in Banks' casino after he screwed over one of the TrueCompanions, not only getting the money back but finacially ruining him allowing ''everyone'' in the casino to win.

** The [[Film/OceansThirteen third film]] shows what happens when you try to cheat at one of Willy Bank's casinos. Although, Bank's not as imaginative in this regard as Terry Benedict.