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In this short novel, the hero Alexei Ivanovich, in his devotion to the roulette table, believes in the truth of chance. And, through that belief, he is revealed to believe in nothing. He is a lost soul who loses all: love, status, wealth, self. His unrequited love of something becomes, instead, a requited love of nothingness.

As often, art mirroring life: Fyodor Dostoevsky was also a gambler. And like most gamblers, he found himself in serious debt. Hence The Gambler, which he wrote (actually dictated) within twenty-six days in 1866 in order to meet his publisher's deadline, which failure would have occasioned crippling financial penalties.