Picking up once more our survey of "classic westerns" featuring the favorite card game of the Old West, the films we previously examined — Sunset Trail (1939), Tall in the Saddle (1944), Winchester '73 — all conspicuously shared a common element. All portrayed the film's villains playing poker — and losing.
With varying degrees of subtlety, the poker games in those films all served to foreshadow the conclusions of their larger narratives. Just as the villains lost their poker games, so, too, in the final reel did they find themselves on the wrong end of more serious "showdowns" versus the film's heroes.