L'ombre d'un jeu (1980)

After winning the lottery, the life of the happy winner turns into a nightmare. The movie consists of four separate stories divided into five parts. They tell the different stages of the winner's life, from discovering the reward to witnessing the consequences caused by the prize.

When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.

After winning the lottery, François goes to a bar in Pigalle and offers one hundred thousand Euros per month to a prostitute named Daniela to live with him as his wife until his money runs out.

John Gage offers a down-on-his-luck yuppie husband $1 million for the opportunity to spend the night with the man's wife.

Con artist Lawrence Jamieson is a longtime resident of a luxurious coastal resort, where he enjoys the lavish fruits of his deceptions -- that is, until a competitor, Freddy Benson, shows up. When the new guy's lowbrow tactics impinge on his own sophisticated work and believing him to be the infamous conman 'The Jackal', Lawrence resolves to get rid of him. Confident of his own duplicitous talents, he challenges Freddy to a winner-takes-all competition: whoever swindles their latest mark, American heiress Janet Colgate, out of $50,000 first can stay, while the other must leave town.

The Catholic Jean-Louis runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal, in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud and the three engage in conversation on religion, atheism, love, morality and Blaise Pascal's life and writings on philosophy, faith and mathematics. Jean-Louis ends up spending a night at Maud's. Jean-Louis' Catholic views on marriage, fidelity and obligation make his situation a dilemma, as he has already, at the very beginning of the film, proclaimed his love for a young woman whom, however, he has never yet spoken to.

A West Texas single mother wins the lottery and squanders it just as fast, leaving behind a world of heartbreak. Years later, with her charm running out and nowhere to go, she fights to rebuild her life and find redemption.

A bank clerk is drawn into the risky world of a gorgeous gambling addict.

Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent student at M.I.T. who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 tuition as he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor to a small but secretive club of five students, Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Fisher, who are being trained by Professor Rosa to count cards at blackjack.

Friends Tepper, Quigley, Fishman, and Bolan get together for a weekly poker night with two simple rules: Everyone contributes a lottery ticket to the pot, and no one checks the numbers until the game ends. But this particular, stormy night is different: Tepper plans to propose to his girlfriend, and just before the weekly game, he finds a wallet outside his apartment with a winning lottery ticket worth $6 million. Tepper calls the wallet's owner, Avery, to come collect what's his, but keeps the winning ticket for himself...only for Avery to show up and ask to play a hand.