Gunn is a very versatile writer both technically and thematically. Games of Chance allows the reader to study one side of him in isolation. These eleven new poems, all written in free verse, show Gunn in a reflective mood. Like an operatic tenor whose voice has darkened with age, Gunn is moving into new roles in his recent work, and though he may move among the same scenery as before, he now sees it from a different perspective. He shows the same curiosity as ever, but it is now tinged with cynicism, as in "Expression," where Gunn turns his attention to the work of young poets…. (p. 491)

Elsewhere Gunn strikes a more tender note. In "Elegy" the memory of an acquaintance who shot himself becomes a general lament for all of his dead…. But ultimately Gunn undermines whatever tenderness he shows with the bitter reminders of reality. In "As Expected" the slow gains a young man makes with a ward of retarded adults are destroyed by his successors. Or in "Adultery," a variation on the Elizabethan echo poems that have always fascinated Gunn, a wife's carefully orchestrated lie is rendered pointless when Gunn suddenly reverses the points of view and reveals how little her husband cares for her. Games of Chance is a powerful book. (pp. 491-92)