On a stopover, a space tourist who is in fact a gamesharp joins what looks like a casino game

Question

I read it in an anthology a long time ago, maybe 40yrs. The anthology was in book form, not e. g. a special issue in a magazine. Probably published in English originally, if I read a French translation it may have been in La grande anthologie de la Science-Fiction; anyway I cannot remember the fil rouge of the issue. I am pretty sure of the general line of the plot, with all the details of dubious accuracy.

The protagonist is a male professional (?) cheater with telekinetic talents, on business among a mixed crowd of well-off tourists on a space cruise. At a stopover, he notices what looks like a circle of excited, indigeneous players around a game of pure chance: dice/dibstones(?) or maybe a spinning top wandering erratically on a board(?). He gains admittance and easily forces out the competing players one by one until, at the last moment, he is frustrated from the victory by a sudden telekinetic field even stronger than his own. To his horror, he realizes the "players" were actually casting lots to determine who, among them, would be sacrificed: the "winner", his last opponent, ends impaled on one of the implements needed for the "casino game". His last-minute savior turns out to be a clergyman who was the oddball among the passengers.

Answer 1

"Attitudes", a short story by Philip José Farmer in his Father Carmody series; first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1953, available at the Internet Archive; reprinted in various anthologies and collections. A French translation appeared in the 1975 anthology Histoires de planètes in the series La grande anthologie de la science-fiction. A French translation (maybe the same one) also appeared in Fiction #5 (the French edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction), also available at the Internet Archive.

Roger Tandem is a starline gambling man:

Roger Tandem crouched behind his pinochle hand as if he were hiding behind a battery of shields. His eyes ran like weasels over the faces of the other players, seated around a table in the lounge of the interstellar liner, Lady Luck.

[. . . .]

Tandem smiled as one who is very sure of himself and replied, "I know you're thinking I've a lot of guts to say that. Here's Roger Tandem, a professional gambler and a collector — and seller — of interstellar objets d'art, reproaching a padre. But I've got more to add to that. I not only do not think Father John has the right attitude, I don't think any of you gentlemen have."

Tandem uses his psychic powers to win:

Tandem looked around the lounge and sighed. Pickings had been slim during this trip. Most of his time had been spent playing for fun with Father John, Captain Rowds, the Universal Light missionary, and the two sociology professors. It was too bad his companions had no money and thought of themselves as gentlemen. Had they played for keeps, they would have been offended if anyone had insisted on suspending a PK or ESP indicator above the cardtable. And Tandem would, then, have had no second thoughts about using either of those talents. He reasoned that they had been given to him for a purpose. The question of from whom they had come did not shadow his mind.

When the starship lands on the planet Kubeia to refill its water tanks, Tandem goes out and finds a native game:

There was no mistaking the purpose of the crowd gathered in two concentric rings at the bottom of the hill. There was the smaller circle of men inside, all on their knees and regarding intently some object in their center. And behind them stood a greater number of people, also watching intently the thing that resembled, as near as he could tell, a weathercock. Obviously, it wasn't that. He could tell from the attitudes of those around it what its purpose was. And his heart leaped. There was no mistake. He was able to smell a crap game a mile away. This might be a slightly different form than the Terran type, but its essence was the same.

[. . . .]

The spinning figure stopped. Its green arm pointed at one of the players. A cry went up from the crowd. Many stepped forward and piled their figurines before the man. He gave the Whirligig — as Tandem now called it — another shove. Again, it spun around and around.

Tandem, using his PK power, is cleaning up, until:

The crowd, which had been holding its breath, released it in a mighty burst, a howl of surprise and disappointment.

And Tandem was still frozen in his crouch, his mind not believing what his eyes saw, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickling as he detected the sudden and irresistible power that had leapt out and swung the legs enough to miss him and make the green arm point at one of his opponents.

It was Father John who shook him and said, "Man, come on. You're wiped out."

Tandem's rescuer, Father John Carmody, explains:

When Father John was finished, he led Tandem, who was pale and trembling, up the hill.

"The house always wins," said Father John, who was himself a little pale. "That man that you thought was the Croupier was the head priest. The tears you first saw in his eyes were those of joy at making a convert and those you saw later were those of disappointment at losing one. He wanted you to win in this millennia-old ritual-game. If you had, you could have been the first Earthman to be the living representative of their deity, who was sacrificed in that peculiarly painful fashion. And your winnings would have been buried with you, an offering to the god whose living image you became.

"But, as I said, the house never loses. Later, the head priest would have dug them up and added them to his church's treasury."