Which Dostoevsky novel features the professional gambler Alexei Ivanovich?

The Dostoevsky novel featuring the professional gambler Alexei Ivanovich is The Gambler.

Alexei serves as a tutor to a Russian general’s family and becomes deeply involved in the group’s financial schemes, romantic rivalries, and obsession with roulette. The novel examines gambling as both a destructive compulsion and a source of hope, excitement, and imagined social escape.

Dostoevsky wrote The Gambler under severe financial pressure. He dictated it to the stenographer Anna Snitkina, who later became his second wife. The completed novel was published in 1867, although its events are associated with the European resort world familiar to Russian travelers.

The book is sometimes confused with a straightforward autobiography. Dostoevsky had personal gambling debts and experience, but Alexei and the novel’s other characters are fictional creations shaped by broader themes of dependence, pride, and chance.