During the Depression, Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) teams up with Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman), a famous con-artist and infamous drunk, to revenge the death of Hooker’s partner Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones). Coleman was killed at the request of racketeer Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) whose only vice is high-stakes poker. Hooker and Gorndoff put together an elaborate sting-within-a-sting involving horserace betting and what Lonnegan thinks is revenge on Gondorff for taking the pot in a card game that he thought he had rigged to win himself.