Gambling Song: Shape of My Heart by Sting

In 1993, mega performer, Sting, released his album Ten Summoner’s Tales and on it, the song Shape of my Heart. The song is one of only a handful written together with Sting’s longtime guitarist and friend, Dominic Miller, and it was edited into the end of the 1994 movie, Leon: The Professional.

In a personal interview in 1993, Sting said about the poker themed song that he wrote: “I wanted to write about a card player, a gambler who gambles not to win but to try and figure out something; to figure out some kind of mystical logic in luck, or chance; some kind of scientific, almost religious law. So this guy’s a philosopher, he’s not playing for respect and he’s not playing for money, he’s just trying to figure out the law – there has to be some logic to it. He’s a poker player so it’s not easy for him to express his emotions, in fact he doesn’t express anything, he has a mask, and it’s just one mask and it never changes.”

These are some of the exceptional words of the gambling song Shape of My Heart by Sting (and which proves why the song is considered a classic even today).

He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn’t play for the money he wins
He doesn’t play for the respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that’s not the shape of my heart

He may play the jack of diamonds
He may lay the queen of spades
He may conceal a king in his hand
While the memory of it fades

I know that the spades…

He may play the jack of diamonds
He may lay the queen of spades
He may conceal a king in his hand
While the memory of it fades