There is, in Descartes’s later writing, an uncomfortable pull between the disclosure of method and the demands of chance. This article aims to take account of the multiple different ways in which Descartes tackles “les jeux de hasard, où il n’y a que la fortune seule qui règne” [games of chance, where Fortune alone rules] (OP III 679, CSMK 297).1 Our lifetime’s experience in the world, we may perceive, is traversed by a “fortune” which takes no account of our status or our needs. We cannot predict it or come to accurate terms with it; but we nonetheless conceive of it and speculate about it. Questions about the extent to which we can or cannot be said to depend on fortune, and whether, in the former case, we can strive not to, are of great interest to Descartes. They overlap with important matters of free will and human choice-making.