Kenny Rogers
The Gambler chords
The Gambler by Kenny Rogers is a beginner song in Eb, played with a capo on fret 1. The whole sheet is 4 chords (D, G, A, Em) across 2 sections: Verse → Chorus. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: D → A, 5 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Ebwith a capo on fret 1
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 4all open shapes
- Sections
- 2each with its own progression
Chords in The Gambler
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse♩=90
Chorus♩=90
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play The Gambler
Capo on fret 1 and four open shapes — D, G, A and Em — carry the whole song. It is a talking-blues ballad, which means the vocal is half spoken and the guitar is really just a bed for the story, so the goal is a relaxed, even strum that never fights the words. The verse sits on D and moves to G and A; the chorus uses exactly the same chords with the Em added as a passing colour on its third line. Nothing here requires speed, only patience.
The change worth practising is D to Em, because it is the only place where your hand has to think. Em (022000) and D (xx0232) share a note on the top E string at fret 2 in some fingerings, so keep whichever finger is on that note and rebuild the rest of the shape around it. Keep the A chord’s ring finger down a moment longer than you think you need to, then slide it into the Em, and the transition becomes almost invisible. For the chorus, aim to have the G under your fingers before you finish singing the line that leads into it.
Practise at 80 BPM with one chord per bar and count the beats out loud, since the phrasing of this song is closer to speech than to melody. Loop the verse until you can tell the story while playing, then add the chorus. The record lifts a whole step for the final verse and outro, so when you are comfortable, slide the capo up one fret for that last round — the shapes stay exactly the same.
How to practise The Gambler
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → Em (0-2-2-0-0-0, beginner)
4 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
D → A5×D → G4×A → D3×G → D2×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Devery section
- Gevery section
- Aevery section
- EmChorus
Climb the tempo ladder
This sheet does not list a tempo, so pick one where every change is clean and use the metronome to move up in 4 BPM steps.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing The Gambler with a capo
This sheet is written with a capo on fret 1. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capo
Eb Ab Bb Fm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 1as written
D G A Em
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 2
C# F# Ab Ebm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3
C F G Dm
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 4
B E F# C#m
1 of 4 stay open
Fret 5
Bb Eb F Cm
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 6
A D E Bm
3 of 4 stay open
Fret 7
Ab C# Eb Bbm
no open shapes left, all barre
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If The Gambler clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Wonderwall, Let It Be, Creep, Hallelujah.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in The Gambler turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.
113bars of this chord across the songbook
30songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 27×.