While I must confess a lack of interest in any sort of significant card game vis-a-vis 007, one of the things that makes this Forum great is the intelligent debate and respect I see whenever a niche topic comes up.
Um, even when it relates to watches, lol.
I'm probably still more in the camp of less cards, not more. But I must also confess to being quite moved by the Goldfinger golf game reference. Never played a game in my life the first time I saw that classic 1964 face off, yet that dramatic tension was very clear to me (and remains great epic to this day, in my opinion).
In reading Casino Royale over the weekend, I further got to thinking that card games and gambling aren't today what they were when Fleming wrote about it in 1953. We have Indian casinos here in Michigan, for goodness sakes! not just the exotic locales of Europe and Las Vegas. Whole TV series revolve around casino runnings, and stars play games off against each other.
So, a familiarity and popularity to be leveraged by Our Man, perhaps.