Swindler’s success in card game meeting with severe cut (9)
I believe the answer is:
trickster
'swindler's' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'success in card game meeting with severe cut' is the wordplay.
'success in card game' becomes 'trick' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'meeting with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'severe' becomes 'stern' (I've seen this before).
'cut' means to remove the last letter.
'stern' with its final letter taken away is 'ster'.
'trick'+'ster'='TRICKSTER'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for trickster that I've seen before include "Loki, say" , "Cheater, deceiver" , "Hoaxer" , "Conman" , "Cheat, deceiver" .)