It was a drawing at the Palms. There were three of us. Friends all. “Al,” Bob, and “Charlie.” (I’m using quotation marks around two of the names to indicate I’ve changed their names. In fairness, I suppose I should make it “Bob” as well because I changed that name a while back as well.)
Charlie had 800 tickets in the drawing. I had 790. Al had 475. Since Al had done favors for both Charlie and me recently we decided to equally split all wins in the drawing three ways. This was a great deal for Al, if you only count the drawing.
As luck would have it, Al won $1,500 that night and was the only winner in our group. So he ended up giving Charlie and me $500 apiece. At this point, Al wasn’t thinking this was such a great deal for him.
The next week Charlie wasn’t there. I had played more and had 1,600 tickets and Al had 400. Al wanted to share with me again. This time I declined. I had 80% of the combined ticket totals and it made no sense to me to share results under these conditions.
“However,” I told Al, “if we both get called we’ll have equal chances. I’ll share with you at that time.” This was a drawing where eight players were called. After these eight people were determined, each of the eight had equal chances at all prizes. I don’t remember the specifics of the bonus game, but I do remember that when you were called didn’t affect your chances at getting the top prize.
Al argued: “If you share, you should share every time. You can’t pick and choose only when it’s to your advantage.”
I disagreed. Sharing when it’s even or close to even is one thing. Sharing when one has a 4-1 edge is something else altogether.
“Besides, I didn’t have the advantage last week. We gave you the advantage.” I told Al. “You didn’t have the same number of tickets but we still gave you a complete share.”
“Advantage, hell! What you call an advantage cost me a thousand bucks!”
In my opinion, you determine the advantage before you look at the results. I believe you must make your decisions before you know what is going to happen. You make your best decisions and then live with the results.
Al looks at the actual results and then afterwards determines whether he should have done something different. (Never mind that nobody could have the information before-hand of what the actual results would turn out to be.) He is forever second-guessing. And forever unhappy.
Al and I have been around and around about this in a number of contexts. I suspect we’re never going to agree with each other.