Two Sucker Bets

“S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E!” sixty people shouted as my wife Bonnie entered her sister’s house. Her 75^th birthday party was off to a noisy beginning.

I sighed in relief. We had pulled it off. All the invitations and such had been sent out and responses received with Bonnie having no clue. I had ordered a cake from BabyCakes, the bakery within the M Resort, where I had a large number of comps.

BabyCakes produces distinctively decorated cakes. People who know me are aware that whenever I’m invited where bringing some sort of food is in order, a cake from BabyCakes is my go-to option. I’d never pay retail for one of their cakes, but I have lots of comps and the cakes are well received.

One person who has figured this out about me is Richard Munchkin’s wife Nelia. Richard and Nelia were part of the 60 invited guests to the party. I’ve brought such a cake over to their house on two or three occasions and she recognized it immediately as being from BabyCakes. When she saw one at the birthday party, she looked at me and said, “I bet you brought this cake!”

Of those six words, the first two were by far the ones that caught my ear — “I bet.” I’m always looking for a good bet. While Richard and Nelia have been married for more than 25 years and she’s been present for more than a thousand hours of Richard discussing various gambling situations with some of the smartest gamblers in the world, Nelia herself is not an intelligent gambler. If she were, she would have realized she had just made a sucker bet.

What makes this a sucker bet? I’m glad you asked.

Nelia’s bet is one she can lose, but she cannot possibly win. If I had actually brought the cake (I hadn’t), I would have said something like, “Right you are, Nelia. Good deduction, but I certainly don’t want to make a bet I’m sure to lose.”

But, if I didn’t bring the cake (which was the case here), my response would be, “How much do you want to bet?” Since whether I had brought the cake or not has already been determined, and I’m 100% certain of what did or didn’t happen, I’m in complete control. I’ll only make the bet if I’m going to win. This is Gambling 101.

To my “How much,” query, Nelia said “However much you want.” She was positive she was going to win. So far as she was concerned, the more I wished to donate to her, the better.

Since remaining friends with Richard and Nelia both is higher on my list of priorities than the outcome of the bet, I suggested $10. Something the loser could laugh off as pocket change. I didn’t know at the time I was making a sucker bet as well!

“Okay,” Nelia exclaimed. “Ten dollars. Pay up!”

“Not so fast,” I countered. “Frank, can you come over here please.” Frank is a friend of ours who, along with his wife Phillis, were guests at the party. The M Resort (including BabyCakes) is directly on the route between their house and Bonnie’s sister’s. I had asked Frank to pick up the cake on his way over and he was happy to oblige.

“Do you know who brought the cake to this party?” I asked him. 

Frank nodded and said, “Phillis and I did.” 

I turned to Nelia and said that Frank knew nothing about our bet, had no reason to lie, and was 100% telling the truth. “That means, my dear lady, that you owe me $10. I can change a twenty if you need it.”

Richard then spoke up and said to me, “But you ordered the cake that Frank picked up and paid for it with your comp dollars, didn’t you?”

“Absolutely! But the bet wasn’t who paid for the cake with comp dollars. The bet was who brought the cake!”

“Close enough,” said Nelia, signifying that in her mind there was no way she had lost the bet and hell was going to freeze over sixteen times before she paid.

That’s what made it a sucker bet for me too. I might not be able to lose the bet, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to collect on it either. I probably could have whined, and Richard would finally have forked over ten bucks just to shut me up. But that was not an option that was attractive to me.

Which is one reason I’m glad the bet was for $10. No hard feelings that way. When I told this story at a storytelling event recently, Richard admitted that he didn’t even remember it, even though it only happened a few years ago. 

This is perfect. Maintaining the friendships was far more important to me than winning the bet. Mission accomplished!