[Tickner]

This whole bet thing is pretty simple. Player B made a bet, and no longer wants to complete it. Player A can simply say "no, I don't care if you don't want to complete it, we made a deal", which is the clear choice IMO and definitely what I would have done, but whatever.

If for some reason you both decide to allow the player who has completed less to "buy out" of the bet, and no strict rules apply, its pretty much an open negotiation and the "market" will decide the price. In other words, what is it worth to each of you and is there any sort of equilibrium point?

There are a number of approaches to this.

24k/30k = 80%, 10k/30k = 33%, 80%-33% = 47% and therefore Player B should pay $470.

But this ignores the time remaining, and the "cash in" value of actually wining the bet (for ex if Player A completes 100% and player B completes 90%, player A recieves 100% of $1000 and not 10% of $1000, so in my example Player A is actually shortchanged) We must also factor in the time left to complete both of their goals. Player B has 6 days to complete 20,000 hands and Player A has 6 days to complete 6,000 hands. The problem is simply a matter of determining the likely hood of both participants completing the goal and adjusting each players expectation of this bet accordingly.

The expectation of this in terms of Player A, assuming player A is finished, is simply:

EV = r * $1000, where r represents the probablility that Player B will NOT complete the goal (so 0 <= r <= 1).

Assuming $800, the probability needs to be 800/1000 = 80% chance Player B will NOT complete the goal.

Assuming an EV of $243, we get 243/1000 = 24.3% chance Player B will NOT complete the goal.

We are basically assuming that Player A will reach his goal 100% of the time (which isn't true), and that Player B COULD complete it (which he can).

Player B simply doesn't want to, he should pay the full price since he bet that he would have completed the goal and did not complete it while Player A did (assuming he does).

Also, Orange, I do not agree that these bets are simply an encouragement to reach a set # of hands. They are real bets. That is indeed the underlying goal of them but if a player does not complete the bet, I would expect payment, and so should anyone else, unless it was clearly defined beforehand.

P.S. As much as it looks like I am taking sides, I am not. This is a completely unbiased opinion. I know tufat much better than I know sir felix FWIW, and for a moment I was reluctant to post this since it doesn't concern me at all.