Disputed prop bet

I'll bet on anything if I think I have an advantage, and so will lots of advantage players. As an example, I flew back to Vegas from Reno yesterday. One of many "airplane props" I made with two friends was on the number of passengers out of three in the next aisle to order a drink. I bet under 2.5 people.

The weather was rainy and very windy in Reno that day. Most of the flight was very bumpy. About five minutes into the flight the captain announced that for the safety of the flight attendants there would be no drink service unless conditions improved. One of my friends said that the bets should have no action if no drink service was offered. This possibility was not stipulated in the bet. It is more important that I have a reputation of being a gentleman gambler than to win a bet, so I agreed. After that, the other friend who I had the bet with laughed, and said I was a huge sucker and fool to agree to that condition. He said if he had my side he would have never made that concession. To him, the bet was simply on the number of drinks ordered, and if the flight attendant never asks, then the number of drinks ordered is zero, making the under 2.5 a winner. No drink service was ever provided, I might add.

So my question is, was he right, am I a sucker and fool? What would you have done?

I would have let a friend off the hook as you did. But after all I am a polite Canadian.

You can make over-under bets on total points scored in a sports game. If the game gets postponed and never gets played, then don't all bets get cancelled? No bookie's going to pay off on the under when the game was never played, right? Why should this be any different? You made a bet on drink service, and drink service was cancelled, so all bets are off.

You still have to be a friend first. These are friendly bets. Twists that was not agreed to by all can cause resentment if payoff was demanded. I would never take advantage of a friend in that kind of bet. However, strangers are another matter!

I agree with wildqat. It's the same as sports betting where rain cancels the whole event. It's a constructive condition to the wager, and I don't think you even need to express it in the intial bet agreement.

Plus, friendship is more important than making money.

Ask your second friend what you should have done if the plane crashed.

No action, no question.

The people didn't have the opportunity to order the drinks.

I too agree that the bet should be no action if there is no drink service.
Suppose after the pilot made his announcement that there would be no drink service, three people in the next isle yelled a drink order out to the flight attendant anyway. Would you then consider the total drinks ordered to be over 2.5? Or, more precisely and importantly, would you have paid your friend if he claimed he had won?

I think the sports analogy doesn't apply. If a game gets rained out, it is rescheduled, and the bets remain unresolved until the game is finally played.

The flight was not cancelled. Nobody ordered drinks.

On the other hand, it's hard/impossible to quantify, I'm sure there was a groan when the captain make the announcement. How many people would have ordered?


Yeah, canceling the bet was the right thing to do.

Often such doubtful issues are resolved against the person who supplied the language that was ambiguous. So he who offered the bet is the one who shoulders the burden of having been imprecise, ambiguous or woefully lacking in completeness. Sometimes however it is considered that there was no bet because the two parties intended different terms and there was therefore no agreement.

I noted one Prediction Market that was offering a bet which I felt had been poorly phrased and was certain to lead to confusion. That bet was later "suspended without action" or some such thing. I was not interested in the bet or its subject matter, I had simply noted that a Prediction Market was unlikely to prosper if it did not insist on more precisely worded bets.

Here you have the issues of friendship and also what the law refers to as Force Majeur. A Greater force that intervenes and was unforeseen by the parties. Suppose the Captain had said we've been told we will have to circle the landing field for a few hours so all drinks are free. This might well have prompted a flurry of drink orders due to more time being available and the price being waived. Was this a risk considered when he offered the bet? Suppose that a large number of the passengers happened to be members of the Reno Temperance Society which was dedicated to banning alcohol consumption? Some of those situations are reasonably foreseeable. Some are reasonably foreseeable but require an outside intervention of authority that skews the situation. Its often considered proper to relieve people of their contractual obligations if there was an intervention by an external superior force. So if the flight attendant had voluntarily delayed beverage service due to the bumpy ride, you might have won the bet yet once the Captain made the announcement your friend is relieved of the obligation.

If you had won the bet you probably would have used the money to buy your friend the first round of drinks so canceling the bet probably left you no worse off anyway. Friendship should probably prevail in a situation like this, but let it be a reminder that its best to envision various scenarios and provide for them in the initial agreement. Might save you money, might save you a friendship some day.