Bets You Will Never Lose (Real)

When Two Make A Bet, One Is A Fool And One Is Scum

Author: Vladimir L. Shirokogorov
Date: 1997/07/25
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Sometimes you have to win a bet as soon as possible -- for instance when you run out of money and there are ten days due to the next salary and you hate to borrow some money.

Here are some bets you will always win, unless your opponent listens to the conditions of the bet extremely carefully and guesses the way you plan to win. Some of these bets are based on formal logic; some on the fact that you tell the truth, only the truth, nothing but the truth, yet not the whole truth; and some on the Jesuite meaning of words.

Make a bet that your opponent will not be able to eat a toaster-sized lump of bread while walking 50 steps. You will always win, because it is impossible: your opponent will half-way run out of saliva and it is impossible to swallow dry bread fast -- he will stuff the whole lump into his mouth, that's all.

Make a bet that you will walk 100 metres and will not touch the ground with your feet. You can win this bet by walking upon any surface in any kind of footwear, thus not touching the ground with your feet. Of course, if you are an acrobat you may do the walking on your hands.

Make a bet that you can jump higher than a pine tree (a very seductive bet). You choose a really high pine tree high (at least twice as high as the world record in jumping), then jump as high as you can, want, or care to, and then turn to the pine tree and say to it: "Now it's your turn to jump". The tree will clearly make no effort to jump, so you pronounce yourself the winner.

Make a bet that your opponent will not be able to crush an egg with a frying pan without touching the egg with his hands. Then you put an egg somewhere where it really cannot be smashed with a frying pan, e.g. under a counter, under a car, in a metal box, or in the corner of a room.

Make a bet that your opponent will not be able to jump over five cents (five pennies, pence, pfennings, etc.). The thing is that your opponent will think you mean a single coin, or several stacked on top of each other. Now you take five one-cent coins and place them, say, 10 metres apart.

Make a bet that you will drink five bottles of any kind of strong liquor (vodka, gin, whisky) in five minutes. The thing is that your opponent will think that he should count all the time, from the moment you drink the first glass till you drink the last. You, in turn, will only count those seconds where you actually sip from all the glasses which are together five bottles.

All these bets were either tested on me (crushing an egg with a frying-pan, eating bread while walking) by other people, or tested on a person by another in my presence (walking 100 metres without touching the soil with the feet, jumping over 5 roubles), or told to me by other people. All the bets work, but with each person they work only once. The best way to make such a bet work is to let your victim first win a couple of easier bets (like not breathing for 1 minute, etc) and thus let him get a taste for winning further bets, and then suggest one of the described.

See also

• Challenge