"So, Tom, do you think Joy will win his bet?"
Do you play snooker or billiards, Richard? In my misspent youth, a common technique of the pool hall hustler was to remind a potential challenger that anyone can lose on any particular day, especially the hustler who is not really up to his best game right now. Maybe it's the indigestion, a cold, a little fever, too much beer. Of course, the hustler knows (if the challenger is not himself sandbagging and pretending to be a worse player than he is) that the advantage goes to the player who knows the table. Players' skill levels may change day to day; the geometry of a fair table does not. Every shot can be predicted, given perfect aim, perfect trajectory, perfect angle, perfect momentum.
The hustler is not playing the table, however; he knows that if he plays as close to perfection as his skill allows, he will win. The pool hustler and the card shark don't play the game -- they play the player.
Because you know the table so well, you think that you can win the game without even picking up a cue stick, simply by knowing where the balls will come to rest, given your choice of where to place the cue ball and which direction to shoot.
Imagine your surprise when you find out the table isn't fair. Your cue ball touches an object ball, then a rail, and when you expect the cue ball to stop you find that it rolls on past that point.
"Make sure you read the small print! Don't prevaricate. Yes or no?"
Yes.
"You can still warn Christian if/when you realize that Christian literally does not have a chance... in other words, not any chance at all."
You're worried, aren't you?
"If you think Christian can win by smuggling a point at infinity into the two computer files of directions (representing points in S^2) on the basis of which the bet will be settled, he sure could use your help right now. And if the help arrives before June 11, Christian wins the jackpot."
He doesn't have to smuggle anything. The point at infinity already includes a pair of fixed and fluctuating variables, the cue ball and the object ball. They are correlated all the time, whether infinitely close or infinitely separated. The result doesn't depend on your choice of where to put the cue ball.
The player has been played. By himself.
