Who, if anyone, ends up learning a lesson? Is it a lesson worth learning? Is either man better off after his experience?

Arguably, it is the lawyer who learns a lesson in "The Bet." At the dinner party, for example, he decides to make the bet because he is motivated by greed: he thinks that being locked away for fifteen years in return for two million rubles is a sacrifice worth making. By the end of his confinement, however, he has come to realise that life is, in fact, "worthless" and "fleeting," and that money cannot buy happiness or fulfilment.

While the lawyer has undergone a spiritual and ethical awakening, the banker is better off in a social and financial sense: he has the honour of winning the bet and he gets to keep the two million rubles. But this comes at a great personal cost: after the bet is over, for instance, he is overcome with "contempt for himself," presumably because he is ashamed of his materialistic nature.