"The Bet"-- As an alternative to capital punishment what was suggested at the party? Why?

The men at the banker's party were arguing about capital punishment. 

The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.

This is interesting for contemporary readers because the issue is still being debated. Nobody suggests that a man who commits a really ghastly crime should be let off with a token sentence. But many people feel--and make their feelings loudly known on days of execution--that the death penalty is murder just the same as the murder committed by the man who is being executed. There are a great many countries in the world where the death penalty is a thing of the past. Even in the U.S.A. there are nineteen states in which the death penalty has been legally abolished.

The banker's opinion is a blend of cruelty and compassion. He thinks that the death penalty should be imposed because it is really life imprisonment that is the more cruel form of punishment. But he doesn't consider the fact that the condemned man might have a different opinion on the subject. The men at his party seem to agree that life imprisonment without the possibility of parole would mean life imprisonment in solitary confinement in the Russian equivalent of "death row." If a man is convicted of first-degree murder, it might be unwise to let him mingle with other convicts and with prison guards. He might commit another murder inside the prison.

This seems to be how the debate segues into a bet between the banker and the lawyer involving solitary confinement, which was not involved in the discussion before. The lawyer seems to be offering himself as a martyr for the cause of abolition of the death penalty. He seems determined to demonstrate that a man can improve himself in prison. He is not only interested in getting the two million rubles, but he is trying to prove that, as he says:

"To live anyhow is better than not at all."

The argument among the assembled intellectual men ends up proving nothing, just as the bet between the banker and the lawyer ends up proving nothing. The story opens just hours before the lawyer's fifteen years of confinement will end. The banker reflects:

"What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two million? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless. On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money ..."

Chekhov's stories often end inconclusively. He has influenced many modern writers with this aspect of his technique. If is as if he is saying that there are no easy solutions to life's problems. Raymond Carver, one of America's best short story writers, was a great admirer of Anton Chekhov. Carver kept a picture of Chekhov pinned to the wall above his writing desk. Carver's stories are full of problems, but the problems are frequently unresolved at the end. They may be even worse.