Personally I'd take the second deal, but that's just because I don't consider $1 million to really be "fuck you" money at all -- it'd buy me a nice house and gi

Personally I'd take the second deal, but that's just because I don't consider $1 million to really be "fuck you" money at all -- it'd buy me a nice house and give me a good head start, but it wouldn't let me retire and spend the rest of my life doing whatever-the-hell-I-want the way $20 million would. His point still stands, of course, if you multiply the numbers by something. Make it a 50% chance of $10 million vs a 20% chance of $200 million, and I'd probably take the first deal.