Responses

To be fair, they did rig the competition in favour of the king, seeing as the magicians were in cahoots with the owner. And the king's matches are the only ones with such a high allowance on betting, so it is fair of them to assume that they would only profit because it would be difficult to anticipate a high level mage also being a swordsman without the reputation of being so. So like their system could definitely use work, but since they were cheating anyways, it seems realistic that they didnt have a delayed payout system. I do hard agree about the taxes though
ya know.... you'd THINK a betting system would be prepared to handle big losses. I mean lotteries NEVER give you ALL of your money, theres always taxes you need to pay. In a real world setting I think he'd be taxed maybe 5 percent of his winnings and even if he won a lump sum, it would be paid back in parts or a lesser lump sum if he wanted it all at once like how lotteries pay out.