Okay, so here's the thing. I have a passage that goes like this:

... if [condition], they would have made a bet that [lots of text here]. They would have bet on it with such confidence that they would have accepted [punishment] in case of their loss. [then the paragraph goes on about what they'd like to receive in case of winning]

The problem is that "they would have accepted [punishment]" sounds like they would be okay with suffering that punishment, but the idea I'm trying to convey is a bit different: it's that they would be okay with the conditions of the bet including such an insufferable punishment in case of their loss, because they're so much confident they won't lose. And in the first place this line only goes in the separate second sentence because I couldn't figure how to fit it properly in the beginning, where it would feel more organic in my opinion.

So I imagine it being something like that:

... if [condition], they would have confidently [phrase I'm looking for] [punishment] in a bet that [the rest of the text].

Actually, my first thought was even more laconic:

... if [condition], they would have confidently bet [punishment] on [the rest of the text].

But I immediately realized that "to bet X" means that in case of loss you lose X, not receive it.

So then I considered "to risk X in a bet". I've looked up "to risk" in dictionaries, and it seems like it can work both ways: you can "risk your life" (in this example you lose your life in case of failure), but you can also "risk falling in climbing" (in this example you receive the falling as punishment for failure in climbing). But I don't like how it works both ways, isn't there anything more unambiguous? And also when I tried looking for examples of "to risk X in a bet" specifically (and not just "to risk" separately from bets), it only gives me "to risk money in a bet" which clearly implies that in case of losing the bet you lose the money, not receive them as a punishment.

Another option that I have found while I was typing this is "to run the risk of".
However the dictionaries give me mixed signals about it. The definitions they provide go along the lines of "to do something although something bad might happen because of it". The way they put it sounds like in the phrase "to run the risks of X" the X would be the thing you do although some other bad thing might happen because of it (so it should be used like "to run the risk of climbing, knowing you can fall"). However then right under that same definition they provide examples like "If you tell him the truth, you run the risk of hurting his feelings" and "You run the risk of being misunderstood if you don't explain your purpose carefully", which clearly imply the opposite: that the X is the bad thing that might happen because of some other thing you do.
Who the hell writes those dictionaries?
And I also can't find any examples of this used like "to run the risk of ... in a bet".