Deal Or No Deal

D

DIVER

At the Start
Joined
May 2, 2003
Messages
636
Saw the end tonight. £75k and £250k the last two boxes. Offer by umpire of £125k turned down. Then the umpire offers the winner the option to swap the box she originally chose. Before I disclose the result what would people here have done? Purely on the basis that it was unlikely that she chose the £250k box at the outset and the other box had been left by a series of eliminations I would have swapped. She stuck with her original box.
 
I would swap. Originally you had a one in 22 chance when you chose a box. At this final stage, he has a 50-50 chance so I would swap.
 
She should have swopped on the basis that the £250k was in the contestants box very recently which she would have known having been on there a while.
 
There is no logical reason at all why she should have exchanged boxes. All of the boxes, including that of the contestant, are allocated by a random number draw.

Anyone who argues that she should have swapped is doing so from pure guesswork - at the end it was a genuine even money chance.
 
I suppose you could argue that she did right in turning down the £125k offer since she was getting £75k to £50k about an even money shot. That is, if you fancy having 50 grand on the spin of a coin - 6/4 or no 6/4 I can't afford it and from her conversations I don't think she could. Common sense seems to fly out of the window on these occasions. They all want to be tv heroes or else they are too greedy.
Brian and one or two others might be willing to risk £50k at 6/4 on a genuine even money chance, but I think the majority of us would hang on to the fifty large.
 
I do feel they ought to announce the statistical expected return to the contestant at each stage - some of them seem to have no concept of this. Some of the offers made by the banker, especially in the early stages, are derisory - though I suppose the programme might become a little boring if realistic offers are made early.
 
As Briam says there is no logical reason to swap. You'd also think the average player could approximate the expected return at any stage which amounts to nothing more than the total money left divided by the number of remaining boxes. Accepting the 125K would amount to flushing 37.5K down the pan.
 
Originally posted by DIVER@Apr 5 2006, 08:50 AM
That is, if you fancy having 50 grand on the spin of a coin - 6/4 or no 6/4 I can't afford it and from her conversations I don't think she could.
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Harry, it's 5/2 not 6/4. Her thinking was absolutely right - she was getting 5/2 an even money chance and her "penalty" for losing was a profit of £75k!
 
You are, of course, right about the odds, but I take a different view of her choice. At the point when the banker offered her £125k that is what she actually held. She chose to put £50k of it at 5/2 on an even money shot. I wouldn't put £50k on the spin of a coin. I can't afford to risk that much, even if I had £75k left in my sweaty little palm. Chicken, I suppose, but I suspect there are a few more roosting on here. For the same reason I wouldn't play no limit 3 card brag with you (or HT for that matter). The cost of new underpants(and trousers probably) would outweigh any amount I might win from you.
 
He/she reduces the programmes liabilities by offering a percentage of the top prize still available. The percentage depends on the range of box values still alive at the time of his offer.
 
He simply reduces the final payout if he persuades the contestant to do a 'deal'. He is part of the game's management team.
 
Originally posted by Songsheet@Apr 5 2006, 09:53 AM
I've only seen one of these so could someone explain to me what the Banker has to gain?
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Nothing personally - he is a device as part of the programme's formula. The contestant has a box that will contain 1p, £250,000 or any one of 20 other amounts in between. As boxes are eliminated he will make offers to buy the contestant's box based on what amounts are left. The contestant can choose to accept or reject those offers based on how lucky they feel (or, in the case of some of us, what the value is).

Look upon it as an up-market version of Michael Miles's "Take Your Pick".
 
Thanks guys but if the Banker is in effect working for the show's management team, what assurance is there that they don't know what is where in the boxes?

These shows run a tight budgets, so they have to know how much 'prize' money they will be forecast to pay out - sorry but it's well lost on me...

Sorry Brian, but I have no idea what/who Michael Miles is!
 
He was a game show host of the 1950's/60's. The show he was 'famous' for was Take Your Pick (nothing to do with women in concrete underwear) in which contestants chose a box number from 1-10 and he tried to 'buy' the box before it was opened. The boxes cotained prizes ranging in value from a penny to a few hundred pounds. It's where the expression "I'll open the box" originated. The show also included the 'yes/no' interlude in which contestants had to answer his questions for one minute without using the words yes or no. Sorry, got carried away a bit there.
 
Thanks guys but if the Banker is in effect working for the show's management team, what assurance is there that they don't know what is where in the boxes?
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There's an independent adjudicator who ensures the boxes are random (although after the thing a few weeks back where they kept coming back to the same sequences, I have my doubts!)

These shows run a tight budgets, so they have to know how much 'prize' money they will be forecast to pay out - sorry but it's well lost on me...
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They'll know statisically how much they're likely to have to pay out over a long period of time, and they'll probably have an insurance policy on that basis. I think Who Wants To Be A Millionaire's £1m is actually paid out from an insurance policy in the unlikely event that its won.
 
Anyone see today's show ?

The old feller accepted banker's offer of just over £8k.

Whilst sitting there with £100k in his box.
 
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