Saturday, 7:15pm and 9:15pm,
ITV1
Welcome back to Red or Black. The fact that it was ITV1’s highest rated new entertainment show of 2011 probably says more about the state of ITV1 than it does the quality of the show. The first series attracted a record amount of comments and discussion.
Still though, here we are. Last year it was apparently brilliant because “it’s just luck”, this time they’re playing down the luck aspect almost completely, highlighting it as a game of nerve, courage and skill. GONE is the centrepiece Red or Black wheel, which looked like it was encouraging gambling if you were thick, IN comes The Vortex, a high stakes game of timing.
I think we may have a slightly schitzophrenic show. Part one, which I would suspect will have most of the budget blown on You Bet! style challenges and will likely get fewer viewers, and part two which is likely a drawn out lottery draw-esque show with the end game and maybe something else which was cheaper to produce and will get loads more viewers. I may be wrong, time will tell.
I think it needs to clear 6m to avoid being a told-you-so laughing stock. I think it has a fair chance of that sandwiching The X Factor, but we’ve yet to see how The X Factor is going to hold up this year. They might end up dragging each other down!
The EPG says something about whittling 8 down to 4 for the first show. I might be jumping the gun, but I’m not quite sure how that’ll work.
Why it can’t be just a one hour show god knows – they’re spending as much time this year to whittle down 8 to 1 as they did to get it from 1000 to 1 last year – so we can already complain it is tediously slow before it’s even aired.
Really don’t get too why they dropped the wheel – this Vortex thing sounds like it supposedly does the same thing, ultimately landing on a black or red surface, and the gambling commission quite rightly dropped thier stupid investigation into gameshows before it even began.
The Vortex is suppose to be like a pinball machine where the ball will land in an area where it will be flashing between red and black for a number of seconds. So where it was done to pure luck, this time is down to skill and timing when to release the ball and how hard you release it.
Realistically though, it’s likely to come down to luck. the one advantage this endgame should have is that it wil have a punchier finish, rather than the ball going in and out on the wheel last year.
It would be nice if the game basically worked like You Bet, with a load of stunts in the first show, and the 4 best predictors go through. Basically You Bet with “who will win between X and Y” instead of “can X do thing Y in Z time”.
I’ve seen pictures that suggest this is actually going to be the case.
The thing is, “who will win between X and Y” really is far less interesting than “Will X succeed or fail”, unless you’re actually playing then you couldn’t really care less who wins.
Well, isn’t Jonathan Ross competing against Carol Voldermann in a spelling bee contest highly entertaining enough?…
I’m ready to critique Red or Black to within an inch of its life.
And with the beginning bit – “oh get on with it” sums it up.
get on with it get on with it get on with it get on with it
STILL get on with it get on with it
Ooh, making predictions during the game. SKILL. At least we’ve not got hours of contestants explaining why they arbitrarily picked a colour.
Only they all picked right at the beginning, with such insightful reasons as “I liked his hair”. Is there any reason NOT to hold off until someone has a clear lead in picking a colour?
Interesting idea letting players choose during the game.. Or at least if they didn’t pick within a fraction of a second it would be interesting
Well, I like it better so far, but it still doesn’t quite feel like the event television it should be.
The set is too dark for my liking! I know black is one of the colours, but I wish it was a bit lighter. How nit picky am I?
Not sure “Pink or Yellow” would have the same ring to it.
And its schlag den raab scoring
I like the fact that you can bet halfway through. Does put a little bit of skill into it rather than pick an arbitrary colour.
A little bit.
And they are talking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YmS_VDvMY
Glad you think that too!
I can’t help but feel they should poll the audience before each task to see which one the audience thinks will win…. like they did in YouBet.
Is anyone else noticing the massive soundtrack dissonance.. dramatic title music followed by club music as they zoom in.. Couldn’t they afford music or something
I agree there, the original soundtrack is great but they seem to be favouring generic chart rubbish.
Very nice of Simon to provide a timing bar so we know when the show continues. This is the reason right?
So looking at the scores its basically: Win the last game to win + one other
The audience going “ooooooWOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!” as the bar goes up and down is pretty ridiculous.
Hilarious!
After Deal Or No Deal does Red Or Black (or, well, Red Or Blue) the other day, now Red Or Black does The Cube. How will the chain continue? Will The Cube complete the circle, or do another game show? Will they repeat the Mo Farah episode yet again before the end of the month? Find out next time, on…
I’m not sure that tiebreaker game fits the overall theme. I feel one more red/black choice should be made somehow.
Regardless, so far this is quite a bit better than the last series. We’ll see with if the second part is any good…
As in, there’s an actual point to pushing a button.
So 45 mins in and its a solid 5/10
I agree, a solid 5, possibly 6 out of 10.
I reckon it’s going to need a tense, unique and iconic end game to succeed overall.
Well, you guys probably have more fun watching Red or Black than i have watching Beat The Best overhere…
OK, I like this set for the spelling bee. It makes the studio look much bigger.
It turns out I don’t know how to spell blancmange.
Spelling on a saturday night… THIS IS WHAT THE UK WANTS!
CELEBRITY SPELLING BEE, quick someone snap up the rights to it, we’re onto a winner!
CELEBRE-BEE!
Duel again? UGH. This was dull last time, and with more segments this time it will be MORE dull.
Ah, but this has a slight bit of photographic memory testing in, so it might get done a bit quicker.
I don’t like the flashing colours. They should cover the wheel while it’s rotating so that it’s more confusing.
Oh and its duel…
Score has been revised to 3/10
Duel – that sequence was bloody quick. How much of this will be memory and how much will be random number picking?
I for one thought Duel was too easy, as I played along and had the whole pie right, and was very confident about it no less.
I like the memory element here. Made more interesting by asking the contestants what colour they want after they’ve seen the pattern.
Vortex doesn’t seem all that interesting.. It’s the wheel but rejigged
Isn’t that entirely the point of it?
It looks slightly more impressive, as a giant vortex-shaped… thing. But they’ve moved from the casino game of a roulette wheel to the seaside arcade game of coin drop. Did they take a cue from Tipping Point?
The vortex, very cool looking. It’s one of those things I used to use to donate to charity and watch the coin go round and round and round. Fairly tense. But… but…
I think I put my finger on what I don’t like about Red or Black:
THEY HAVEN’T EARNT IT
Compare with Schlag Den Raab – if a contestant wins 500,000 euros on that, they really have earnt it. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, they’ve demonstrated considerable knowledge. The Chase, they’ve had to work bloody hard to earn it.
Red or Black – it’s just a few simple decisions. The Power of 10 (US show) suffered the same issue, it was effectively a slightly intuitive guessing game, it didn’t feel like they had earnt their winnings.
I quite liked the more YouBet side of the show – well that was a good show! – and whilst this second series is a marked improvement over the first series, I just don’t feel like they earn the money.
Agreed. If they turned it into their own SdR with a larger rolling jackpot, and did it a few times a year it might work. As a series though, they’ll never create the ‘Event TV’ they want.
Wow, looks like the general consensus is that we don’t like the changes. I actually didn’t mind them…
Duel DID seem far too easy with the memory element. I was able to memorise where they all were even with how quick the sequence was. Chalk it down to the memory games on The Cube, I guess…
The Vortex…I’m in 2 minds about it. On one hand, I think it’s an impressive piece of kit and it was quite tense watching the ball get closer and closer to the hole, but on the other hand, the roulette wheel lasted longer and gave better tension as the ball rolled out of the segments several times before settling.
I think Series 2 is better than Series 1 but only marginally at the moment.
All this talk of You Bet it’s one show you never here any talk of ITV reviving. I know Ant and Dec did a pilot in the US and though that didn’t work out it would be the perfect format for them here. Us viewers would appreciate the random everyday folk doing the everyday challenges, ITV bosses would be happy it has four celebs – and IIRC there is little or no prize money, so cheap enough for them too.
There was no prize money for contestants performing the challenges, though there was money that would go to charity based on the celebrities’ accumulated points and audience totals, put into a big formula with a number in the thousands coming out.
IIRC the celebrity totals were all added to the audience score, and then multiplied by 2-4 depending on the year.
To be honest, I thought the first half was OK. I quite like the new Chicken aspect of the decision, and also thought it was quite interesting that so many of them got the game three puzzle wrong, especially as it was quite simple. The editing for the first two games was a bit rubbish. Choose a good shot and stick with it for more than 48 frames, for goodness sake.
However the second half suffers a bit. The chicken element doesn’t really work very well in take-it-in-turns games, and, you know, bloody Duel (why on earth would you not choose to go first?).
I would be intrigued to know if production can win Vortex a significant amount to be able to class it as a game of skill rather than luck. I thought it looked nice, but I didn’t think it was as exciting as the roulette wheel.
A better show, but still not quite good enough I think.
You should totally ask Olivia van der Werff this. 😀
I don’t get the impression that the Vortex is particularly far from being the coinflip the wheel was last year, but then again I don’t get the impression it’s any less dramatic.
I’ll only tune in again for a £1.5m+ endgame because I don’t want to miss the biggest win in British television history (and, after tax, in anglophone television history – I believe the 10m guilder on pre-euro, pre-DoND Miljoenenjacht got won once, but even a tax-free £1.5m would top the entire post-tax winnings of Ken Jennings across all the show’s he’s ever done, I think).
My low expectations were exceeded; it wasn’t all that bad. For the past few years, Ant and Dec have done essentially the same show every time, sometimes for higher stakes and sometimes in different settings, but it’s always the same fun-for-the-whole-family, big-boned, star-studded extravaganza wrapped in an ever-so-flimsy shell of a game show.
Agreed, however, that the pre-opening vignettes were full of yuck.
From @tvscoops:
‘Red or Black’ returned for a 2nd series yesterday with 3.4m at 19.15 and 4.0m at 21.15 (both incl+1), down about 3m from last year’s opener.
Wow, pretty bad. Probably the worst rated Ant and Dec show for some time.
Turns out actually the first half did lose out to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and that’s rubbish.
As EXCLUSIVELY revealed by me last week! I will now EXCLUSIVELY reveal that this will be Red or Black’s highest ratings of the series.
Dude! You should TOTALLY write about TV more!
First-night points for Red or Black? 2.0.
* Chopping out all the ad breaks leaves about 61 minutes of show. The BBC could get this done in an hour.
* Starting four minutes early is not going to help.
* Colour theory says the problem with black is that it sucks in all the light and makes everything else look dull. If they’d set the backdrop to a dark grey, it might look less rubbish.
* Looks like the first show is mostly an excuse to air some entertaining stunts, and performances by pop stars. Agree with Brig that the editing was far too choppy, especially in the card-chucking.
* Is there a more ITV couple than Vorders and Wossy?
* In Duel 2.5, the flashing colours may be to confuse the brain, try and get it to remember irrelevant colours, or not realise what it should be spotting.
* Players get to practice The Vortex 2.0? That must be why it’s skill.
Overall, I agree with Mr. Peake: what has the winner done to earn this? Compare and contrast with last night’s Secret Fortune – though it’s easy to come out with a decent prize, players have to be knowledgable and skilful to pick out a high prize. When the two clash next week, I’d pick Knowlesy.
Actually there’s a point, how did Secret Fortune do last night?
3.2m
3.23
Last night’s show was better than the whole of the first series!
The Vortex to me was excellent. It still kept the tension of the wheel, but there is an element of skill which makes the end result purely down to the contestant, unlike last series.
The games were better (with the exception of Duel 2.0 which was rubbish).
Editing was abysmal. Sound levels all over the place and over use of wide shots to disguise certain things.
The fact it wasn’t live made the dynamics of the show a little worse. Ant and Dec weren’t as sharp as they usually are and the whole thing lacked a little atmosphere.
For me 5/10.
I’ll find it rather amusing if the prize fund never grows past £1m considering how much they’ve bigged up how it could be the biggest prize given away on UK television!
Right, let’s work out the probability of this.
There are six shows left. In order for the jackpot to reach a record £1.5m we need two straight losses within the first five of them.
Removing all duplicates, these are the unique combinations that can produce a £1.5m jackpot for the first time:
* ep2 loss, ep3 loss
* ep2 win, ep3 loss, ep4 loss
* ep2 loss, ep3 win, ep4 loss, ep5 loss
* ep2 win, ep3 win, ep4 loss, ep5 loss
* ep2 win, ep3 win, ep4 win, ep5 loss, ep6 loss
* ep2 win, ep3 loss, ep4 win, ep5 loss, ep6 loss
* ep2 loss, ep3 win, ep4 win, ep5 loss, ep6 loss
If we assume that the Vortex is a 50/50 shot, then the probability of a £1.5m jackpot appearing at some point from here on out is (1/4) + (1/8) + (2 * 1/16) + (3 * 1/32) = 19/32 or about 59%. If we assume that there is a sufficient skill element that that probability can be increased, even slightly, then the prospects for a £1.5m jackpot fall – if P (winning The Vortex) = 0.6 instead of 0.5, then P (Vortex being played for over £1m) ~= 0.43, instead of 0.59.
Overall, it is now very slightly less than 50-50 that Ian Huntley (£1m from Chris Evans + £50k from Poker Den) is overtaken at the top of the All-Time Winners List, if we assume The Vortex is just luck. And in a result that I’m sure could be proven by some algebraic manipulation or another, the probability of someone winning £1.5m or more at some point would be greatest if P (winning the endgame) = 1/3.
Ian Woodley is the highest winner in UK GS history not Ian Huntley.
Cracking Freudian slip there.
I’m going to advance the math a little bit here.
There are 32 combinations possible from episodes 2 to 6. Obviously 1 combination where the player wins every time (jackpot stays at 500k) and 1 where the player loses every time (jackpot reaches 3 million). From there, jackpots can be 1, 1.5, 2 or 2.5 million.
What you covered David is the chances of the jackpot reaching 1.5 million at any time, which is indeed 59.375 percent assuming 50/50.
Along with that though, some additional results can also see it go above that (or even a double shot at 1.5 million if 2 and 3 are losses, 4 is a win, and then 5 and 6 are losses). Breaking out the excel spreadsheet and doing some sorting, I came up with 12 combinations where the jackpot never goes above 1 million, 11 combinations where the jackpot never exceeds 1.5 million, 5 combinations where the jackpot never goes above 2 million, and 2 combinations where the jackpot maxs at 2.5 million. Combine the combinations as necessary to figure the chances of reaching a given jackpot, and here’s what you get at 50/50:
Odds of 1.5 million at any point- 19/32 (about 59.5%).
Odds of 2 million at any point- 8/32 (25%).
Odds of 2.5 million at any point- 3/32 (about 9.5%).
And 1/32 of 3 million, which is a tad over 3%.
To figure the odds of it being won at a certain amount does require one further step since some combinations only hit the possible max at episode 7 (the finale), which brings us to 64 different results. So that math says (assuming again this is 50/50):
Minimum win of 1.5 million- 24 combos before episode 7, seven in episode 7. 31 out of 64 combos= just under 48.5%.
Minimum win of 2 million- 8 combos before episode 7, four in episode 7. 12 out of 64= 18.75%
Minimum win of 2.5 million- 2 combos before episode 7, two in episode 7. 4 out of 64= 6.25%.
Win of 3 million- 1 combo in episode 7, 1 in 64= slightly over 1.5%.
At some point, I’ll try to figure it out in other probabilities too.
I wonder what will happen.
So continuing on from the math exercise above…
Let us take David’s assumption that you can win Vortex with some skill 60 percent of the time (P=0.6). What does that do to our probabilities? (Admittance time- I was heavily spreadsheet reliant. While I’m sure I have it all right, I may have missed something while eyeballing it).
Well, David nailed it- more wins means fewer opportunities to build the pot means less big pots to win. And the effect is pretty dramatic:
Odds of a 1.5 million pound pot at any point- 43.26%. That is down 16.1 percent from 50/50.
Odds of a 2 million pound pot at any point- 16%, down 9 percentage points.
Odds of a 2.5 million pound pot- 4.1%, down almost 5.5 points.
Odds of the 3 million pound pot- 1.02%, down about 2.4 points.
Taking this one step further and figuring out the odds of a particular jackpot being won…
Minimum 1.5 million pound win- 37.5% (down 11 from 50/50). If you turn the percentages into odds, we went from 1 in 2.05 down to 1 in 2.67.
Minimum 2 million pound win- 13.4% (down 5.3 from 50/50). Percentages into odds, we went from 1 in 5.33 to 1 in 7.46.
Minimum 2.5 million pound win- 3.07% (down 3.18 from 50/50). Went from 1 in 16 to 1 in 32.57.
3 million pound win- 0.61% (down about .9 from 50/50). Went from 1 in 64 to 1 in 164.
There is, however, an overriding question from the side of production- what does all of this do to the prize budget for the series?
Start with 50/50. From here, its 1 in 64 that Saturday night’s win will be the last and its 1 in 2 they will pay out all 3.5 million pounds (since a win on the last episode cleans them out). The rest of the probabilities are in sequence- its 1 in 4 they’ll pay out 3 million, 1 in 8 they’ll pay out 2.5 million, 1 in 16 for 2 million, 1 in 32 for 1.5 million and 1 in 64 for 1 million. Multiply the amount won by the probabilities, and you get an expected total series payout of 3,007,812.50 pounds.
Now for 60/40. This time, its 60% they’ll pay out all 3.5 million pounds. From there, it would be 24% for 3 million, 9.6% for 2.5 million, 3.84% for 2 million, 1.536% for 1.5 million, 0.6144% for 1 million and 0.4096% for 500k. Do the multiplication and you get an expected series payout of… 3,168,032 pounds.
So a 10 percent increase in probability of a win only ends up leading to a 5.5 percent increase in how much ITV should expect to give out, mostly because of the chance of a total victory at the end. Basically, from a budget standpoint, ITV probably planned to pay in full and will breathe a sigh of relief if they don’t. Is that good business sense? *Looks at ratings again* Only if it goes up from here.
Hope nobody minds my cross-posting from BuzzerBlog:
I realize this is like complaining about scratched paint on a Ford Pinto, but I really thought the spelling bee was a missed opportunity. They got Carol Vorderman, one of Britain’s most famous math geniuses, and instead of giving her a math challenge, they have her spell words. Countdown’s letters round isn’t even about spelling in the first place.
And for some bigger complaints:
First, the contestants are rubbish. They’re like the brainless central casting contestants that have been plaguing the US for years now. Picking Red because the guy had better hair? Seriously? And the first four people to lock in on the explosion pattern ALL got it wrong, when the pattern wasn’t rocket science. Adjusting the power for Vortex? Any idiot should know that you should adjust the release timing. With just one test run, you have no clue how much longer it will take if you increase the power. But if you release the ball 0.5 seconds slower, you can at least land about 0.5 seconds later in the sequence. I knew that when I was 6 years old playing carnival games, for crying out loud. Assuming the ball is consistent (which I think the show should’ve worked to ensure beforehand and then state on the air, but I’m guessing they didn’t, which makes the game luck-based anyways), she should’ve set it to minimum power (or maximum power, if there is no consistent minimum setting), released her test run right as the light swapped, then look at the result, pick the color she got on the trial run, and do the exact same thing on the real run. Also, in Duel, if given the choice, picking choice of turn and going first is the obviously better strategy. Choice of color is worthless, because you can just watch for the 5 red slices. If you end up getting black, just *avoid* the slices you know are red. All you need is to remember 5 numbers, not all 10 slices, because you know the other 5 are the opposite color.
Which brings me to my second complaint: Randomly giving the choice to one of the contestants for Duel is also bad, because with optimal play (which isn’t that hard, I played along and had the whole pie right), the contestant who gets the choice will win. They could at least have brought back the tiebreaker round to decide who gets the choice.
Then there’s the tiebreaker round itself. I think they should’ve given each player a couple practice tries (perhaps with tape stopped, then mention it on-air) because it seemed to me like there was a tiny bit of lag on the button, and if the second player noticed, it could give them an advantage.
In conclusion: Still rubbish. Slightly less so, but still rubbish. I’m locking in Red. For the show’s net income, that is.
I agree with the mathematicians above. My personal view is that The Vortex 2.0 is slightly more likely to produce a winner than flipping a coin, but not by much. There’s slightly less than a 50% chance of seeing a new number one on the All-Time Winners’ List, and somewhat more than a 50% chance of someone going for £1.5m.
Assuming that all trials are independent, the probability of someone winning £1.5m or more is, indeed, maximised by an individual trial probability of 1/3. Similar results apply for larger wins. The probability of someone winning £1m or more is maximised at an individual trial probability of about 0.475, because the end of the series creates an end to the chain, and we cannot include chains that go all win to all loss.
Mathematical topics we’re all skirting round: Bernoulli distribution (with plays of The Vortex 2.0 as Bernoulli trials), geometric distribution, the St Petersburg Paradox, and (by analysing the probability of runs) an implicit mention of Fibonnaci numbers. They get everywhere.