Happy weekend!
Tomorrow (i.e. Sunday) night at 8pm we’re having a fun game of HORSE as part of our Mix It Up Real Good poker series. It’s open to anyone who basically wants a game, regardless of if they’ve got any interest in winning the glass-effect league trophy or not, so come and join us. It’s DOUBLE POINTS, as the first deeper stacked mixed game of the season.
Otherwise there’s not much of interest this weekend, although there’s a Pointless Doctor Who special (BBC One 7pm) followed by a new series of Who Dares Wins (BBC One 7:45pm). Alternatively there’s Proper Saturday Night Entertainment™ with Ant and Dec (ITV, 7pm) followed by Philip Schofield making looks of joy, excitement and pain on The Cube (ITV 7:20pm).
Lewis Murphy is ill, so there will be no new Fifty 50 Show this week. They’ve still got last week’s to put out eventually.
Edit: Jonathan Ross takes on The Banker on Celebrity Deal or No Deal Sunday evening, 7pm on C4.
No surprise the bloke on the Cube took the money but they should have still let him take part in the game to see if he would have won. Or even just show us what the simplify would have been 🙁
It’d have been a wider target hole. There’s no other way you could simplify it. If you move the columns then it’d throw off your aim and it’d probably negatively affect you.
The issue with seeing if they’d have won anyway with The Cube is that for such high stakes I think most people wouldn’t WANT to know and stuff it up deliberately. And you couldn’t do anything about that.
Interestingly they DID allow it in the original pilot.
The sad reality is, if he isn’t going to take the game with 6 goes and a simplify then it isn’t looking likely that a member of the public ever will.
I’ve been thinking about it a bit and really what there should be if you reach the £250,000 game is a sort of bail out scheme, so if you took on the game and lost a life you could still take a cut of the £100,000, lose another and you could take a smaller cut, a bit like monetary trial runs I guess.
This is the biggest problem I feel, getting a member of the public to gamble £100k on the all or nothing basis. At least on Millionaire if you go for £250,000 from £125,000 (old money tree) and lose you’re taking away £32,000…
Four people (AFAIK) have risked £100k and lost on a UK game show before. All four still left with five figures, and three still left with arguably life-changing sums. (Besides the two £218k losses on Millionaire, the others are contestants on recent DoND who turned down above-mean final offers to chase the £250k and lost – Kerry-Anne turned down £140k and ended up with £10k, Rich declined £160k and was left with £50k.)
The most anyone’s lost on an all or nothing was £75,500 in the first PokerFace final,which a) worked a bit differently because of the faceoff element, b) was notable for said contestant being fairly obviously not short of a few bob anyway. Amusingly Sarah Lang, who got the million, holds the record for the biggest risk on an all-or-nothing gamble (albeit on a technicality; we’ve had a DoND contestant decline £88k to win a penny, and Mo Farah had the celebrity special £1k fallback). And she’d just won an arguably life-changing £32,500 from In It not long before.
In short, most people aren’t going to risk this. I’m kind of surprised that last night’s player stopped at £100k having played on at £50k, but £100k is obviously a big milestone in a way £250k possibly isn’t.
Don’t Forget the Lyrics had a similar problem on the original US version. In order to win $1 Million you had to go in blind not knowing what the song is but you’re told it’s a number one hit and it can be featured in one of the nine song categories (pop, rock etc…). Only problem that nobody was going for it as you’re guaranteed $25,000. They fixed it later in the series on the basis if someone goes for it then their guaranteed amount is raised to $100,000. Although it was difficult reaching the final song, at least two people went for the top prize.
I think with a different game he/I would be more tempted, Descent is a massive bastard of a game at the best of times that you can lose your lives so quickly on if you’re unlucky.
£100k is not the amount it once was but it will basically set you up for life if you use it right, £250k is just a bigger house in comparison. I would idly ponder making the jump £100k to £500k.
Descent is one of those games you could be lucky on or you could lose your lives quickly. One contestant was defeated on the same game and he had eight lives.
I do think in this case it’s better to leave both the contestant and viewer wondering what might have been, rather than playing out to the end.
It’s also a bit different to just believing people are still picking the same boxes as in Deal – remove the money element in The Cube and the nerves go so it’s a different game.
I do think though maybe making £10,000 the safety net, especially for anyone who gets to the £250,000 game, would encourage the gamble. Or perhaps The Cube could make a guaranteed offer to play on – if you take this game we’ll guarantee you “X” amount if you lose. Maybe that could be a lifeline in exchange for a remaining life.
Catchphrase back April 7th, apparently.
The UK still hasn’t had their daylight savings? Bother. I was really excited for HORSE, since I fancy myself a good all-round player. Alas!
Yes, Euro daylight savings comes into effect next weekend.
What about if you beat a game, you bank the money you risked to play it? Like if you win the 2K game you bank 1K, win the 10K game you bank 2K, and so on. That way people who lose the 250K game still walk away with 50K. Sure, in theory it sounds like it’d be more expensive, but if the choice is between “take 100K” and “lose the 250K game and still walk away with 50K”, I think in the long run more people would be willing to attempt the harder games, meaning if they lose them the producers save themselves money.