Saturday,
7:15pm UK/8:15pm Germany,
Pro Sieben or naughty internet streaming
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Well it’s only been a month since the last one and I was rather hoping that I could just copy and paste last month’s entry verbatim for this one. But not so!
On Saturday night two celebs will battle it out over fifteen games LIVE for €100,000, the people’s favourite Elton will once again be hosting and commentary will as always be provided by Frank Buschmann. There are usually musical guests to break up the action but we don’t know who they are at time of writing which is rather unusual. Edit: Good news for fans of JORIS and Era Istrefi, for it is they.
But if you don’t fancy their commentary than come and listen to ours instead. We’ll have quizzes (probably) and gossip (possibly) while the adverts are on.
Who are the two gladiators competing this month? NONE OTHER THAN lead singer of Revolverheld and The Voice Kids coach Johannes Strate and international footballing sensation Arne Friedrich. Best of luck telling them apart in this promo photo.
Our Youtube live commentary link.
This stream is commentary only. You will need to have a naughty stream running at the same time for the visuals. We are likely to be about 15-20 seconds behind the visual stream (and about a full minute behind if you’re watching an actual satellite feed), sorry.This is the stream we will be watching. (It’s in HD!)
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Tschüß!
I’m enjoying watching these, as well as listening to the discussion about what’s going on. Kinda makes me wish that I’d know about it when Schlag den Raab was still going on. Or that I actually use Twitter…
Game 1: Dodgy tin opener, possibly, but I do know that some types of tin openers work much better for me than others, and I doubt that I’m the only person like that. Also, I read “Dosen” as “dozen”, and so was expecting only 12 of the cans to be opened.
Game 2: Those faces were creepy. Clever idea for a game, though, although it was really hard to hell what was going on at first.
Game 3: The game kinda made its point after about a minute and a half, but as it was only a single sequence each, it was probably correct to have it be almost that long. Nice gimmick at the end with all nine targets lighting up at once. Could’ve done with a progress meter, though. Also, a nice touch that the floor board in front of it was killing some of the bounce.
Game 4: Shut The Box… the dice game? Doesn’t feel fair, given that the dice can royally screw one player over. I’ll post separately about this, because maths.
Game 5: Rocket League, anyone? Surprised that they were walking out on camera instead of taking a break. Don’t know if it needed to be two halves.
Game 6: So, when tossing the caber is done as part of the Highland Games, this isn’t done for distance, but for how straight you can toss it (something that I only know because of the QI Elves). Also very surprised that they were measuring it from a fixed point in the middle. I don’t think that this affected the result, though.
Game 7: This looked interesting. Possibly not great television, but I think it’s ok to have the odd game like that. Might have been easier if I was paying attention at the start. Good that they went through all of the items that were added. Some of those were utter stinkers, though (*cough* lightswitch).
Game 8: This game sucks! As does that pun. As does Elton at keepy-uppy with a ping-pong ball… And what is up with the advertising timings, this time?
Game 9: Fetch? No, because I can’t type into Google Translate properly. Fencing! On the commentary, Lewis made a point about how skilled players can sometimes lose to absolute beginners, because they are far less predictable. I think that that applies to a lot of different things, not just fencing.
Game 10: Presumably, Zuordnen a repeat from Schlag den Raab, since it’s as obvious an idea as Sortiren, and deserves to be compared with it.
Game 11: Racing… on Segways? Am surprised that there was no major crash. Benefitted from being a shorter and more technical race, rather than going around the studio.
Game 12: Pretty good game. Not much more to really say about this one. I kinda disagree about this being all about luck. Shut the box leaves you at the mercy of the dice, whereas at least this has some skill in it.
Game 13: The return of the man in the red suit. Has he been taking lessons from Jeremy Paxman?
Game 14: The light above the table helped with the less than ideal camera position. I think a few may have ended up on the camera. Could possibly have been a little shorter, although it was only just gone three and a half hours when this game started, so it wasn’t as if it was going to be a really long night.
Game 15: In another universe, this could quite literally have been The Million Pound Drop. Except it’s only for EUR 100k. Elton should’ve had a chair to sit on so he could be at eye level with the ring. High potential for lasting a while, so I agree with them lowering it after several attempts, but I think that they could’ve waited slightly longer before lowering it a second time.
WARNING: Maths ahead.
Shut the Box. Wikipedia has a good article explaining the rules for this (although I don’t believe that option to only roll one dice was provided), so I won’t repeat them here.
To close the 9, that requires you to roll a total of 9 on two dice (commonly referred to as 2d6). If it’s early in the game (and the low numbers are available), then rolls higher than 9 will also let you remove the 9.
The probability of rolling 9 or higher on 2d6 is 10/36 (4/36 for rolling exactly 9, plus 6/36 for rolling higher), which is 27.8%. The probability of this not happening is 26/36 (72.2%) Rather usefully, we can keep multiplying by 26/36 to see the chances of repeatedly failing to roll 9 or higher. This resulting number gets rather small rather quickly. After 5 rolls, the chances of not having rolled 9 or higher at all fall to below 1 in 5 (19.6%), and are below 1 in 7 (14.2%) after 6 rolls. Most of the attempts that were played lasted about 5 or 6 rolls, so these are useful numbers to remember.
It wasn’t until late in the 4th attempt to shut the box that someone finally managed to close the 9. I haven’t been able to count, but it’s a reasonable guess that about 20 rolls had been made previously to this. The chances of 9 or higher not being seen after 20 rolls is 0.149%, which is in the realms of very unlikely. Had 9 or higher not been rolled once before the end of the game (they played best of 5, so probably at least 30 rolls), the notary would’ve had legitimate cause to question the fairness of the dice that were being used. Either that or the eventual winner should be spending the EUR 100k on lottery tickets…