Prepare to speak your brains, the UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar annual poll rounding up the year of 2013 is now open and waiting for your votes.

You can read instructions for voting by e-mail on the UKGameshows.com site here.

Alternatively (and preferred as it makes it a bit easier to add up and leaves a paper trail) we’ve got our very own form for you to use right here (and linked to in the sidebar on the left). It’s not very pretty but it’s beautiful inside, and that’s what really matters right?

Lines close 11pm Wednesday 15th January. Best of luck to all the runners and riders.

We discuss last year’s biggest shows in this week’s Fifty 50 Show, give it a listen.

Also we’ve got a poker game going on tonight, the first episode of the Bother’s Bar Monthly. Come and join us for cards and ‘laughs’, 8pm start, ten minutes late reg available.

9pm, Channel Five, massive twist and so on. God knows why they bother advertising it as the most extreme every year (this year celebs will apparently enter handcuffed together! Which is a new launch night thing, but not new Big Brother thing), it’s not like people don’t know if they’re going to watch it is it? They’ll never beat Julie Goodyear and Cheryl Fergison for launch night antics anyway.

I’ve also got no idea who is going in as I’ve avoided most of the gossip, so it could be quite exciting.

Im other unrelated news, squeaky-voiced comic Willy Rovelli’s returning as the chef on Fort Boyard next year.

And Happy New Year to you all. Come and play cards on Sunday night.

So Deal or No Deal has a shiny new set and a new game element – can’t blame them for not trying – in Box 23. Box 23 is a box set aside from the stage with one of five things randomly loaded inside – Double, +10k, Money Back, Half, Nothing. After the main game, the player can elect to buy Box 23 for all their money and receive a return based on what is inside.

Crikey. I’ve been in several minds about this over the last hour, varying from hmmm, to mmm to hmmm again. They’ve been filming with it for months now so other people will have a better idea of how it’s panning out than I, but here’s where I am.

I sort of respect it but think it’s been done too conservatively. The fun of Pacco Matto (the crazy box in the Italian show) is that its game changing effects could come in at any point, here we have high potential for really big Pressure Pad style anti-climaxes.

I maintain that when people come up with these ideas, it’s not enough to consider expected value implications (mathsy people have already worked out that any prize under £20k is +EV and worth going for, over it is not) but also the sorts of real world decisions people make, ideally you want to cause a bit of indecision agony followed by a reasonable percentage of people going for it – this is why the Final Drop of The Million Pound Drop was really poorly thought through.

I reckon the sweet spot for this is going to be where the stake is around £3k-£8k, maybe a little bit more, not mega money but the sort you’d be quite upset to not have and where doubling or  halving represents significant utility risk. Below this it’s pretty much a no brainer – the gains significantly outweigh the losses, above this I think most people will walk away and certainly once you get power five I can’t see anybody going for it leading to really awkward win celebration followed by energy sapping pointless epilogue. A really elegant solution should avoid this sort of pitfall entirely.

Perhaps the recent running average has been in that sweet spot – I don’t really know. But I’m interested to see how it plays out. I think they’ve been quite clever in downplaying the half million payoff potential.

I still think the Deal team sets the high bar in the business, but my gut thinks Box 23 in its current form it’s a bit of a misstep.

Last post of 2013. It’s our tenth birthday in April dontchaknow. Whatever you’re up to, have a good one. But before we go…

I’m informed Deal or No Deal is worth watching in the next few days – not because there’s a big winner (as far as I know) but because with the new studio apparently comes a new element and genuinely nobody has told us what it is yet, but people who have seen it filmed suggest that it’s going to be interesting to see the reaction. It also sounds like the proposed move to 3:30 has been put off, listings guides keeping it at 4pm as far as the eye can see.

Iain Weaver has done another Fifty 50 Show Outside Broadcast this time set at Puzzled Pint, the international puzzle pub quiz thing run in London by TV’s Dan Peake and chums.

• Download direct!
• Show notes!
• iTunes!
• RSS!

Daniel Peake completed his 2500 Clue Challenge in the last few days so congratulations to him, you can read all about it and donate to charity here. He just needs a hundred quid to make a grand, go on.

The Genius continues variously, Wie is De Mol? begins on Thursday, and hopefully our good friend ThatDarkSpark won’t have problems translating it quickly!

The Poll of 2013 will launch next Sunday. Look out for a thing in the next Fifty 50 Show. We’ve got a poker game running next Sunday as well.

That’s all for now. Have a good ‘un.

Happy Bit Between Christmas and New Year! I’m preparing to hand my notice in after winning lifechanging amounts of money (about £500) tipping Mrs Brown’s Boys to top the Xmas Day overnights, as could have you (and indeed some of you did!) if you heard me banging on about the price on Twitter. Don’t forget the inaugural Bother’s Bar Monthly Poker Open is Sunday January 5th, costing $5.50 to play (but a single re-buy and add-on is available), you can buy in now, all the details can be found here.

For now, Challenge’s First Ever Eps weekend approaches. It’s a bit liberal with the term “first ever” in some cases I think, but here’s the line-up, with particularly interesting (i.e. ones Challenge haven’t shown for ages anyway) emboldened:

Saturday 28th:

1400: Dale’s Supermarket Sweep – I might be wrong about this, Guardian’s TV listings suggest it’s the more recent version although I don’t doubt it could be the original. (Edit: It’s the original. Naughty Guardian.)
1430: Takeshi’s Castle
1500: 1 vs 100 – lottery references removed, natch.
1550: Going for Gold
1620: Bob’s Full House
1700: Whittle – We love a bit of Whittle!
1730: Fun House
1800: Ninja Warrior – Stuart Hall voiced this originally. Will it have been revoiced?
1900: Treasure Hunt – Set in Bali and very much a curio, closer to the original French show than the show most people would associate with Treasure Hunt. What’s really interesting is that it’s been given a seventy-five minute slot, so fingers crossed unedited.
2015: Celebrity Squares – Bob’s Big Box Game, this is from the 1993-6 reboot.
2045: Strike It Lucky – can’t say I remember Challenge showing the very earliest series for a while, although I might be wrong.
There is also First ever eps of Challenge’s wrestling coverage.

Sunday 29th

1400: The Crystal Maze – Yeah I know TCM is on Challenge all the time anyway. But it is brilliant. I’m convinced they’re editing out a game so it can fit the current ad break structures though.
1500: Take Your Pick – From 1992 rather than 1955 I expect.
1530: Deal or No Deal – Back in 2005. Simpler times.
1615: Wipeout – This was a great show with Paul Daniels, but certainly last time Challenge showed it is had been edited rather to fit in a three minute ad break, so not much contestant chat.
1645: 321 – From 1978! I had a mild addiction to 321 when Challenge used to repeat them in the small hours years ago, and I actually think the really old ones have a massive amount of charm to them.
1800: Stars in Their Eyes – I don’t remember this only being half an hour when it started, but that’s what it says here. Leslie Crowther hosts – I can’t believe Challenge haven’t considered Crowther’s Price is Right, it is genuinely brilliant and would fit in with their current output really well.
1830: Total Wipeout
1930: Knightmare
2000: Bullseye – from 1981 when it had weird rules.
2030: Blankety Blank – The crowning glory of the whole weekend for me, the very first episode fronted by Terry Wogan from 1979. It’s been given a 45 minute slot too, so let’s hope the only edits are for ad breaks.

It wasn’t so long ago Challenge refused to put anything on that didn’t look modern so I really hope the archive stuff is working out for them.

The Poll of 2013 will commence the following Sunday, so get your thinking caps on.

Alright, last post before Christmas. Last year’s 21 Questions Wrong Hotseat seemed to go down well so here’s another festive (it was only meant to be five or six festive questions mixed with normal questions, it turns out to be five or six normal questions mixed with festive questions) twenty-one for you to lord it over the dinner table with after Christmas dinner. Best played with a fast-talking quizmaster and about six people I reckon, but there’s no upper or lower limit.

If you don’t know what this is, it’s the endgame from LEGENDARY Italian quiz Avanti Un Altro multiplayered up. We used to do it on the radio and who knows may yet still again at some point, and not forgetting top celebrity Tom Scott partook in a live action version months ago.

Here is this year’s quiz (corrected) – it includes notes and the rules after the list (which is designed to fit onto one sheet of printed out paper). DO NOT READ IF YOU INTEND TO BE A PLAYER. As ever the questions run the gamut of difficulty – don’t assume they start easy and get gradually harder (the difficulties are mixed to try and trip people up, and part of the fun is the thrill of the chase) but the last two are always difficult but knowable (Q21 is hard at this time of year, much easier a few months later). No question will ever ask what is *not* something as I consider that unfair in the circumstance, and we won’t ask questions that are “according to polls” (unless it’s really really famous).

If you enjoy that and find you can’t get enough I did two more sets last year you can use for yourself – here’s Xmas 2012, and here’s New Year 2012. There probably won’t be a separate NY edition this year unless I’m really bored over the next week.

If you do play let us know how you get on.

AS WELL AS THAT, Fifty 50 Show reaches its landmark 46th episode and Lewis Murphy chats with Daniel Peake and Andrew Sullivan with regards to this week’s hugely exciting Schlag den Raab as well as some other things, I’ve not listened yet.

• Download direct
• Show notes
• Subscribe on iTunes
• Subscribe on RSS

We’ll be around over the Christmas period, although there probably won’t be a huge amount of updates. Whatever you’re up to, have a good one!