I always thought they can't make a more primitive game than this. But yesterday I finally watched the whole show, and it reminds me of trading a lot. You are in a good position in the money nicely, should you hold for a homerun or cash out while you are ahead? You can play it online: http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/deal-or-no-deal.html Is there some kind of winning strategy for it? Since I haven't been watching the show regularly, I assume most people leave with money under 100K...
Well, after playing it a dozen times, my average win was 44K. About 3 times I should have taken the deal while I was way ahead. I had the 750 000 once in my box, but took the deal for less. My best was 135K, my worst was $50... Unless my strategy is not very average, the average player should take the deals when it is above 100K and there are still 6 or so boxes left...
Simple strategy: Ride the trend. As long as the banker's offer is increasing, no deal. Deal on the first down tick. Played 6 hands (no time for more ) Max: 179k Min: 12k Avg: 52.5k Two trades above 100k, 4 below. If change the strategy to taking profit as soon as reaching 100k, then 4 trades would end up above 100k but average would go down.
They do a pretty interesting dissection of deal or no deal strategy at wikibooks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_or_no_deal#Game_strategy
i also think this game show is very similar to trading. making quick decisions about money using probability, while under pressure. one thing i've noticed is that the friends/family members that are brought on stage to "help" the contestant seem to be even more risk aversive then the actual contestant. i have a feeling that more people would take the "deal" when it gets close to 100k if they didn't have a group of friends/family yelling at them to pass on the deal and press on for the million bucks. i wonder if the producers tested the show with/without family/friends on stage....i suspect that if they did test that they found they would give away less money and create more drama and excitment by bringing the extra folks on stage. another observation is that most if not all the contestants i've seen will at some point or another as it gets close to the end will say something to the effect of ' i feel that today is my lucky day, i'm going for the million!' i saw an interview of a former contestant who said that the stage atmosphere, the live audience, etc, caused them, "to beome a different person....I knew I should of taken the deal but I felt that it was my lucky day so held out..." after watching it about a dozen times it seems that the best strategy would be to always take the deal when it gets up to the 100k area. i can't beleive how many people pass on 100k, 150k, 200k deals when you know that is more then these people make in a whole year.....you can practically see the dollar signs in their eyes and the sugarplums dancing above their heads.....so deluded. i guess its the old adage regarding greed.....pigs get slaughtered.
Just noticed my typo. It should've been: Max: 179k Min: 12k Avg: 72.5k Otherwise this sentence wouldn't make sense: "If change the strategy to taking profit as soon as reaching 100k, then 4 trades would end up above 100k but average would go down." Over 400k for 6 hands, would average at least 67k per hand (It actually was 71k).
The problem is, there is no real trend here. More like luck and lots of probabilities. And you don't know in advance that the next offer is going to be a better one, but the drop several times is very dramatic. I say take the deal whenever it is in the neighbourhood of 100K.... Once my best offer was 91 K and I ended up with 21K, the second time my best offer was 89K and I finished with 3K....
OK, I just came up with MY strategy. Played it 10 times, my average win was 108K !!! That is quite an increase compared to my previous average. I will tell you later, but let's see if you can beat it. I will test your strategy, my guess is that it will average around 50K....