The Price is Right - 4/24/12 Episode (Part 1)

My afternoon is a little busy, so I'm going to have to split my entry on today's episode of The Price is Right into two parts, with the second one coming sometime tonight. But here's a few quick thoughts on what I've just seen:

Pricing game strategies
We started off today with "Punch a Bunch." Andre earned three punches to win some cash.

There are 50 holes to punch, with the following prize breakdown: 1 - $25,000; 2 - $10,000; 4 - $5,000; 8 - $2,500; 10 - $1,000; 10 - $500; 10 - $250; 5 - $100.

Andre's first punch got him $1,000, with the option to keep it or throw it away for the other two punches. As we can deduce from the breakdown above, that's 3-to-1 odds (16 out of 49 possibilities) to win more, 2-to-1 (25 out of 49) to win less, and about 5.5-to-1 (9 out of 49) to stay at $1,000.

Is it worth the risk?

Andre decided it was, and his second punch was one of the $100 holes. It's an obvious decision to throw that away and take your chances with the third punch, which saw Andre pocket $2,500.

Going by the numbers, it may not have been the sound play, but it paid off.

In the very next game, Neil got a chance to win a car in "The Money Game." Here's the setup:

You get three incorrect guesses to fill in the first two and last numbers in the car. Neil, like just about everyone before him, tried to fill in the first two numbers first. Obviously, it's the 15, 16 or 17. Unfortunately for Neil, he wasted two of his incorrect guess, going with 15 (which anyone who watches The Price is Right regularly knows is wrong) and 17 before hitting with 16. That left him with just one guess to waste on the last two digits, and it really could be any one of those other options. It turned out to be the 24, which he didn't get.

So, here's the question: Knowing that you can set aside three options for the first two digits (which is pretty much always the case in this game), do you make a run at the last two digits first? You get four guesses on six options, and even if it takes you all four, you have decent 3-to-1 odds on your final guess for the first two numbers. And, really, if that setup is like today's, it's 50-50 because you can eliminate the 15.

You obviously run the risk of going 0-for-4 and getting shut out. On the other hand, if you ever get it before your fourth guess, you've pretty much won the car.

It's not as clear-cut as other pricing game strategy foul-ups (like Cover Up, for example), but I'm starting to think this may be the way to go.

Click here for Part 2 of the April 24, 2012 review of The Price is Right, and don't forget to follow us on Twitter (@TPiR_Files).