The Price is Right - 5/4/12 Episode

I'm not quite as obsessed with Plinko as many other The Price is Right fans are, but it can sometimes make for riveting television. The exultation of a $10,000 chip, matched by the utter despair of the $0 chip. Fortunes hang in the balance and can change in a second.

Today, Kyong's playing of Plinko gave me goosebumps.

That's pretty damn good.

Kyong earned her three extra Plinko chips with some sound pricing strategy (including the generally accurate principle that if they give you a '0' for the second number as an option, take it. She did twice, and won a chip both times).

Kyong's highlight reel wasn't over. At the wheel, Mary has just gotten a dollar. Here's Kyong trying to match it:

Mary got an 85 in the spin-off, and Kyong was one peg away from matching it and creating the most epic spin-off in recent times. It didn't happen, but $22,000 in cash isn't a bad day on The Price is Right.

The Plinko and wheel moments saved an otherwise fairly mundane show. There were a few highlights and lowlights, though.

Bidders' row FAIL
Ladies and gentlemen, let's say you're convinced the item up for bid is $900. The three bids before you were $775, $800 and $1,200. What do you bid?

The Price is Right - 4/6/12 Episode

Today's episode of The Price is Right had a lot going for it: obnoxious contestants, great pricing game play, poor pricing game play and a $1 spin on the wheel, to name a few.

To start, Drew Carey just could not keep a straight face when introducing the Dutch oven during "1/2 Off":

Pricing game strategy fail
With alarming consistency, contestants take the already fairly difficult game of "Cover Up" and make it a lot harder for themselves. For those not familiar with the game, you're playing for a car, and the board starts off looking liking this:

The car - in today's case, a Ford Fiesta SE - is not $29,619. But you have to cover up those incorrect digits with one of the digits right above it. So, today, that 6 in the middle is in fact a 0, 3, 1 or 7. You get as many turns as you need, as long as you got at least one number right in your previous turn.

Here's the thing: you KNOW that Ford Fiesta is a $17,000 car based on those numbers. The obvious strategy is to get just one of those right on the first turn and purposely botch the other one, buying yourself an extra round of guesses on the more difficult numbers at the end.

The first two numbers are always that simple, and yet no one ever, EVER plays it correctly.