The Price is Right - 5/31/12 Episode

I'm calling today a 6-for-6 day on The Price is Right.

Technically, it wasn't, as neither contestant who played for a car actually won a car. But they showed some common sense (a rare concept on this show) and took home pretty good prizes, so I'm giving them the 'W.'

In today's second pricing game, we had Morningstar (yes, really) playing for a truck in "Temptation." One by one, the models trot out four prizes (usually, one of them is cash)...

...and you have to guess which of those numbers is the next digit in the car. You're given the first digit in the car price (in today's case, a '2'), so here, Morningstar has to guess whether the next digit is a '3' or a '4.' And so on and so forth. In addition to the $3,434 in cash, today's other prizes were a portable satellite receiver for $776, a 32-inch HD television for $499, and a trio of watches for $595. So, each digit is a toss-up.

The game is called "Temptation" because you can just keep the prizes without doing a thing, or risk it all on the premise that you guess all right digits in the car. If you are right, you get the car and the prizes. If you go for it and lose, you lose everything.

To me, it's an easy decision: take the prizes. Today, they were worth over $5,000 total. Why risk that on the 16-to-1 odds that you have the right price of the car? And yet, most contestants go for it. They almost always lose.

Morningstar, however, took the prizes. And it's a good thing she did.

In today's fifth game, Dennis was playing "Gas Money" for a shot at a Chrysler 200 LX. In this game, you're given five possible prices for the car. One is correct, and the other four have money values of $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 and $4,000. To win the car, you have to pick the car price last, accumulating your "gas money" along the way. You can stop and just pocket the cash at any time, but if you keep going and pick the car price before you're supposed to, you lose everything. The game is difficult because the five prices are all within about $1,000 of the one above and/or below it.

The Price is Right - 5/29/12 Episode

Well, this happened today on The Price is Right:

She bid on the fucking tugboat prop!!!

Novel's $800 bid didn't win the surfboards, either. And she didn't cover herself in much glory in the next round. As the last bidder on a portable DVD player, Novel went with $900...

...when a bid of $651 would have done the trick. Particularly since the actual retail price was $780 - oops.

Novel finally figured it out in the last round, going $1,501 after bids of $1,200, $1,499 and $1,500. But Orchid (above, far right) won the pool table with her $1,200 bid, avoiding becoming a "first four" flame-out in the process.

Orchid didn't have much luck in "The Race Game," though (click here to see how the game is played). Here were her prices:

And the prizes were: desktop computer, women's accessories, treadmill, kitchen range. "The Race Game," like other timed games, requires poise and at least some retail knowledge. It also helps if, as I've mentioned before, you pay attention to George Gray as he's describing the prizes. The women's accessories - a pair of platform sandals, leather tote and sunglasses - were from Prada.

Prada.

The shades alone are probably $880 for all we know, so hearing "Prada" should ring alarm bells that the accessories might be one of the more expensive items here. As it turned out, it was the most expensive at $3,590, but Orchid went with $880 - and then never changed it. In the end, she got only the treadmill for $2,499.

Considering the presence of Prada, and the $880 just screaming out "desktop computer," this was a really winnable setup.

Pricing game WIN
Contestants went just 1-for-6 on pricing games today. The '1' was a hell of a win, though.

After getting a $500 and a $0 with his first two "Plinko" chips, here's Ryan's last two:

"Cover Up" FAIL
I'm going to throw a party when someone finally plays "Cover Up" correctly. You're all invited.

I know I bang on about this every time (here's my original banging on, complete with how the game is played), but here's the thing: this game is played a lot. Perhaps some contestants show up to The Price is Right on a whim without watching it beforehand, but not all of them. Surely, at this point, a lot of these people have seen this game played already.

If I can figure out the strategy, so can they.

The Price is Right - 5/10/12 Episode

Today was a pretty boring episode of The Price is Right, so this is going to be relatively short.

Let's take a look at the highlight of the day: David winning a new truck in "Grocery Game." This is my favorite grocery-related game.

 

It requires strategy, retail know-how and has a cool setup, including Rachel operating an old-school cash register with the spinny numbers. The purpose of the game is to "buy" groceries until you get to a price between $20 and $21.

And David nailed it.

 

Here he is with his truck:

"It's got wheels!"

David was the star of the day, as he also won an epic Showcase duel with Felipe (who wiped out on "Gas Money" earlier in the show).

To get two bids that close is rare. Felipe looked like he had his iPhone/iMac computer/Prius in the bag, but David topped him with a $28,300 bid on his snorkeling gear/Belize/ski boat package. Well done.

Pricing game FAIL
There were a few of these today. In addition to Felipe, we had Francina asking for the first digit and then getting the next two wrong in "2 for the Price of 1" (a double fail), and Jason blowing "Swap Meet" (by guessing that two pairs of Gucci heels and two pairs of Gucci sunglasses were only $1,650).

The Price is Right - 5/3/12 Episode

Maurice had a fascinating day on bidders' row today. He joined the circus for the second round, and never got on stage.

Let's examine why. We'll start with his first bid on men's and women's watches:

What's the deal with these types of bids lately?

They were pretty nice watches, but...

Maurice appeared to have it figured out in the next round, bidding $1 over Vincenza as the last bidder. He didn't hesitate to rub it in, either.

Too bad for Maurice it didn't pay off.

Instead of sticking with the process, though, Maurice grew increasingly erratic. He soon went back to the $1-over strategy, except this time, he was the second bidder. This opened the door for James (who didn't win, either) to one-up him...

...which is why you don't do that as the second bidder.

It was then all set up for Maurice in the sixth and final round, as he was the fourth bidder. So what does he go and do?

Say it ain't so, Mo. Say it ain't so.

James, by the way, was another "first four" contestant to never get off bidders' row. Oh well.

My weekly "Cover Up" whinge
Someday, somebody will play this correctly. Someday...

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).