So it's now been over 13 years since the show started!! And on this very day in 2005, the £250k made it's first EVER appearance on the table, just 10 shows in.....except Natalie had already dealt at £22k at 8-box! It almost happened twice in a row with Maurice the following day too, but luckily he only had 50p in his box.

Also, with Maurice's £35k win, Natalie's game would also be the last game where no one the wings had witnessed any power-5 level wins until Mikey's game in April 2008, and of course Maurice would hold the very short-lived title of the biggest win of all time, only to be completely knocked out of the park a week later

I quite like the way that - in the early days - Noel would ramp up the hyperbole to a level of near-insanity; I remember him telling Maurice, in words to this effect, 'you're the biggest winner we've EVER HAD!' - well, of course, we've only actually ever had about six shows...I think it was similar with Shell's opening round, the all-blue - again, not copied verbatim here - 'that's the best opening round EVER! £4,300, the highest first offer we've had in ages!'

I suppose acting as if the show's been around forever kind of led the viewer into having the same mindset, hence the sensationalism having optimum effect.

That was just Noel over-exaggerating a big win, just like when Chris Tarrant said that the first WWTBAM £125,000 winner was "the biggest winner on a quiz show IN THE WORLD" (Tic-Tac-Dough's Tom McKee and all 9 couples who won the grand prize on the $1,000,000 chance of a lifetime unquestionably won more) and more recently Bradley and subquently Daily Mail claiming that the recent £100,000 win on The Chase was the biggest win in daytime quiz show history.

Yes, it was Noel over-exaggerating a big win, which is exactly what I said!

Yeah, I noticed that about Chris a few years ago while I was watching all the early episodes of WWTBAM (all those on YouTube anyway)...so at least Mr Walsh is keeping the good old tradition alive

11 years ago, Shaz took advantage of the first ever FUTURE OFFER from the banker and was rewarded beautifully with a great win of £25,000!

I actually think the show started to decline after Shaz's game. Despite the controversies of £1k Michael and Helen B's post-game handout, i thought early November was great as it had good moments with box wins that weren't OPW's but still satisfying results (Charly, Nicki, Mary), Stef having a great OPW for £25,000, and characters like Basil Fawlty Peter, pealpixie Simon, Denis and JC, and the "mummies" of the group were also played up as big characters at the time too.

I think Judy's game was the true beginning of the decline, with Judy having a trainwreck after a truly forcing 5-box offer, Mario having the nightmare round after an extremely brave no-deal at 5-box, then there was "£16,500 week", and then after JC played, the sob-stories came flooding in at a ridiculous rate and we were really struggling for entertainment (largely due to bad editing which didn't give a lot of wing contestants a chance to shine). With a mixture of crap-mediocre games and not many standouts on the wings besides Clive, "Marmite" Orry and Olly Murs who really became a "legend in hindsight" with his post-DoND pop singer fame , I think they were trying to manufacture characters with Johnny the Tramp and Ashleigh yawning in one of the games

I think December 2007-October 2008 and the second half of 2013 were probably my all time least favourite eras of the show

Happy New Year all! And Happy FIFTH Anniversary of Joey's game and the introduction of box 23!

Happy New Year to you as well and everyone else!

I haven't been to the forum for a very long time. I was prompted to do so as have been catching up with the new series of DOND US on youtube!

Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of the game of Julie Walton who sold a 1p box for £33,000 and held a record that remained unbroken right up until October 2010 - The largest proportional win!

Today is the 9th anniversary of Debbie who had a horrendous game and took one of the lowest deals ever by dealing for 13p! Her record only being beaten by 4p Mark from October 2008 and of course, Igor's unbeatable record of 2p in July 2007

Yesterday marked 5 years since Peters Game In Which On a 750/10k finish, he declined a lousy £2,375 as he believed a red was on the table, unfortunately it wasn't.

https://m.facebook.com/DealorNoDeal/pho ... e_internal

So he purchased box 23 with the £750 and went home with NOTHING. The most heartbreaking show in which someone left with nothing.

Today is 3 years since Bobby Hall played and got +£10,000 from box 23 after an emotional end to the game after he had originally won £500.



https://goo.gl/images/kqHbe2

Why are we still documenting these anniversaries? The show has been off the air for nearly three years now. It all seems kind of pointless to me.

On that note, let's do something a little different.

One year ago today in MY personal DoND series, Giorgio played with box 5 after a fairly short stint of 16 shows on the wings

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=28222

He had an extremely strong game, turning down offers of £8,000, £15,000, £20,000 and £41,000! Despite the loss of the £250k in the fifth round, he had an amazingly strong final 5 of £15k, £20k, £50k, £75k and £100k, and the banker offered EXACTLY the average of £52,000....which Giorgio REJECTED!!

Things came off the rails a bit in the final round when Giorgio found the £20k, £75k and £100k, leaving him with a final pairing of £15k and £50k, and a final offer of £30,000, which he DEALT. Giorgio had £15,000 in his box, making it a technical player win

Question is, was Giorgio reckless or not for turning down an on-the-mean offer on the board he had?

So now we’re documenting fictional games? If that’s not grasping at straws, then I don’t know what is. I think the best thing to do in this case is to let pointless threads die.

One anniversary worth remembering - 10 years ago today, our own site admin man h2005 played! Bananas, furniture polish, strange dances and ghosts all featured... Those were the days.

Four days late for the party, but here's to it! I think we had something like 340 people online that afternoon, too. What a moment.

Keyvan played on this day 5 years ago. He was a great character but he had a practically luckless game, and an unsuccessful gamble on box 23 was the final straw which saw Keyvan join the NOTHING network

Useless trivia - Keyvan was the last EVER man who stood in wing position E11 - the position that started with a long run of women, and ended with a long run of women (April 2014 also marked the last man in W11, which had mostly men in it at first, then went mixed, and after Craig who played in this month, it was all female for the rest of the show's run) - Oh how i miss my namesake James1978!

James1978, what an unsung hero of this forum he was.

What happened to him? He was always loyal to the forum and seemed like such a great guy, he was always very open-minded about the way people played their games and hardly ever got aggressive. Then he just......disappeared

Anyone heard from him lately?

First post here in over 5 years!

Wow, I'm amazed I'm even remembered TBH.

I did choose to stop posting on the forum actually, it came to the point where during the last year or so I posted here, all I was doing was bitching about other users' posts (first it was Norwich Donder who always seemed to snipe at the contestants, then Mark with his oh dears, then it was Mad Mark/Dr Hindsight/whatever else he called himself, then lastly ACB - though the latter did get much better after I left) - and not really posting anything constructive myself as I wasn't watching the show anywhere near as much as in the early days, so didn't feel I had anything to contribute any more. There might have been one or two more but they're the main ones I remember!

I can't have seen more than 20 games per year from 2014 onwards, though I did see most of the specials at the end of 2016 and the jackpot win on the last-ever show (which I felt was something of a fix!), and I absolutely HATED Box 23 - to have been used as anything more than a tool to see if people could rescue to extra 10 grand out of a trainwreck (and to keep viewers watching a trainwreck) , then the NOTHING option really needed to go (have something else bad, but not as bad as losing the lot!).

(God I've just realised I still have a signature of an old man who played his name nearly 13 years ago.......)

I must have some kind of psychic powers to get you back on here!

I can't say i was a fan of Box 23 either, as it was just a gimmick they added to suddenly turn trainwrecks into decent wins and was essentially a more permanent version of the miniature boxes from Tracey's game, BUT i can seen why it was done, as we were just about starved of big wins and exciting games during the second half of 2013, as the majority of contestants during that era had become incredibly cautious and many were terrified of going on of 8-box! (plus the rare gamblers we had during that era nearly always ended up winning low amounts, which didn't help matters either). Box 23 at least gave contestants some motivation to keep playing as it gave players a chance to recover things if it went badly wrong.

We did have a great period of big wins in October 2015 with Ann becoming the 8th quarter-millionaire (and nearly blowing it by doing a "Mary" on box 23!!), £100k Harry and some powerful boards, which no doubt would've been a classic era for the show if it were in the pre-box 23, 45 minute slot era and wasn't for the fact that people were beginning to accept that DoND was running on its last legs