It's been a run of bad games in this series, but a new player is looking to change all that. And with his familiarity with Le Banquier, he'll be well used to stable boards with ridiculous numbers on them...

Here's the board as it stands...

1p
10p
50p
£1
£5
£10
£50
£100
£250
£500
£750
£1,000
£3,000
£5,000
£10,000
£20,000
£35,000
£50,000
£75,000
£100,000
£150,000
£250,000

...before we fire up the Dulux Purpliser! There are 11 red boxes here with all the red amounts, 11 blue boxes here with all the blues, and 11 greens with percentages from 0% to 50%. Whatever green you find is the share of the red that gets moved to the blue.

We do that five times in all, and for each one you need to pick a different number for each colour. Ready to go?

Sure thing, boss. I'll start off with 1, 2, and 3, please.

Red 1... £75,000. This could be important.

Blue 2... £5. We like that!

Green 3... 50%! Oh, that's a big change. It means that you now have a £37,500 from one half of what was £75,000, and £37,505 from the other half plus the original £5. That will help to stabilise your board.

Four more of those red-blue-green combos to go. You can post them all at once, if you like.

Not a bad start to the game.

I'll go for Red 4, Blue 5, and Green 6 next.

I thought you might like that.

Red 4... £100,000. An even bigger number is on the block for changing.

Blue 5... 1p! Oh, that is fantastic. Unless this is 0%, you will not have to worry about a 1p win.

Green 6... 40%! You most certainly will not have to worry about the penny, because it's now £40,000.01, at the cost of the six-figure amount becoming £60,000. A price worth paying.

Three more of those. They probably won't be that dramatic, but there are £150k and £250k boxes to maybe redistribute some of?

Hey, this is going pretty well thus far.

I think you can probably guess where I'm going next, but since I have to post it, here it is:

Red 7, Blue 8, and Green 9. These all sound like different colour dyes, kind of in the same vein as Red 40, an actual dye that appears in many food and drink items.

Red 7... £10,000. This won't be as exciting.

Blue 8... £250. We'd have preferred that to be lower.

Green 9... 25%. Well, that's enough to ensure a blue becomes a not-really-blue. £7,500 and £2,750 are your two new amounts, and I wonder how you're going to handle this next pick. Red 10 and blue 11, I assume, but which green? You've used 3, 6, and 9, and can use any other green number.

Well, there's no 12 for either colour, so let's change things up a bit:

Red 11, Blue 11, and Green 11 next, for my birthday, December 11.

All the 11s.

Red 11... £1,000. Oh well. We're keeping those big numbers big with that, at least.

Blue 11... £100.

Green 11... 5%. Well, that's adorable. £950 and £150 are now boxes on your board.

We have one more to pick.

Give me all the 10s please, David.

Hopefully, going with 10 is going to serve up something ace.

Red 10... £20,000. So we now know you are still playing for a quarter of a million.

Blue 10... 50p! Another pocket change blue getting some serious help. Unless, of course, this is 0%.

Green 10... 30%! But it isn't, and that means you now have £14,000 and £6,000.50 on your board.

It now looks like this!

£40,000.01
10p
£6,000.50
£1
£37,505
£10
£50
£150
£2,750
£500
£750
£950
£3,000
£5,000
£7,500
£14,000
£35,000
£50,000
£37,500
£60,000
£150,000
£250,000

I think that works nicely. Now, you have Box 15 for this game, and you'll need to pick five others for your first round.

Pretty good board, I’d say. That the 1p is now worth 40 grand will make this an interesting game for sure.

I will start with 14, 5, 8, 21 and 6.

Your game begins in earnest now!

Box 14... 10p! It literally could not have started better. £1 guaranteed from the main game.

Box 5... £60,000! Well, the bad news is that's a big hit. The good news is that you moved £40,000 of it over to the penny, and that one's still there.

Box 8... £6,000.50. Conversely, you bumped that up, but not to anything you will cry over losing.

Box 21... £14,000. And right away, that's where that six grand came from. So really you took out 50p and £20,000.

Box 6... £5,000. All in all, I think we can say that's a good round, even though you only took out one "real" blue.

£40,000.01
£1
£37,505
£10
£50
£150
£2,750
£500
£750
£950
£3,000
£7,500
£35,000
£50,000
£37,500
£150,000
£250,000

Time for the opening offer prediction. We've seen some bad misses on this lately, as nobody's got within 20% in three games, leaving a 0% option on Box 23. Ironically, all of them went on to pick it, but each of them escaped with a fixed offer Deal.

The Banker says you should at least be able to get reasonably close here, because it's a fairly average configuration and he's not done anything wacky with the offer.

I'd go with £9,900 here.

Fair enough round, so I think the offer should match.

Here is my prediction.

PLAYER'S PREDICTION

£9,900

Followed the advice of his fellow North American. Did it work?

BANKER'S OFFER

£9,500

Yeah, I'd say so, as that's a mere 4% difference. That leads to this:

BOX 23 OPTIONS
16%
66%
116%
166%
216%
316%

All up 16 percentage points on the starting values. That's good. But is the offer good enough to take? Remember, Box 23 would be optional if you deal one of the first three offers or go to the end, but the 8-, 5-, and 2-box offers all come in two guises; one with 23 compulsory, the other with it out of the picture entirely.

£9,900... Deal or No Deal?

Well, as good as an offer it is, I’d catch heat if I dealt early, so No Deal.

If we’re opening three next, I’ll go with 16, 3, and 18.

We are indeed. And here they are.

Box 16... £500! That'll help your offers.

Box 3... £37,505. That would have done... had it stayed where it started.

Box 18... £7,500. That is a good box, though.

Your second offer will determine what cash modifier will be added to the Box 23 options. And you're predicting it with this configuration...

£40,000.01
£1
£10
£50
£150
£2,750
£750
£950
£3,000
£35,000
£50,000
£37,500
£150,000
£250,000

Sonce this Banker is significantly more generous at the second offer, I'd go with £15,300.

Another decent round. No complaints from me.

Ben, I like the way you think. I was going to say £15,250, but I think I’ll try your idea instead.

PLAYER'S PREDICTION

£15,300

Let’s hope this works.