i think its unwinnable
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heres a scenario:

5 boxes left

£5
£250
£500
£20,000
£250,000

Banker gives an offer of £47,000

I have seen most players chicken out and DEAL
but its the common sense to deal.

5 people who dealt and had the 250k:
Natalie - Dealt at £22,000
Mally - Dealt at £54,000
Daz - Dealt at £45,000
Anna - Dealt at £43,000
Germaine - Dealt at £75,000

Majority of people at that stage would deal wouldnt they?

I would.

They would be scared of losing the 250k, everyone would. so thats why they deal
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this is why i believe its unwinnable

Your views please

Someone will end up one day having the guts to say No Deal and hopefully win a quarter of a million. Part of the fun of the £250k guess is that we are trying to find the 250,000 and so far no one has guessed it correctly

The £250,000 is winnable, it's just unlikely that it will happen very often (if ever).
The way my partner and I see it, two things need to be in place for someone to take the jackpot.

1. The player has to get to the last two boxes with £250,000 and £100,000 still in play (Maybe the £75,000, but any smaller amount in the second box and the difference in monetary value becomes too great for most people to risk a gamble, and they would likely accept the bankers middle-ground offer)

2. The player has to be a hell of a gambler, and be happy to accept that they might go home with the smallest amount of money potentially available to them (£250,000, Bankers offer, £100,000).
But given that the smallest amount available is still £100,000, they would hardly be skint if it all went wrong, and they have a 50% chance of winning the top prize.

If anyone does win the £250,000, I think it would probably play out something like that.

It is winnable. The two criteria you need is.....

a)You must have it in your box, or last two left.
b)You need someone with massive balls like Jennifer did.

It's winnable, it's just long odds.

Bork has it spot on. The only time it would be worth continuing and go right to the end for £250000 is if all there are left are big numbers - specifically the £250000, £100000 and most of the rest of the "power block".

The dream scenario with five boxes left would be something like this:

£250,000
£100,000
£75,000
£50,000
£10,000

The offer at this point would be HUGE, but the absolute WORST CASE SCENARIO at this point would be a cool £10K, which is a very good sum of money indeed. At this point it's worth opening another three boxes as even if you were to knock out all three of the big ones above, you'd still be looking at a final offer in the £25K range with the two lower boxes, whereas if you still have the £250K and £100K in play at the end, your offer would increase to the £170K range I should think, and then it becomes a matter of how greedy you are. If it were me, and I was guananteed a minimum of £100K at this point and a possible £250K in the other box, I would probably play on to the end. It's win-win either way - £100K I never had to begin with.

Mind you, like they say on the show, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and if I was up there in the chair and I was being offered REAL money, I'd probably bottle out and take the cash. It's definately doable though - to the right person with the right mindset and a hell of a lot of luck along the way.

Mental Mickey

I agree with you on




and



and with nik



but its very unlikely we get someone have the £250,000 and £100,000
(has anyone been in that position?)

I was wondering whether the TV company considered this as a factor. If they 'insure' themselves by selecting people whose monetary aspirations are not in the upper bracket, (not they wouldn't take it if offered) then yes, the odds against it being won get longer.

sara had the final 2 boxes as the top 2. way after she dealt though.

anyway, i think if a dealer was lucky to have the top 3 and a couple others left, they may go to the final 2, in which they are lucky enough to have the top 2 left. then, they need balls to no deal.

This is almost exactly the scenario that Brenda had the other week. Her final five were £250k, £75k, £50k, £35k, £10k (although she'd already said Deal a round earlier).

Knowing that you're going to win at least £10,000 no matter what means that you're guaranteed a good result. With no chance of a disasterous result, there are definitely people who would reject any offer and take their own box if they were in that situation. John G. on Saturday showed that there are people out there who will go for lesser amounts with far greater risk!


Absolutely.

how do you vote - i.e. no

Click on the circle on the left of the answer.

Then click submit vite. the results will come up

What a great game Germaine had today.

Unfortuanately it provided further proof that you need a virtual dream scenario, as disscussed elsewhere in this thread to be able to say "No deal" and have a go at opening a potential 1/4 million box. Either that or balls of steel, and the ability to get over the fact you denied yourself thousands of pounds.
Even with a relatively poor offer of 75k from the banker, Germaine still couldn't risk going home with just £1.

Given that he had the £250,000 in his box, then from the 5-box stage he had a 50/50 chance of ending up with either £35k or £50k as back-up.

I would expect an offer around £100k, and, knowing Germaine, I think he would have turned it down.

We got closer than you might imagine today.

Sara was in that position several months ago, although by that point she'd already dealed for £31,000, if I remember correctly.

Although I don't know Germaine, I expect you're right bushy. Its a shame he didn't take out the £1 instead of the £35k at the end, if that had been the case he might have thought - well, someone has to go for it and if I don't manage it I have £35k as a back up. It was just too risky with the £1 as backup for Germaine. So no one can blame him for taking the money (even though it was a slightly lower offer than I expected from the banker). £75k is still a huge amount of money and I suppose we have to flip it over and say - if he had gone home with £1 it would have been devastating. I think on average 21 of a cross-section of 22 average contestants would have dealt there, and many of those wouldn't even have got to that deal.

So you have to say well done Germaine - he was my favourite contestant of the last few weeks and his cheerful gameplay today showed why -(especially enjoyed it when he answered the phone to the Banker himself and just carried on afterwards!). Well done mate, enjoy your win.

You're right, it was a shame he didn't have a reasonable back-up, that must of entered his thoughts when it came to that all important question.

I agree with your last point too Maltus, even though we know that new and entertaining people (like Bushy) will continue to replace our old favourites, Germaine will be sorely missed.

The offers with £250k in the final two were getting lower and lower. If this continues, someone will get such a low offer that they'll go for it - most likely if the backup's a middle red (so the Banker can still go a long way down without looking stupid, but the gamble still appears worth taking).

Realistically though, it'll only be won if a player like Fin has it in their box. That's what happened in Australia.

I think Endemol are increasingly keen for someone to win it, to add to the momentum the show has generated. Hence the lower offers while the £250k remains in play.

It seems that way, but I'm not so sure they're right. The first £1m win on Millionaire was a jump-the-shark moment for that show - the only way was down from there. Would the same apply for DoND?

Probably not actually; the Australian and French versions are still going well even though they've given away their top prize (more than once, in the case of the French version), and I can't think of any other version that's given away their top prize.