Here's a fiendish question I thought of last night, and it's in 3 parts. The next 2 parts will appear as new topics during the week, and I hope that you'll be able to answer them all.

I'd really appreciate it if you could consider the questions first before reading the replies below. You can do that if you want, but it might affect your decision making before answering. Here's part 1:

You're playing the game for real, with the pilgrims watching, Noel, and the players on the wings. It's very exciting, with a lot of gasps, talking and cheering, and everyone is marvelling at the board in front of you:

£35,000
£50,000
£75,000
£100,000
£250,000

The banker calls, and offers you £98,000. What would you do in this situation?

When you're ready, click the reply button above. And get ready for an interesting challenge for parts 2 and 3!

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I would No Deal.

DEAL for me.

Deal.

Deal.

No deal, you're guaranteed £35,000.

Always no deal, no matter what.

As far as I am aware, we would expect to see a board like that every 83 years (based on the chances of ANY exact final five appearing being 0.004%, or every once in 83 years) or every 25,000 shows.

Based on that and the following:-
-With £35,000 guaranteed (and the worst case offer over 40 grand)
-The fact a £98,000 offer isn't anywhere near as rare as the board
-The mean is a touch over £102,000
-The chance of increase alone is 40% yes, but the chance of significant decrease at the next offer (where the worst case scenario is still 41 grand) is just 20%.
-It's just not pleasing as a viewer watching such a board never get played out

... in my eyes it's a no brainer of a no deal.

In a way, it depends on what your 2-box philosophy is going to be. If you have in mind that you are going to no deal a £100k+ offer at 2-box with the QM in play, then it's only a 20% chance of making a significant profit. If you are going to deal, then the EV is around the offer.

If I were in the studio gambling my money, I wouldn't give a stuff what the pilgrims, Noel, production crew or audience would think of my decision.

It's not your money though? Until you deal.. but then you're not gambling it once you've dealt

In my eyes the only significant decrease would come from £35,000/£50,000 and £35,000/£75,000 (offers ranging from £40,000 to £50,000 respectively) whereas the rest that don't involve the QM would be lower but not 'disasterously' lower.

In essence, none of these situations are disasterous and therefore the above board is very much a 'dream' board to have. And with the chances of it appearing being so so low, it would definately seem like a wise move to play it through as there may be a higher element of fun knowing you're guaranteed so much anyway that each desicion (for me) would have much less pressure applied to it, unlike that of say 1p Trevors where 1 box holds a massive difference between the scale of the next offer.

Guaranteed £35,000? NO DEAL!

No Deal.
Where the fallback is better than my wildest deams of what I would come away with, I would chase the £250K almost regardless of the offer.

Close enough to the mean for me to Deal.

Think I'd want 6 figures to deal actually.

I would look at the board and think, "What have I got to lose?".

On the other hand, it could all go horrible wrong.

But as I would be guaranteed £35,000, I would probably No Deal.

Deal.

Unless I finish with £75k+/£250k the final offer isn't likely to be massively more. And I'd probably be dealing it anyway. So i'm quite happy to just take the mean now.

No Deal, might as well. £35,000 is fantastic