A few months back, I began a thread about 'Underrated games'. Now, time to flip it: are there any games you feel are highly overrated?

The main example would have to be Anthony from June 2011, who won £20,000 from his box after a couple of risky and ill-advised no deals, given his situation. But them paying off thrilled everyone to the extent that his game beat £100k Sam to that month's SotM!

Anyone got any more?

3 come to mind:

£47.5k Mike: He was about to Deal £10,000 (which he admitted in a post-game interview) until the Banker called back and told him he would offer bang on the average of the final 2 boxes should he go on. This persuaded him to No Deal the £10k and he then proceeded to have the perfect round and Deal £47,500 on a £20k/£75k finish. He then won Show of the Month over 2 people who didn't need an extra gimmick to win big money (Terry and Clare, I think ).

1p Trevor: No Dealt £9,900 on a 4 blues/£250k 5 box and then took the jackpot out in the last pick of the final round. Everyone felt either pity for him due to sequence-gate being discovered around that time or called him greedy for No Dealing £9,900 when he said that would fulfill his dream of seeing his family in Australia.

And without question the most overrated game of them all....................................

£21k Donna: She dealt £21,000 on a 4 blues/£5k/£10k/TOP 2 8 box, a somewhat average Deal. However, she became a YouTube spectacle for it because she proceeded to have the Dream Finish and have the £250k in her box, making her cry throughout the prove-out and whining at her boyfriend because he encouraged her to Deal.

Mally's game, for two reasons:

a) His silly 'rule' that if someone had a high amount in the previous game, they're less likely to have one in the next game (which is obviously wrong because the chances are exactly the same each time). What's worse is that "Mally's Law" continued to get mentioned for years after his game.

b) Utterly ridiculous play by the Banker, with no real player-tailored justification for it. At 8-box he was offered 6.9k on a board with 250k/20k/10k/5 blues (which in itself was one of the most ridiculous sticks of all time, despite being a poor offer for the board, given that he'd taken out 15k, 35k and 50k in the previous round). Then, at 5-box, for no reason whatsoever, he was offered 54k (i.e. bang on the mean) with a 250k/20k/3 blues 5-box!

All in all, probably the least hard-earned win of over 50k in Deal Or No Deal history (even Brenda had a tempting 11-box offer of £31,000!)


And as much as I loved the contestant, 50-show Lucy's game itself was not all that spectacular - it was just a generic, 'never really got going' sort of game where she ended up with £5, yet it got re-aired as a 'classic' show anyway?

I'm not sure if Trevor's game is overrated. I'd say he's largely been forgotten, despite having what is probably the most disastrous final box in the history of the show.

I was literally devastated at that. True, £9,900 was a bit of a reckless No Deal given his circumstances and that it would have fulfilled his dream, but it happened. And he came so, so close. The story could have been the complete opposite of what it turned out to be; first 1p/£250k finish, offer probably over £60,000 given the offers of the era, and what if he'd left box 1 to the end and swapped? F. M. Q. M. as Noel might say.

Instead, he goes home with one penny.

I agree re Lucy. It wasn't a special game; that was a shame, given she'd waited 50 shows for it, but the 50-show wait seems to be what made it a "classic" show. The game actually wasn't anything to write home about.

Also note Mally's 2-box offer - of £145,000, hypothetically. The Banker was mad that day.

Probably £250k Alice. Yes, she was the second jackpot winner but I really didn't get the reasoning behind offering the Banker's Gamble on a 1p/£250k board when she had dealt at £17,500.

Other games that, depending on how you define 'overrated', could also apply:

Olly Murs - letting him play the game a second time really bugged me tbh. The whole 'only here once' aspect is one of the few ground rules that up to that point hadn't been broken. And granted, it's highly, highly unlikely they'll ever make any future exceptions to that rule, but still...

27.5k Steven - A game that sums up the early 2007 era quite nicely. At 11-box, he was offered 27.5k, with the remaining boxes being the top 4, 15k, 3k, 1k, and 4 blues. His deal was treated as a heinous act, primarily because on the wings he had repeatedly stated he would always go on if 3 of the power 5 were still there (though it's worth noting that he advised Sheran to deal at 24.5k even though she had three power 5 sums left!), and also because during the sweep everyone had said no deal.

What then followed was some of the most atrociously unfair banker play of all time, including an offer of 66k on a 250k/50k/3 blues board (that's 110% of the mean!) And throughout, Noel was consistently treating it like the worst deal ever. To be honest, I was relieved that 50k was in his box, because otherwise it would've been one of the most unfair banker wins of all time.

A hell of a lot of 1p games - At first, when there were only a handful of members, winning the lowest amount had some comedy value. But it's been years since that was the case. As it stands, the banker will frequently artificially keep offers down if the 1p is still in play, even though every blue below £100 is functionally more or less worthless anyway. 1p is easily the most commonly won blue amount, and IIRC something like half of the players who bring it to the table end up winning it! Now winning 1p is basically like winning any other worthless blue amount like 10p or 50p or something like that. Yet still the show regards the '1p club' as though it still has some level of comedy value.

This is especially the case for the 1p wins like Aurora's where (ignoring swaps) even ultra-cautious players like Beryl and 1k Michael probably would've won a penny. :/

Anthony is a brilliant pick!

Another one in the same mould - Gabrielle from the same era, a chase-the-money-in-questionable-fashion £15k OPW that was drastically oversold by Noel. I'll never forget seeing the rerun of it, with Noel actually stating to the camera "if you are brave, you will be rewarded" at the end (!!), at a B&B in Fort William. I wanted to throw the TV in the sea. (That's a reference the old-timers on here will get...)

Steven's game was a really interesting one that should have had a very different proveout approach. Noel should have sold the "always go on with three P5s" line as a bluff, and built the proveout around that. "Well, you didn't deal with three of the Power 5 in the game. You dealt with four. And I'm wondering if actually, you knew what you were doing all along, that you actually wanted to fool the Banker into buying you out of the game early. £27,500 is a massive offer for this stage in the game, and a lot of people would say it's a life-changing sum of money. But what if what you said you were going to do was actually what you did? This is going to be really interesting. Come back after the break!"

And then the 8-box inflation could have remained ("he'd have had to have believed you really did mean what you said,") but the 5-box offer would have been much lower. ("Well, now you'd have been down to two of the Power 5, and he would have believed he could finally get you out of the chair. We'd now be at £30,000.")

Any low red box wins that have been celebrated with pitch invasions, especially £3k Charmaine who played the day before Corinne. I know she had really bad luck and her highest offer was only £500 more than what she won out of her box, but she still won a fairly modest four figure amount, compare people celebrating at a player winning a couple of thousand pounds to people like £70k Paul, £50k Patrick and £21k Donna who have won substantial amounts and still been upset at having the £250k on the table!