Maybe you don't know as much about Wakey1512 as you all think! I certainly don't.. i only joined in 2008 after all

In fact, you joined only a few after Wakey's last alias (jjcocherfan) was banned.

That's funny that! Wonder if he's still about these days.. surely not

The thing is with people, I don't mind people taking gambles on the show as long as you face the consequences if it goes wrong. I hate it when people take a big gamble and they start crying because they won the blue. That's what happens you if the gamble goes wrong. The people who I hate the most are the ones who don't care and take the gamble without thinking what happens.

I am surprised no mentioned Gaz from 2010. He deserved the blue IMO. He had 3 generous offers and chased the money.

I can sympathies with people up to a certain extent.

Another one that has escaped me was one from the tail end of 2009, where a woman called Pommy declined an offer of £20,000 with a 4-blues/£250k final 5 ! She lost the lot after losing the £250k in the final round and left with £50

Usually, I'd consider to be reckless, but this was during a Santa vs Scrooge special where she'd found the Scrooge. So I thought it was more because the banker messing with her mind and convincing her she had the £250k

I thought that £20,000 was generous. 1p Trevor got £9,900 on a 4 blues/250K 5 Box!

I think somebody else got £20,000 for a 4 blues/250k 5 Box. But they took the £20,000 and it was the right decision.

Show 1,997 Amy and Lily from November 2013 (with the latter being the only generous offer the Banker made that month ) both got offered and dealt £20,000 on a 3 blues/£1k/£250k five box andspanked the Banker.

Actually, Jenny from August 2007 did have a 4 blues/£250k five box and dealt a £20,000 offer for a Banker Spanking. Considering how rubbish the prior offers were, that was one of the easiest Banker Spanking of all time.

Jenny was the one I was referring too.

August and September 2007 was one of the worst periods of the show.

Still feel sorry for Trevor though compared to other people who got £20,000 for almost the same board,

Do you think Trevor would accept the £20,000 if he got offered that instead of the £9,900?

I'm not sure. Trevor was fully prepared to leave with nothing, so he very easily could've turned down £20,000 on his five box, especially given you could expect an offer in the region of £100,000 on a blue/£250k finish back then!

I don't think he would of turned down the 2 box offer if he had the £250,000 left though. In those days it must of been around £80-90 grand? On a 250k and blue finish.

One of the most reckless gambles paid off. Rich in 2012 declining £85k when an all-blue finish was a 10% shot away.

Would Gary who won £1 in May 2006 count? He no-dealt some VERY generous offers on a dangerous board and then crashed! Then at the end he swapped away £3,000 and won £1

His game was more or less a poor man's version of Fin's game! Don't think his was THE worst, but he declined £14k at 11-box and £21k at 8-box, at both points he had just the £100k and £250k than a HUGE drop to £3,000 (!), so he could very easily have avoided crashing by accepting 3 offers (including a loss-cutting £1,400 at 2-box) and not swapping

Funny to see him being referenced. ''I dropped aht of sckoool when I was folteen and went to work streyyt away and it done no 'arm to me''. Even my mum still goes on about him a decade later and she was a completely casual viewer.

The most reckless gamble at 8-box without the £250k in play was Theresa from early 2007, £21,000 at 8-box with only the £75k and £100k higher and hardly anything else to back it up.

Perhaps made more laughable by the fact that she just got very cocky out of nowhere, especially when Leila (That's right, the girl who was practically LECTURED into dealing by her icy-faced boss of a mother in her game, of all people) advised Theresa to take the offer because it was so generous and not risk going home bark and Theresa basically threw it in poor Leila's face with "Yeah whatever, that won't happen" sounding SO sure of herself. Offer declined, splat, bang, crash! game over in two boxes

What then followed was a week of third offer deals (one of which was hilariously done by one of the biggest gamblers on the wings at the time) and a huge win of around £70k-ish, which was unjustly punished by the proveout resulting in a squandered dream finish!

I remember that very vaguely. One I've been watching today, who's probably had his share of mentions in this thread but who I'll bring up again because it was yonks ago that we had any kind of liveliness in said thread - played towards the beginning, in November 2005. I'm thinking of Madie, who for about a year after his show was known only as 'Player 14', and seeing how he played his game, it's easy to imagine why he was keen to remain anonymous. Turning down £28,000 as his fifth offer - when the mean sat at about £23,000 - and revealing the £100,000 in his final selection to leave himself faced with £5 or £15,000, he dealt the resulting last offer of £4,800, but fortunately only had the fiver in his box.

What I found puzzling about that was how willing he was to deal at £4,800 - despite constantly telling the player in the chair to go on to the end, as the other contestants alleged when he sought their advice at £28k - and how on earth 'No deal' slipped out of his mouth after all that deliberation and sage commentary from what were then called the 'left wing' and 'right wing'.

Noel commended him after the deal, saying he'd 'played it so well', but I can't think of a better example of how not to play the game. You have an offer that's so far over the mean you might as well be in Berwick, let alone Bristol, you turn it down and then, realising what an absolute fool you've been, you sidle out quietly via the back door with a few quid for your troubles.

I was actually shocked at how many players on the wings were encouraging Madie to no-deal the £28,000, let alone the fact that he no-dealt an AMO at 5-box and then crashed and cut his losses for a very mediocre offer at 2-box.

Though i suppose the tempting factor was an offer nearing £50k if he had a £100k/blue finish, which was actually possible in those those days (Interestingly, Lindsay had £50k on a £10k/£100k ending a couple of shows earlier, and Jan the day after Madie got £48k on a £1/£100k ending, but both were after the deal)

Yeah, that caught me off-guard too. No-one seemed to notice how far over the mean it was, either, and Trevor the Sage didn't say a word.

Madie. Player 14. Ha. That takes me back.

Those ''cease and desist'' orders by him to every unofficial fansite out there was hilarious and it *just* about worked in an era that was still pre-40d, catch up channels and regular YouTube uploads becoming the standard. If you didn't catch it on broadcast, then you did seemingly miss out for good.

Until More4 started showing the series from the beginning during summer 2006 and their reaction to his anonymity order was ''lol, nah mate''.

Yeah, although I wasn't aware he'd actually gone about issuing cease and desist orders, or 'C&D' as we called them at the time on here. Obviously it makes sense that it was him, but I was young and naive...

The summer of 2006 I remember better for the cease and desists Endemol were chucking up left, right and centre whenever an online game came out or was uploaded anywhere. People of all backgrounds would put the game - usually the 'Dilan04' version - on their websites; a band called The Magic Numbers seemed puzzled when I signed up to their forum and demanded to know where they'd got the thing from, seeing as everyone else had had theirs taken down by the big E.

Anyhow, we're veering off-topic, I know. Very amusing to learn of Madie's ill-fated attempts to protect his anonymity (and his reputation) though. And you're right about the internet and 4OD at the time; we sound like two old buggers reminiscing about better days, but in a way, they were. Life had a slower pace to it then. You didn't feel rushed very often.

And there again, another thing - 'we're veering off-topic I know...'

I didn't even think about that, it just happened. It's a natural reaction, evidently something I learned when other humans actually frequented this place and it was frowned upon if you took a thread down a different path unless you were in the right section of the forum. It's been so long since there was a regular crowd of more than ten (and a while now since we had a regular crowd) that conversation has, so it feels, been pretty one-dimensional forever. That wasn't always true as we had some great threads and comments here, but that's so far back that one's memory is faint and faded, much as a prisoner becomes accustomed to his cell. So I, too, get accustomed to things. Things like notifying the forum that I know we're venturing into uncharted territory, but I'm going there anyway...

It's well worth pointing out though that Madie, although easily construed as the original Wakeyist, would be misconstrued in fact if he were. At £28,000, he was ready to clasp the cold hand of the banker with his own and take his marching orders in earnest, but went on only after the other contestants press-ganged him into following the advice he'd given to previous players to go on regardless. He was a very reluctant gambler at this stage, and I doubt his heart would ever have been in such a tumultuous, perilous decision.

However
...that decision would have been the best of his life, if not for one final box selection. Had he not found the £100,000, he'd likely have been faced with an offer between £45,000 and £55,000, and he would have gone down as one of the early heroes of the game, just like Trevor Bruce if he hadn't smiled at Marilyn that afternoon, hadn't chosen her box and hadn't had that smile wiped from his face with the rip of a seal and the flick of an elegant wrist.

Alas, both of the aforementioned committed what would become a cardinal sin; they made the wrong decision, in hindsight.