The original and best. (Notwithstanding the occasional overpowering whiff of sexism, anyway.) Linda talks about what people could do with the money - cars and holidays mentioned, and other things too - and then it's lime green dresses for the human wallpaper that are the 'case girls'.

I'm pretty sure the quiz bit of this show is recorded over a few hours and the endgame is played live, as per The Vault which aired in the UK a few years ago. I'm sure I heard the show was live, but there are scene changes physically impossible in the quiz bit without pauses, so it must be that. Anyway, in said quiz bit, the opening round sees the blue half win, and each of them get a Samsung netbook. "A really good reaction!" LInda remarks. That's 250 prizes each worth more than £200 - fifty grand of stuff given away right away and the show's barely started! 5A/2 (Anita) gets chosen at random from the losing red half, getting her pick of the three coloured cases; a place in the final six, €2k for every lottery ticket-holder in her postcode, or an electric scooter for everyone in Block 5A (Linda confirms that's 25 people, thus confirming it's not all of block 5 as I wondered before). She picks red... and she's in the final six!

In the second round, it looks like it's between 7 and 8 as they're tied with a six-point gap to everyone else, but 9 come through on the rails on the final question and win by two! Random remote picks out 6B/17 (Kees), he picks blue... he too is in the final six! Now, will 9A or 9B be the winners? After I find out that the Dutch for 'tree' is 'boom' (yes really - pronounced 'bomm') in one of the questions, I then laugh very hard as the next question is about something that is forbidden in Iceland.


Not forbidden in Iceland; volcanic eruptions. The answer is 'stripteases' by the way, something I learned while reading aroundthis article.

9B win easily, 37-29. 9A/24 (Berna) is chosen, sounds rather surprised, and picks the red case... AND SHE TOO IS IN THE FINAL SIX!! So it's like last season where only three of the winning block actually play in the final six - Peter, Thea and Rian. Random €10k winner in the studio: Jeroen Mulder. No X-Files mystery about that.

Oh for crying out loud. An entire video question introduced by someone trying too hard to squeeze into skinny jeans, then collapsing. The question is something to do with that, although I couldn't translate it any more than that. Question 2 is asked to the audience's car-owners. 456 of them! I thought this was cycling country! Anyway, we're left with 76-year-old Thea up against Kees, who looks only one generation younger. The money clock starts... with slow big leaps... looks like it'll stop pretty high, it's shooting up a little now... I'd stop at €70k... THEA sTOPS AT €51,700! Life-changing money for her, I don't think she realised it was that high! The clock was set to stop at... €92,000! It did feel like it was going to be high so I'd have held on a little more. I need to time the clocks that go all the way to see if they're a fixed length.

KEES is the player, anyway. Pronunciation is pretty much the same as the English word 'case', except the Dutch for 'case' is 'koffer'. Right. Which case, Kees? Case 18. He mentioned 9 in there, but chooses double 9. (Linda points out here there is no Case 27!) Second €10k winner - Harry Fritschy. What a name that is! Kees has five kids! One of them, daughter Letika (?), apparently has Sri Lankan origins too, and is with him in the audience. Linda refers to her as a 'beauty'.


Judge for yourself.

Away we go!

ROUND 1
5 (guess €5,000) - €300,000. Kees shrugs it off.
2 (guess €75,000) - €75,000! CORRECT GUESS FOR €25,000! "How much have you won?" asks Linda... "lots!". He gets told exactly how much there after.
25 (guess €5,000,000!) - €0.50!
11 (guess €2,500) - €500,000! "Whee!"
7 (guess €25,000) - €0.01! No reaction though.
21 (guess €5,000) - €10. That did get applauded though!

Strange audience reactions aside, a better than average round.

OFFER €47,000

My jaw actually dropped. Second highest opening offer ever, the highest coming after an all-left opening round, but it's still an easy NO DEAL of course.

ROUND 2
15 (guess €500) - €1.
13 (guess €25,000) - €2,500,000! Kees mentions how 13 was unlucky!
1 (guess €50,000) - €400,000. Not good now!
23 (guess €100,000) €0.20! All the single-coin amounts have gone already (unless there's a €5 coin).
10 (guess €100,000) - €5,000,000!! Shock fills the arena. Linda points out 10 was 'next to 9'. Letika points out the million could be in his case.

OFFER €23,000

"OK" is his reaction. NO DEAL is his decision.

ROUND 3
17 (guess €50,000) - €100.
26 (guess €500) - €500! CORRECT GUESS FOR €14,000! 6/7 split the right way at halfway, but the top two are missing.
14 (nearly opened the case too soon - guess €50,000) - €200,000! Third-highest on the board, frighteningly. Linda demands one from the 'left column'.
3 (guess €25,000) - €20. Relieved sigh from Linda. A good round!

[code]
€10,000
€5 €25,000
€50 €50,000
€1,000 €100,000
€2,500 €750,000
€5,000 €1,000,000

OFFER €55,000

Enough volatility here for this to be almost dealable but I'd play on. Letika agrees... does Kees? Yup, NO DEAL it is.

ROUND 4
24 (guess €5) - €750,000!! Linda is not happy at all.
6 (guess €2,500) - €2,500! CORRECT GUESS FOR €10,000! We've given away €49,000 in guess prizes already!
19 (guess €5,000) - opened after the break - €10,000. "Unlucky for you, but good for Kees!"

Now, how useful are the safety nets of €100k, €50k and €25k here? How will the offer be pitched?

OFFER €85,000

Not quite the €100k Linda mentioned as possible after the €750k went. Crowd are noisy and mixed in their opinions. I'd probably just about play on, there's a good case not to... NO DEAL!

Now we need to dodge the million.

ROUND 5
12 (guess €25,000) - €1,000! Warm cheers.
A fair amount of discussion before...
22 (Thea - guess €50,000) - €50,000! CORRECT GUESS FOR €7,000 and her total winnings are now €58,700!!

More importantly, this offer will be rather more than that...

The Final Six
€5
€50
€5,000
€25,000
€100,000
€1,000,000

OFFER €112,000

With one to open I'm playing on. Less generous than the last one. Letika says stop. Linda points to the 1/6 chance of hitting the million. Lots of thought over this one. DEAL! Very clever offers there, and I'm reminded of AArnett's opinion that six-case Deals are worse than eight-case Deals on the 26-case format.

That said, this could be confirmed as an OPW in one shot...

PROVEOUT
20 (guess €1,000,000) - €100,000! People briefly started cheering... nope!
Linda makes a rather ludicrous suggestion we'd have had an offer of €170k-€200k here. Don't start turning into Noel.
4 (missed her guess) - €5! OK, now we'd have gone in that range.
8 (guess €25,000) - €5,000... Linda is getting rather on edge now...
9 (guess €1,000,000) - €50! Kees can only laugh.

Final two
€25,000
€1,000,000

Does his case 18 have a million, making it the third seven-figure case on the table in four? No, Linda, it wouldn't have been €600k at this point. Case 16 guesses he has €25,000... nope, he's got €1,000,000, Kees had €25,000 in 18, so a nice profit on the case!

I think the UK version should allow these prediction bonuses. It's got the perfect format to allow such a twist, and it could help keep the show fresh, and looking at how elaborate the specials have been lately. They did this to a minor extent during Love Week where the Love God(dess) got the chance to win a holiday, but how about a permanent feature whereby contestants can guess what's in their box, and the bonus could be, I don't know, £40 for every box remaining in the game? Seems fair enough, since obviously most people would have 19-25 chances of winning a prediction bonus, and if you made it too high someone very lucky might end up winning a five-figure sum before they've even played their game!

And from Endemol's point of view it would have the benefit of making people less risk averse, since if people have already racked up a few hundred before their game starts, fears of a blue win would be dispelled since they have something to fall back on.

I'd make that £50 to make it nice and round. That makes the value of guessing the first box £1,100, and the mean cost per game of the bonus would be £1,050 - increasing the prize budget by about 7%.

Also, by definition, the average amount won by each player on the wings would theoretically be £1,050, because the EV of a prediction bonus will always be the multiple per box (as it is a 1/x chance of winning xy, where x is the number of boxes left and y the base bonus value) and by definition the mean number of games on the wings will be 21