(Just an update from me, as I've finally caught up with some episodes recently)

Affari Tuoi (translating as "Your Business") is the Italian version of Deal or No Deal, hosted daily on Rai 1 by Max Giusti, running from about September to May, I think.

It features 20 boxes, and one of the key differences in this version is that the Banker (referred to as "Il Dottore", the Doctor here) knows the values in all the boxes, and so develops the psychological mind games, and on the evidence of recent shows, this seems to be of greater concern to the player than playing the odds of a given board.

Each of the players are picked from 20 regions of Italy, these currently being:
ABRUZZO, CALABRIA, LOMBARDIA, FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA, TRENTINO ALTO ADIGE, PUGLIA, CAMPANIA, EMILIA ROMAGNA, TOSCANA, MARCHE, SICILIA, SARDEGNA, LAZIO, UMBRIA, LIGURIA, PIEDMONTE, BASILICATA, VENETO, MOLISE and VALLE D'AOSTA. (apologies to Italians if I've spelt those wrong)

Right, we'll have a look at the standard starting board in a moment...

Here's the values we can expect to see on the Italian board:



...Except often the blue values are replaced by Joke/Booby Prizes, such a Slingshot, a Can of Beer, Waste Paper or some extinct animal or something etc.!

Now, of course, you've be wondering what Pacco X, Pacco Y and Pacco Matto (which is roughly translated as 'Crazy Box') mean for the board, so I'll explain those:

At a certain point of the game (usually early, and certainly after they have picked a box containing X or Y), the player chooses 2 of 20 envelopes from a glass container. These envelopes contain one of each of the following values:



The average of these values is 23,879.86 Euros.

The player stamps each envelope X and Y to distinguish the envelopes. The doctor, as far as I can gather, also doesn't know what values have been picked. Basically, you don't know whether it's going to be good for you until you eliminate it, so adds a different dimension.

Ok, on to the complexities of Pacco Matto, the "Crazy Box" in a bit...

Pacco Matto is perhaps the most complex of the concepts of Italian Deal, as there is nothing quite like in the UK version:

When the player picks this box, they pick one of eight scrolls contained in some spinning dome thing. Written on each are the following twists that could dramatically affect your game, which I've loosely defined below:



Pretty much self-explanatory if you watch it - a few contestants have been afflicted by ARRIVEDERCI recently, one I believe from Lombardia has been waiting about a month since picking it to play again! We also had a 1,000,000 euro board recently with RADDOPIA. Haven't seen PROPOSTE INDECENTE in action, but that could be a multitude of things really!

...And that's about it, but the twists make for an intriguing contrast to the British version. In the main, we've seen a lot more gamblers on this version (which wouldn't be hard... ), the player yesterday turned down a mere 115% of the average! (Still got 20,000 euros though!)

Clearly it's a much higher stakes version, with the starting average twice ours at 61,200.69 (Excluding Pacco X and Y, whose value I'm unsure how to evaluate, whether on mean/median/FD of values etc.). There's a positive dynamic in the studio, with music regularly played after every blue, as well as suitable "funeral derge" for jackpot/big prize going.

The player is very much left to their own devices in the decision-making, and running to about 40 minutes, it's a fairly speedy version ala old days of UK deal.

Hopefully, I'll get some summaries up shortly, however most players would seem to defy a Deal-Eye-esque analysis, but might still be interesting to look at for the extremes from our version...

(Yes, there is a stream available online if you know where to look, but I won't divulge it here for now... )

Hope that help newcomers a bit who have found said streaming!

Travis knows more as he has been watching this for years longer than me!

Ok, just going to try a 'dry run' with tonight's edition of Affari Tuoi!



(Probably useful to look at the 'rough guide' first)

Starting value is currently 27,261.59 euros, but this will probably need a few modifications as:

1. The booby prizes, (for simplicity) are currently left as their original values, in this case 1 and 10 euros.
2. No Value is attached to mystery boxes Pacco X and Pacco Y yet , as it could be anything from 0.02 to 200,000 euros. The average is around 23,000. Pacco Matto doesn't need a value.

A solid green line under the amount denotes an offer point; today it was a bizarre 6-1-2-2-1 pattern before the offer, not sure about proveout offers after that.

I'll try and do the Sunday Summary like this, and write up some notes for the rest of the week.

Affari Tuoi breaks Deal-Eye.
Once I've caught up on Miljoenenjacht I'll have to get Deal-Eye analysis on that, although it'll probably break it for a different reason!

Any thoughts on how we might evaluate Pacco X and Y though? Giving them the average of the values doesn't seem quite right, as they only really have significance at 2-box. Median could be a possible idea. Or perhaps it's better their default setting is zero!

Wow. Affari Tuoi has interesting twists, and the Banker is called The Doctor. Does he get to the set in a blue police box? Sorry, couldn't resist .

I love the options that the Pacco Matto box has. If you're having an awful game, the Pacco Matto could potentially send you back to the wings to wait for another crack at it. This is something that I believe every version of Deal should include. Paccos X and Y have the potential to make the game more interesting as well, especially if they both turn out to be larger amounts.

For stats mongers, though, the twists could potentially send things into a tizzy. Not sure why stats are collected for Deal anyway, but hey, everyone has to have a hobby, right?

I'd be interesting in watching that stream. PM me if you know where it is.

Eh, Dumbaz !

Ok... I messed things up rather spectacularly with the Affari Tuoi summary last sunday, due to not adjusting some formula cells. On the board shown, the benchmark was actually nearly 71,000 euros!

Call this a "work-in-progress" still - in fact, in reality we'll discover a lot of boards defy stats analysis, as you say, due to Pacco Matto and X and Y random values. So, I'll just flag up 'straight' boards from time to time.

Tonight's was interesting at 5-box: Fanaloka /50/10,000/75k and 500k. Offer was 50,000 euros (which was dealt), and Deal-Eye (Or "Trattare Occhio" ) Benchmark was 50,432.94 (assuming booby prize in 1 euro position). So, in principle, this is still interesting to look at in certain contexts! (She would've left 75k and 500k! )

Different dimension with the doctor knowing what's in the boxes, well worth a watch!

Watched today's episode of Affari Tuoi, and I really enjoyed what I saw, despite not knowing any Italian. Deal or No Deal is one of those games where you can instantly understand what's going on, despite not understanding the language of the version you're watching.

Anyway, StatsMan and KP, I have an interesting question for you regarding Affari Tuoi.

As we know, the Doctor knows where the money is, and makes his offers based on that. With that being said, if a contestant made it to 2-box with Paccos X and Y as their final two, what kind of offer could he possibly make the contestant? Obviously, he knows the exact location of the X and Y, but since the amounts are unknown to him, how would that influence his offer? A scenario like this also has the potential to mess up Deal-Eye: Dumbaz Edition as well, as the amounts of each are unknown until the envelopes are opened.

I suppose the same sort of situation would arise if a contestant had Pacco Matto and either Pacco X or Y as their final two, although according to Affari Tuoi's Wikipedia page, if the contestant goes to the end and has the Pacco Matto in front of them, it's worth 500 Euros.

I think with Pacco X and Y left, all he could do is offer the swap at the end (which tends to happen more often than it does here).