Surely there was no guarantee of Michael getting the swap at the Banker's Gamble, and as Box 2 was his favourite number there was no way he would go on. Well played Michael, and another great show to watch.

A great game with lots of banter and a good deal at the highest point moneywise. Was never going to be a big money game due to the bad opening round and the bankers gamble was probably always going to be too big a risk with the chance of going away with only 50p.

So well done Michael


Jim

Great tactics by the banker today to produce a tense ending. For 98% of games, we would have had a hypothetical offer of maybe £17,600 (double the £8,800) and then a technical draw but as soon as Michael revealed his financial situation (which did get him a very good offer at 8 box but I still doubt the tactics of letting the banker know your financial situation - although it is probably something the application form enquires about), it was obvious what was going to happen.

So glad that the blue was in his box as it would have been agony for Michael had he had the £100k.

Very hard game to quantify, started as a trainwreck, ended with a win which, while it doesn't sound like much compared to the figures that can be won was clearly hugely significant to Michael.

And at the end of the day that's what matters. It's abut players doing what's right for them.

And for the record no i wouldn't have risked £8800 on the BG, not without a significantly higher fall back (£500 maybe but no less than that)

I think the banker's gamble really turned it into great drama though. Some of the third round deal shows could have really been lifted by banker's gambles too. I hope we see many more of them this year as long proveouts often need a twist
at the end.

I find it quite interesting about how much emphasis people put on certain blue amounts over the others. This doesn't give anything away, but everytime I read the board, I count all the blues as £1. It seems crazy to me that an extra £450 is all it takes to gamble £8800. Just my opinion and it seems I may be in the minority.

also, the 1p seemed to have some some mystic value that somehow makes it much worse than say £1 or even the 10p. The banker always uses the fact that the penny is in play as some sort of scare tactic, whereas surely any blue below £250 is (almost) just as unwanted when dealing with figures in their thousands. People often accept the fact an offer is off by a thousand or so just because the penny is in play, but if the 10p is there, it is not nearly as bad.

I'd be interested to know what other people think of the penny and if it would affect their decisions more than if it were replaced with £5.

Personally, I have always thought that anything below £250 would not be cashed and it would be a cheque in a frame and if I am to win blue money, I want it to be 1p. After all, if I'm going to crash and burn, I may aswell get myself into an exclusive club of 1p winners.

What do you guys think??

This is probably a good topic for the 'General DOND Discussion' forum, actually.

If I dropped a penny down the side of the sofa, I probably wouldn't be too bothered about fishing it out. If it were a pound I still might not be that worried. But if I knew there were £500 lurking between the cushions, you can bet I'd be going in after it!

When I'm mentally calculating the mean of the amounts left on the board, I do tend to ignore the blue values. But I'd still much rather have a high blue consolation prize after a bad game than a low blue. I've seen games with a final five similar to, say, £10k/£750/£1/50p/10p, when the £750 has been revealed and the audience has whooped and cheered like crazy purely because they've seen the colour blue. But on that board, if I'm taking a punt at the £10k, I sure as anything wouldn't want to see that £750 back-up go!

And I'm not sure that people do necessarily 'accept' the fact that having the 1p still in play will disproportionately reduce the offers. It's just that that's what the Banker does, and there's not too much that the player can really do about it...

I guess it comes down to how much money you want out of the game. All the blues are so much lower than the kind of money I want out of the game that even in the extreme case you mentioned, £750 would still be a big cheer from me. Don't get me wrong, if I am not going to get the £10k, I'd prefer to have the £750, but in that situation, I am so hoping to get the 40% chance of keeping the £10k live, I really wouldn't care too much.

The situation yesterday was a specific circumstnce where I would offer the banker some of my own money to be given the chance of the bankers gamble. It was incredibly generous and was a great move by the banker (not many players would be shown this generosity). It adds lots of drama to the game and was a fairly safe bet that he wouldn't take it anyway. Either, Michael takes the gamble, he wins big, massive feel good moment - great TV, he takes the gamble, it goes wrong and he goes home with nothing. lots of tears and heartache, bad situation but good TV. He declines it and misses out on the money. Massive finale and everyone is gutted for him, nethertheless - great TV or the scenario that happened, Michael plays the perfect game and makes a good decision - Great TV.

I might tart a post about this in General discussions, because it is quite interesting to me.

I guess my comments fit in with what KP said yesterday about utility curves.

I admitted yesterday that when I see really high figures of £35k, I become more cautious. This is not a spoiler, all my advice usually backs this up and I have always thought like this.

For example, if I was at 5 box, the board had a mean of approx £60k (£250k, £50k, £1k, $500, £1) and I get offered 50% mean (£30k). I will most certainly take this deal.

However, if all the ratios between the numbers were the same, but we are working on a scale 10X lower, Mean is £6k (£25k, £5k, £50, 10p) and I get offerd 50% the mean (£3k) I will 100% no deal.

I guess my reason to not distinguish between blues is down to my utility curve.

£500 is at least some sort of compensation if the gamble goes wrong, even £250 imo.
To win 1p would be just as bad as winning anything up to £10 but not any worse.
There are too many members of the 1p club now to attach much prestige to it now although a framed 1p DOND cheque would have a bit more comedy value than £5 !

Whatever people think of Michael's decision not to take the banker's gamble and the stats involved (50/50 on such a good possible return) he wanted the £8,800 enough not to risk going home with 50p which is understandable especially if you have invested a couple of weeks of your life to appear on DOND.

If you have gone there with the mindset that you don't want to go home with a blue then unless you are exceptionally unlucky you don't have to even if that means a modest return dealing at 8 box.

If you have gone there to play the game and win big money you should have no regrets if you go home with a blue of
whatever description.

Oh yeah, without a doubt, Michael made the correct decision for him and everyone in the studio could see it as plain as day. The part where he tells everyone how much the money meant to him was actually a little longer than what was shown. This was due to the fact he talked about buying Christmas presents for the kids, which would have sounded wrong given that we were pretending it was January, ha ha ha.

I know £250 would be a better compensation than £10, but when your other goals are £8800 and £100,000, the extra £240 isn't near enough to change a decision for me. That is the only thing that perplexed me a bit. I can see why people would want to turn down the bankers gamble, but I assumed that anyone willing to gamble with £500 as backup is the same kind of person that would gamble with a penny as backup.

I guess I was wrong. No matter what we all would have done, I'm just delighted he went away with life-changing money and that he topped off his DOND experience with a positive.

So well done Michael!

I would suggest that the scale of the blue matters more against a lower red... perhaps anything less than 1% of the higher amount is indistinguishable on a final two?

I'd agree with that.

I think the size of the blues only really matters when you're dealing with the lower sums of money at the end of the game. As has already been said, 1p vs £250k isn't that different to £250 vs £250k in percentage terms; whereas 1p vs £1,000 is obviously very different to £250 vs £1,000.

I think in the early stage of the game though, a blue is a blue, which is why I don't really think the player has much weight when they talk about how many of "their Power 5" they have against "the banker's Power 5". The banker really has a Power 11 - all the blues - as none of the contestants want to win them, whereas most would be happy with walking away with a low red!

A decent enough game, showing us a side of Micheal that I didn't expect to be honest.

Some good banter, and in the end the right decision. Well done to him!

I've always agreed with that view. A blue is a blue to me, only time to really treat them differently is when you have low red vs high blue.