There we go. Complete agreement between the banker/producer and KP!

Round 5 - Proveout round

Noel wonders when we are ever going to see a male £250,000 winner.

7 - £20,000 Tom

13 - £1,000 Jo

12 - £3,000 Mo


Banker time

Considering if one of, or indeed both of those biggies went, the offer would be slashed, I think that was a decent decision!

The fallback has gone...now those two HAVE to be discovered...and they're not!!! Even resorting to Mo didn't work!!! (Perhaps karma for "not playing honestly???)

Arggggh... A five box with the top 2 in play is so rare says Noel... The Banker says that Linda was spot on with her talk of the averages.

Banker's offer would've been:

£45,000

I doubt it'd have been higher than about £35,000 in real play...

Jennifer's exact 5-box!

10p
£500
£750

£100,000
£250,000

Round 6 - Proveout round

15 - £250,000 Matt

1 - £100,000 Jean

21 - £500 Justin

Banker time with 10p and £750 remaining

10p

£750




Albeit a couple of boxes too late, he saved himself from a total crash!

The Banker can't gloat anymore says Noel

Banker's offer would've been:

£250

Noel opens box 20 and reveals £750

Joyce with box 22 contains the 10p

Noel says if he was really cruel he could say that Al bottled it, but Al had told him that his target was £20,000, and he was actually brave to stop there when he could have been drawn into the moment with the top 2 still in play.

A good result, yes he "bottled it", but Noel's version of summing up his "bottling up" would have left even KP leaving the studio feeling happy!

I just noticed that he took out all seven reds consecutively after 10-box (a 1 in 120 chance). Also, not only was the 5-box he had exactly the same as Jennifer's but he had the exact same amount in his box as well!

Has anyone else noticed that the earlier offers have been a lot bigger lately? £8,000 after an opening round with 50k and 75k? I was expecting 3k or something! The 5-box hypo offer seemed inflated, but not drastically so (it would have been more like 35-40k). There have been far more blatant lies in terms of hypo offers before (27.5k Steven from March 2007 comes to mind).

Anyway, an enjoyable game today, with a good sum of money won, so I can't complain too much. Well done Al! Noel going on about the first male quarter millionaire was kinda annoying though (I imagine KP will have picked up on this).

Could've been an outright spanking if he had stopped at 5-Box, but nevertheless it was better than yesterday's

Didn't realise the 1 in 26,334 chance of having the same 5 box as Jennifer. There's no chance in hell that the offer would have been anywhere near £45k in active play. I would have thought old faithful at a minimum and somewhere around £35k at the most.

Good to see that Noel recognised that Al hadn't been too greedy today although given the 11 box offer was only £1k short of his target, he might have been tempted to deal but with the block of 3 as backup, it would have been a cautious deal.

Kudos to Al for knowing what he wanted and walking away when then it was offered.

It was a tough call at five box and the offer was perfectly pitched,he was right to take it but there would have been no shame in going one more round either. On this occassion it didn't work out for him but it's better to get out one round too soon than to crash and burn

A satisfying result!

It is a bugbear of mine how such blatent lies in proveout is portrayed as "playing on with honesty".

Nonetheless, Al did well to stick to his guns and produced a good game. And I'm glad the audience kept clapping when the £20k went just after the deal, even when Noel was scowling at them in a "Why are you clapping? That's not good enough!" way (recognising that for a first box of the round, it wasn't actually that bad).

Indeed, £20K was the third-largest number left, so the "perfect round" was still conceivable at that point.

Am I crazy in thinking that Corinne's game may have permanently altered Noel's philosophy on playing on or playing safe? A pre-Corinne Noel probably gives Al a lot more grief about dealing at 8-box with Big Red and Junior (my new name for the £100K) still in the game.

As much as I'd love to dismiss the £45k proveout offer as inflated rubbish, Doreen was actually offered more without the £100k there! (I think that would have been the real offer had the £20k stayed with the big two). And remember people were dealing offers like £20k 18 months ago with stuff like the big three and two mid-red back-ups at 8-box, rather than the top two and one mid-red back-up!

Not a bad game though. The Bother's Bar term is used very loosely, I mean this officially was a TBW, yet £1k Michael's game is that as well!

Classic case of one too early is much better than one too late!

I think Doreen was an extreme example, though, due to her determination to play to the end! There have probably only been a handful of offers in live play which have been virtually 100% of the mean (or more), and Doreen's 5-box offer must surely be one of the most generous of all time (if not the most generous) when you consider the instability of her board.

I was surprised Corinne "only" got £31k on her 5-box board, actually, as she had more backup than Doreen, but had the same attitude as Doreen. Al seemed to think very hard about the 11 and 8-box offers, so I expect the 5-box offer would've really been around the £30k mark, even though he had the £100k as well as the £250k. Also bear in mind that Doreen played during a period when the offers were generally higher than they are now.