Round 6 - 1st box

2 - 10p Debs

Banker time

That was perfect says Noel.

Banker's offer:

£19,500

Noel reminds Paul that if he plays on he will only have to open 1 box. The Banker calls back and says that if Paul finds the blue in the next box his offer will be over £30,000. Paul goes to Lee for some advice, and Lee tells him to ignore the Banker's future offers for the moment. The Banker calls back and apologises for distracting Paul by saying he could win over £30,000, and says the offer would be £40,000!

Paul says

DEAL

Round 6 - Proveout round - 2nd box

4 - £250,000 Steve

Banker time

Can you imagine how you would have felt if you played on says Noel.

Banker's offer would've been:

£950

Round 6 - Proveout round - Final box

17 - £100 Emma

Banker time with £1,000 and £3,000 remaining

Noel opens Paul's box 7 and reveals £1,000

Box 13 with Michael contains the £3,000

I'm begining to think wakey was onto something. Feels like the 250k is always popping up in box 4!

Good result anyway, with the twist proving crucial.

It seems to pop up in Box 4 a lot of times at crucial moments

But nonetheless, we start the themed week with a Spanking

So the gameplay twist is the old trick-or-treat-and-variants-thereof one, only you choose one and only one of the two bonuses. That means the ADP is shifted to five-box for the week, which so soon after an 11-box OPW is quite amusing timing.

I'm not watching this, but I'm sure Paul is an arresting sight in his fancy dress. £100,000 is a horrible start; four blues is enough to cancel out the damage, that's a marginally above-average round, and the opening offer is in line with that and recent offer trends.

Two more low blues is fantastic, but the producer then spoils it by making a 'joke' that could, and in some quarters doubtless would, be interpreted as asserting that homosexuality and criminality are positively correlated. (Or am I reaching too far yet again? As I continue to argue, better a false positive than a false negative.) Ten grand does no real harm at all, and the offer is shockingly good for this stage in a game with a five-box ADP. Not that it's dealable, mind, and I suspect the stinginess kicks in at one of the next two offers.

Maybe not this one after a round that good, but Paul's excitable acknowledgment of a sub-£20k sum will suffice as an excuse for offer deflation. Told you. Note the coded invitation to play for bonus offers.

Twenty grand does little harm on its own... that blue cancels it out... and £35,000 is certainly not a game-breaker here either, three Power 5 amounts (jackpot included) and £15k at eight-box is fabulous. The offer is the clearest possible indication that the producer wants this game to go to five-box - if the Banker keeps being this stingy this week, Nick Clegg will do a deal before any of the players!

Ooh... ooh!... OH! But the jackpot is still in play. 50:50 of each, you have to play for the extra offers. Remember the Brenda Rule: no non-cash prizes are guaranteed, so treat them as worthless. Thirteen grand would be right with three to open, but not one; Paul is quite right to play on.

There we go! The worst-case scenario gone. Ooh, that's cleverly manipulative, an offer placed deliberately short of the £20k breakpoint. I'd Deal just to spit in the face at such an obvious attempt to produce a gamble, and also because I'd expect £26k at three-box; oh OK, he's promising forty grand, but only for the 25% chance of a blue, I'm assuming Old Faithful for an orange. I'm gone. I don't think he will be.

But no, Paul fights the pressure, Deals... AND ANOTHER OPW! Yes, he'd have recovered to an all-orange finish, but who cares?!? Another fantastic result for a player who resisted temptation.

No, I can sort of see where you're coming from. I'm sure it wasn't intended to be offensive, but it could easily be interpreted as such. On the other hand...




This is reading a bit too far into things. An offer situated a little under 20k is hardly justification to accuse them of trying to force a gamble. I mean, it's £500 less: when you get to sums of money on that scale, £500 really doesn't make much difference at all...


Anyway, an enjoyable game and a good start to the themed week. I quite like the idea of being able to pick between two twists: one box at a time or a holiday. On Paul's board it was obvious to go with the former, but depending on the board it could produce some interesting decisions... The one thing I didn't like about today's game was that they claimed that 12k was a respectable offer at 8-box, when it really wasn't. I mean, how can an offer of 12k be considered fair on a board with 2 blues versus 6 reds, 4 of which are 15k, 50k, 75k and 250k? Double that would have been fair.

Oh I LOVE this theme! It's much better than those stupid clowns for last year, and find the bit where the banker can send a player to jail is very amusing (Liam actually looks better as a robber.....). Though with choosing the gameplay twist, surely it's a no-brainer to go for one-to-open every time? Aren't the holidays for the other option bargain-basement and so there's far more potential financial gain in opening one at a time? Unless as Noel said on the end, there's something we don't know about if the players pick the LOSE option, but surely the banker would have said so under those circumstances?

As for the gameplay, I just knew the first two offer would be much more generous than the 3rd and 4th offers, I couldn't stop laughing at 8-box when Noel said "On that configuration, he's desperate to stop you getting to 5-box" before revelaing the offer was about half of what the board was worth.

But really pleased the way it worked out, I was glad he at least went to 4-box to take advantage of the twist, and was really pleased he didn't get goaded on once he'd made up his mind, I think the banker could have thought Paul would think the prospective offer would be almost the same as the promised £40k for finding an orange next box too.

But glad to see the goading him into playing another box failed big time, and he got a massive OPW out of it, nice!!

Shortly after I saw the 8-box offer I was thinking, isn't it ironic that Sharon's statistically generous £9k offer on Friday was presented in a way that suggested to her "You're not really going to deal this are you?", while Paul's just been offered a statistically terrible one they're trying to really talk up!

He seemed a good choice to start the week off as he had a lot of energy and quite an open attitude to the game and the twists, and did well in a game that in a normal week could have seen anything from 8-box deal for just over £20k or a forcing offer / money-chasing streak at 5-box to an orange win.

The 1-to-open rule was probably the right choice here; I guess the holiday option might be a better choice if you're having a game like Kelly's last week where there's not that much big money at stake by that point.

Not necessarily. If you have a rubbish board, where the most you can get is something like 5k (or even an all-blue final five!), you'd be better off going for the holiday. Likewise, any true Wakeyists should go for the holiday, since the extra offers would just get turned down anyway! Of course, if you have a one-box game like Paul did, it's a complete no-brainer!

This is going to be an interesting week - the Costumes are rather good and despite the false moustaches the players remian pretty much recognisable, which is a pleasant change from the clown outfits last year (and after the disapointment of seeing Scarlett play in clown face last year i'm sure i wasn't the only one pleased to see that Natalie had been given a custom made uniform - very Amy Pond )
And on a slightly related sidebar was i the only one who thought "Look they've got a couple of TARDISes in the corner of the studio" before realising they were supposed to be police boxes

But this was of course Paul's game and what a cracker of a game it was. I was reminded of Zanna's game when he got to the half way stage and only had 3 blues left, guessed then he was going to have a rocky couple of rounds simply because he hadn't left himself anywhere to go, luckily though he had the 5 box twist to help him out, and he timed his departure perfectly
Imagine if he hadn't found the right Tardis Police Box though, it could have been a heart breaker if he'd had to play till the end.

Great timing by Paul - resisted the temptation to go on which I fear I would not have been able to do.

Did notice that a lot of the male robbers seemed to be sporting a lot of stubble. Not noticed whether it was present last week or whether it was a deliberate costume enhancement.

I don't think that the LOSE boxes have any twists to them but in Banker's Birthday week, don't put it past him to sneak a peak at a box if it occurs.

Costume department definitely had something to do with it, Paul was clean shaven last week - at the time I thought he reminded me a bit of Mark S who played in Jan 08, whose show was repeated in the Hall Of Fame specials last august.

Interesting twist this week, like most I'm intrigued what would happen if the "LOSE" is picked on either option - maybe nothing, but as Simon said, a peek in the player's box is not out of the question in BB week!

Anyway, that was a fascinating game, even if the mid-game offers were a bit terrible - I'd even have thought that a 9/2 11-box board to the reds with 4 of the power 5 would warrant close to 30k, with seemingly little potential downside at that point. Of course, it was inevitable he'd hit reds but to leave the 2 low reds at 5-box was a tad unlucky, and in the end it he clung on for the OPW when the first part of the game had been practically plain sailing - today could be described as a Big Relief Win, salvaging victory from the jaws of defeat.

Can't think who else has been trying to do that lately...