Analysis of 4 box would indicate £20,000 was a good deal, however that's not the problem. It's wrong how the banker decided to stop the round, without the request of the player. This will surely happen more..

With £20,000 dealt she had (offers wise, figures based on estimates)

33% chance of significant increase at 2 box
33% chance of a stick or £15,000
16% chance of £7,000
16% chance of £4,444?

Result:
Player winnings: £20,000
Peak offer: £50,000
Box contents £20,000
Result: TBW

Say that was a draw to be honest as the box contained £20,000 in.

The peak offer was still £50,000, so normal techical scoring is assigned. A draw would only be the case if the peak offer was also £20,000 therefore making all figures involved the same.

She wasn't defeated in my books.

I like many many others are sick and tired of the banker butting in when someone has the chance to win big money.
Should never ever butt in after opening one or two boxes out of the three.
I watch to see people win big amounts of money but most go with less than 10,000.
It's geting to be boring

Her peak offer was over 50% higher than the offer she accepted, so the banker won, technically

She still won a healthy sum of money, the way I see it.

As i have said in a previous topic, some of us try and look into the game in detail, rather than just declaring a game a win just because the player won X amount of money. Yes she won £20,000, but that doesn't mean she won automatically. If everyone won the game because they dealt at a value that meant something to them, every player would be scored an OPW which is besides the point of the scoring system!

OK then.

LOL, posted after four five-figure wins in a row.

Oh, and if it weren't for that intervention, for all we knew we could have had a blue/£10k finish. It was a twist for 'shock' value, simple as - the only weakness with that is the overdoing of this sort of thing we've seen in the past!

I did always think you disliked these kinds of twists, KP. PJ's no-cash-offer is a prime example of that, i presume; "Ladies and gentlemen, you just saw the death of a TV show.", so the banker halting 6th round progress with no request whatsoever is absolutely fine!?!

Personally, I don't like these kind of twists - it just feels as if the banker is 'cheating' a bit phoning up at non-regular times, I know he can bend the rules as supposedly 'it's his money', but he shouldn't be able to do this during a round just because he is in trouble, or at least if he is, the player should be able to request an offer if they are in trouble. In my opinion, anyway.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed the game, Olympia was a fascinating contestant, and she can count herself a bit unlucky from that proveout. Good Game (I would say that was a TBW as well FWIW).

A fascinating game. For all the people moaning about the banker changing the rules mid-game, I'd be fascinated for someone to provide an official rule book for the game.

I love human beings, always seeing patterns in things that aren't there

If Olympia had taken the £100k out in the first box after she dealt then I'm sure there would be people here saying they did it to avoid a crash, but because she kept it in it was a cost saving measure? The only way that could have been a cost saver is if she had bought £100k to the table, in which case the final offer was guaranteed to be higher

Whatever his motives for doing so (and i personally do not believe anyone except the IA knows what is in the boxes) that was a canny move by the Banker making an unscheduled offer at 4 box, he caught Olympia with her guard down and positioned it equal to the second highest box in play. It was an offer almost too good to refuse

So would I mate.

In my opinion, I don't see what's wrong with a 4-box offer. There's nothing to stop the player no-dealing it if they feel it's not enough. Had Olympia taken out the £100k before 2-box, there would be a different consensus of opinion on here I bet.

I could cry when I see feckless squandering like this. Gullible Olympica is just as much to blame as the cheating Banker for this fiasco and no amount of tedious analysis can alter the fact that yet again dealing has spoiled what could have been an exciting finish to the show.

Contestants should remind themselves the show is called Deal or NO DEAL every now and then.

I can see both points of view here. I think that both sides are talking at cross purposes, in that, as a one-off, the offer was clever and gave the game a bit of variety. It's effectiveness is hampered, though, by its overuse, which is a subtle but important counterpoint.

The banker seemed to make the 4-box offer because he made an error at 5-box, exacerbated by the effective non-offers at 14 and 11-box. 8 offers for a box (and 6 acceptable offers if you count the first 2 as forbidden by peer pressure) is a lot at these relatively low stakes (the Netherlands has 9 offers with a top prize of €5,000,000; Italy, 5 offers and €500,000).

The key here is that, while there's no rule book, he needs an incentive to make an effective offer at 5-box to prevent a difficult finish for him - in this case, £20k and £100k. Adding extra offers also has the effect of deweighting the importance of a single offer, and hurts the value of the first 2 offers even further.

I've watched the Irish version, with 9 offers and a €250,000 top prize, with 6 acceptable deal points, and that fell through after 20 episodes. The 5-4-3-2-1 format just doesn't work well at these low stakes - and, if I put my head on the line, the show here would never have caught on so well if we had adopted that when the show first began.

In context, it was a clever move, and I think the banker also kept in mind that if the £100k went, that would put Olympia in a potentially awkward position, which would have been a shame. It seems as though he's lost his nerve, though - and with it, the excitement of a player winning by taking risks. The key thing here is that more offers will not bring more excitement - quite the opposite, in fact.

If the show's producers want to do it properly, do what the French did: 24 boxes, £1m, offers at 18-13-9-6-4-3-2 box. Put it on primetime, live, subtle set lighting, fast paced with some tension, interactive, for 5 days a week and 1 week only, see how it pans out. I know how to make a show even better than that, but the show's producers are enamoured with the concept, so let them try it.

Of course, they're more than welcome to experiment with the daily format. Just wish they didn't have to add extra offers so often to cover up deficiencies in the game/banker's play.

I've generally been a fan of more offers, but an excellent point on how some other versions with these stakes also have few offers, and the counter-examples are often unsuccessful.

I'm honestly of the opinion that 5-5-3-3-2-2 might be a good format, and I'm going to create a thread on Expanded and Special Games to that effect, if anyone wants to try that out for themselves.

Back to this real game, though, and I have to agree that the regular changes in rules are just bewildering now. Find a ruleset and stick to it. Whether that's got one-box rounds in the final stages or not isn't a big deal - pun intended - to me. Consistency is.

Absolutely, consistency is the key to me too, and linked to CE's comment extra offers do not necessarily make the game more exciting, quite the reverse in fact. In my opinion, it robbed the game of a tension-filled final round, and I'm saying that whatever the finish would've been. It's all about balance and too much banker 'butting in' destroys much of the subtlety of the game. It's ok in moderation, but leave it to the themed games for extra offers if you must. Interesting idea to end with 2-box rounds KP, that could be the happy medium...

Of course, they mainly throw in extra offers to create a talking point, and in that way they've succeeded!