I disagree, the wife really fought him to take that deal, I reckon he's a bit of a gambler (as I said) and she has to rein him back IRL.

Before I posted this comment, I had written a rather long rant at the antagonists of today's thread. However, I reminded myself of my responsibilities here and one of those is to present myself well, and calmly, and try to mediate, rather than antagonise in return. So I deleted that, and I'll put it in better terms below.

To those concerned....please, please at least attempt to be positive. Your constant moaning and cursing is annoying, and not just from my point of view as you well know.
I believe it would be in your best interests - and those of the forum in general - if you listened to what has been said about your consistent negativity, take it in and realise it, and try to act upon it. In short, it's time you paid attention to what other members have said to you, rolled up your sleeves, and actually tried to do something about it.

I often state, in my posts on this subject, the prospect of guests who are "haunting" these forums; they do so every afternoon, and I daresay most come from the same locations to here every day. After all, we are the only site who provide running commentaries in such a way as we do.
Now, your conduct - specifically - is what I believe is potentially driving some of those guests from signing up. Noticed that we haven't had more than one new member become a regular here for well over a year - probably longer? There you have my point.

In order for this forum to escape the lull it's currently in - and it is, compared to its heyday six, seven years ago - and return to somewhere near that heyday, it needs to be an attractive proposition to the guests who visit, prompting them to want to sign up here.
But it's not, at the moment, because of your conduct.
If we can make these threads positive environments - rather than the seemingly perpetual stream of negativity which seems to engulf them now - we will be improving the image of the forum to those guests. Who knows? They may even be encouraged to sign up, and post with regularity as members. Positivity breeds positive consequences, folks.

I've been trying extremely hard, making a real effort to be positive in my life, trying not to turn every negative into a positive - because the negatives are exactly what they are - but to counter it with a positive, at least. To think in a positive way, rather than the negative way I've been used to for eighteen years.

If there's one thing I ask of those concerned, it's this: Please at least try to make an effort with your negative thinking. It takes some time to start finding positives, but they are always there if you search for them.
Please really try to be positive, and happier if possible. You might even find that doing that only for DoND-related things also moves on naturally to other areas of your life; just a suggestion.

Me + MsM = 2 new members who have become regulars in the past year

Ah, so the two-box was Richard's finish... with the exact same offer too! See, even I remember a few DoND facts!

daniel123 is completely right too. Some of you seriously need a break from this program. All this negativity is quite ridiculous, actually. It's just a blasted game, which you aren't even playing.

I visited the OFFICIAL DoND forums - it's bustling with life when before it was just a hopeless wasteland - everyone is friendly there... maybe too friendly! No irritating nagging negative people around.

ACB, you stubborn rat... you are probably the most negative of the bunch. Haven't you anything better to do than harass contestants?

Why are there no (other) girls here? Is it a reflection on me or on them

Only active female member I can remember on here recently is Maud and she's nowhere to be seen these days.

Holly used to be a regular on this forum but she's now only on the official forums. Traitor!

I suspect there are more female lurkers though, I lurked for years just couldn't bite my tongue any more.

WRONG, Skyline. Richard was offered £32,500 on that finish.

He broke the streak of four figure wins. Therefore, your complaining in the rest of the thread - which, every single person here agrees is largely unwelcome - is flat-out unnecessary.

THE ONE GAME I REMEMBER AND I GET IT WRONG!

Last thing, and then I'll shut up:


Okay, so that point is wrong. Still, are you just going to ignore the rest of the post? If you disagree with it, you ought to say something. As it stands, it's impossible to understand at all why you do what you do.

As for this game:

I love it when people immediately label a player cautious and going at the third offer when he actually turns it down. That he went at the fourth one is cautious, sure. But he won a nice amount of money, still.

I don't think players necessarily "deserve" their game to end up the way it does. After all, they are playing for money and deserve the amount that they decided to deal at, as it's the figure they decided they were comfortable with leaving with. I know we're all statistically and historically minded to be able to gauge the strength of the board versus the current offer and come up with instant conclusions as to whether players' decisions were good or bad, but in the end each player is there only once and has only one chance at grabbing money. I'd imagine he'd feel really devastated if the next two rounds were perfect nightmare rounds, perhaps as upset as you'd be if he had accepted the first offer and proceeded to have incredible perfect rounds.

Regardless, this is indeed my opinion, and I know that others will disagree with this. But I am fully with daniel123 that this place really needs to become more positive. If people continue with their constant negativity, this forum might end up deserted faster than Deal gets canceled. Is that what we're really shooting for, here?

I do it because I refuse to support this run of ridiculously cautious Deals ultimately rewarded. Seriously, the current run is almost undoubtedly the most cautious era in the history of the show. Nearly every contestant nowadays comes on the show with the mindset to secure a significant sum of money at the 3rd or 4th offer regardless of the generosity or the state of the board. This is Deal or No Deal, not "Deal at the 3rd offer or go on and definitely take the 4th". I am hoping that my criticisms will either encourage contestants to be more brave or encourage production to do better contestant screening, because at this rate the show is going to be dead in the next year.

Hmm, not sure what to make of that. Another fairly cautious decision, but it could ultimately have been a lot worse, I guess.

I agree that we do need players to be a bit bolder, but we need better offers as well. Most of these players would deal anyway if the offers were a bit higher, and it would probably go down better.

I'll allude to that, certainly; but personally, I'm still very unhappy at the reaction every small decision or event seems to garner from some here. It's unnecessary, really, I feel.

ACB, your criticisms will do nothing whatsoever to encourage the players - remember they have already played, many weeks before the show is aired. You can do nothing about it, at all.
As for production, I'm not sure they even come here any more? They don't acknowledge us on the show I don't think anyway, bar H's game perhaps. I'm also not sure the players go on the show with a "I'm going to take 3rd/4th offer no matter what" dead-set, concrete mentality; I really do think they analyse - however poorly - the situations with which they are faced, and make their decisions based on everything they consider in their analysis, rather than playing the game knowing full-well they're going to deal at a certain point. That'd be a flawed plan to have - what if you have Siobhan's or Mark De Sousa's game?

I meant if the big money stayed in play to that point.

Ah, but how did I know that....?

I know it's probably logistically impossible for some posters on here to do this but I really urge everyone to try and watch at least one show live. To have the player sitting a few metres away from you gives you a completely different perspective to sitting at home complaining that people don't have the nerve/guts etc to gamble.

On a 4/4 board like today's, it's tough to know which way the board is going to go and for me, neither decision was wrong. I'd say the 5-box decision wasn't an easy one either.

I've never seen the show live but I'm obviously well aware of how easy it is to question somebody's decision when it's not actually your money, so you raise a very interesting point here. In the studio you would still be in that same situation but I suppose the intensity of the situation would lead you to become more immersed in the game. I regularly watch gameshows and shout at the telly when people make a 'bad decision'. But that doesn't stop me from knowing that if it was my money I'd probably make that very same 'bad decision'!