Recently, Noel has been going on a lot about the OHO club, meaning 'Only Here Once'. He claims that since contestants only have one chance to play the game, that the way to make the most out of it is to play to the end. In fact, this logic is highly flawed, and the opposite can be said to be true.

If you were allowed to play the game twice instead of once, let's say, then if you didn't do so well the first time, you have another chance to win some money. However, since you can only play ONCE, that means that if it goes wrong, then that's it; you go home with a low amount and someone else gets their chance. This would encourage caution more than risk-taking, because if you lost out on 20k, your regrets would be much lower if you got another chance and managed to regain all of it the next time...

Statistically, mean wins would be higher if everybody went to the end. Barring incredibly unusual luck, you'd expect mean wins of all contestants to be about 22-28k. Compare this to mean wins throughout the entire shows run, which stand at about 15-17k. However, this statement is incredibly misleading for two reasons:

a) This assumes that all amounts are equally likely to appear on the table. In practice, this is highly unlikely. On the show itself it's been pretty close (approximately 52% blue, 48% red), but since it's a game of chance, theoretically you could have an extortionate run of blues. For example, in the last 26 shows, only 4 have seen reds come to the table (ignoring swaps).

b) As you play a game many times, you'd expect the results of the games as a whole to 'even out'. However, one particular game may be significantly different to any other game ever seen. On average, you'd expect people to win 10-20k roughly, and take out the same number of blues and reds throughout, but there have been extremes on both sides, with incredibly unlucky games such as Nikki and Siobhan, and amazingly lucky ones such as Brenda. Thus, to treat every game the same (as Noel is doing with his determination to go the end) would be erroneous.

c) The previously quoted average win if everyone went to the end is heavily lopsided. Only five amounts out of 22 are higher than said figure, and the 250k in particular stands out a lot from the other amounts in pulling this upwards artificially. You'd expect around half of people to go homes with blues, which is a lot more than we see on the actual show.


In conclusion, Noel's theory on the "OHO" club is completely and utterly WRONG. The fact that you only get to play once is justification for DEALING rather than going on aimlessly. Besides, for some people (including me), the regret you'd feel from winning £1 after turning down over 20k would be a lot worse than dealing and finding out you had 250k all along... 20k with regrets > £1 with regrets.

Basically, assuming one has a utility function such that the marginal utility of money declines within the space between £0 and £250,000, there is justification for the consideration of below-mean offers, even if one does not take any because they are sufficiently far from the mean (or, at earlier stages, the 'going rate' for key two- and five-box configurations that consist of amounts remaining on the board) that it is a positive-utility move to play on.

What I'd love to see is Noel flip it both ways, and use 'only here once' not as a means of encouraging gambling, nor even as a means of encouraging caution, but purely as a means of building up the tension, as in this hypothetical introduction: "every one of these 22 players know that when their name is called, that's it - it's their one shot, and they have to be ready and waiting for everything the game can throw at them, because with no second chances, there's a lot of room for regrets if they make the wrong call... whose turn is it today?"

No mention of risk or reward, but it builds up the tension.

Sadly, the only reason why Noel is acting like that is because of how many people have thrown away the biggie (with a few exceptions), the same goes for the £100k

So I find his behaviour and his "OHO" saying, starting to come off as desperate and odd

KB that doesn't make sense at all...

Your typical Aspie behaviour makes you want to agree with everyone...me and KP manage to stick to our own opinions on here, nobody is going to hate you for speaking your own opinion

I don't think that would work in practice. Noel's built himself up to be an optimistic presenter who looks on the bright side and wants contestants to do well (ignoring stuff like guilt tripping people who have dealt too early, since he's usually subtle enough for most viewers not to notice), and saying stuff like that would make him seem to be pressuring the contestants and making them more nervous than they already are, which would probably turn some viewers away.

However, had he started doing this from the start, it might well have worked. Take a look at the Weakest Link - from the start Anne Robinson has been rude and sarcastic to contestants, and despite having much lower stakes than Deal or No Deal, it's managed to stay popular for almost a decade now. But since Noel's not gone down that route, such a drastic change in his personality would likely not be too well-received.




I'm pretty sure that the reason he does it is to appease the viewers. If you think about it, which games do people tend to find most memorable and exciting? People like Laura, Alice, Gaz etc. who win massive, life-changing sums of money. Rather than having them happen once in a blue moon, Noel's trying to get people to go onto the end so that wins such as these occur more often, and in general viewers will find the show more exciting and be inticed to continue watching. However, what Noel doesn't realise is that the very fact that these games are rare is one of the things that makes them so exciting in the first place!

Oh yeah, and younger viewers. Children under 10 probably won't value the money won on the show much. I mean, when you were eight, did you realise the extent of what twenty thousand pounds was worth? So they want contestants to go on because... well, they find it fun I guess. And given the timeslot, they're going to want to try and pull in as many children as they can (that said, some of the jokes on the show are surprisingly risqué considering this!). UK contestants in general seem to be more risk-averse than the likes of people on the US version, for example. Whereas in this version people like Corinne are few and far between, the US show seems to get one every week or two...

Alright then, here's my rephrased opinion:

He's doing this because contestants just can't seem to tell what's right and wrong anymore!

Huge, huge wins are becoming few and far between, he's trying to get that message across and as of recent games (Since the start of the year), it has not worked

And btw, when I was eight, I was only interested in PC games but I was attached to money-winning shows only and yes, I never knew about the "extent of what twenty thousand pounds was worth"... (Wheel Of Fortune, anyone?)