Many players seem to be happy to gamble low reds in a normal game (even when a deal may mathematically be wiser and/or a blue win is on the cards), so I was expecting most players who won low reds to take on box 23. Instead, there have been 19 red wins of £10k or below since it was introduced (including 6 of £5k or below) and only one of these wins was used to buy it.

I also thought box 23 may trigger some tactical dealings of low reds at 5-box or 2-box to guarantee a reasonable result if it was taken on and 'double' was found (as clearly 'double' is virtually useless with most blues), but this doesn't seem to be the case.

So despite Joey taking on box 23 on New Year's Day with a >£10k win and coming off better, it seems box 23 has cut itself a niche of mostly just being a tool to possibly win £10k if you win a blue. Having said that, it'll only take a gambler to go to the end, win a large red, take on box 23 and find 'double', and a frenzy will be whipped up!

Interesting to imagine how it would've transpired during the "Wakey Winter" perhaps...!

Random idea I'm throwing out there...

How about making Box 23 compulsory?

Tweak the possible outcomes so it's not -EV above £20,000.

Make it so the player has to choose 1 of 5 box 23s or something to make it not seem like the game is pre-determined.

Offer some way to not have to open box 23 that requires a penalty. e.g. half of winnings are lost.


The fact that only two reds have been risked on it is a pretty shocking statistic. And the first was done because it was day 1 and he reasoned it wouldn't contain anything bad.

Very few people want to risk going home with nothing when they have almost anything above just £1,000 If Box 23 had these five options it might be used more:

1) +£10,000
2) Winnings increased by 50% eg £8,000 becomes £12,000
3) Money back
4) Winnings halved
5) Winnings reduced by 75% eg £8,000 becomes £2,000

With the guaranteed safety net in place the worst case scenario is ending with 25% of your winnings. This would hopefully incentivise more contestants to gamble.

Just a random thought - does the stats board in the studio show the ha'penny that was won? Or did they round it up/down?

Currently, it doesn't show the "half-penny" win, let's put it that way...!

It's never shown the amount of pence won overall.

As I said on another topic, it doesn't take a genius to realise that the format is drying up and even I am struggling to become interested, infact I haven't watched the show consistently for the last 2 years. So where certain changes and additions would be welcome, I still think that the fundamentals of DOND 2005/2006 should be phased back in such as less gimmicks and a more realistic banker. And perhaps better contestant selection!

Some updated stats, as of Wally's game on Sunday:

• Box 23 has been dealt 30 times out of a potential 81.
• Only two red amounts have been risked on box 23: £10,900 and £3,000 - those happened on 1st Jan and 9th Jan respectively, and both amounts had £10,000 added to them.
• There have been no blue wins where box 23 hasn't been dealt.
• Had all winnings since 1st Jan been used on box 23, they would've increased by 20.5% (£255,575.10).
• In reality, all winnings since 1st Jan have increased by 4.8% (£59,727.60) due to box 23 (because not everyone has dealt it).
• Roop's £250k win skews things due to his box 23 containing 'double'. If you remove his game from the stats, the hypothetical effect of box 23 is an increase of just £5,575.10 (0.5%).

The banker mentioned recently that he's not happy 'his mother' introduced box 23 as it's not worked out well for him, which implies he was hoping big winners would take it on and have their winnings halved or reduced to nothing more often than blue winners would have £10,000 added to their winnings. I don't think that was ever likely to happen though.

It's obvious that lower wins are going to be risked on box 23 most often, with a 20% chance of a £10,000 increase. Even though there's a 40% chance of halving winnings or having them reduced to nothing, the banker is unlikely to be able to redress the effect of the extra £10,000 payments because the 'half' or 'nothing' options are only having a negligable effect as the amounts risked on box 23 are so low.

So maybe the banker does have reason to be angry with 'his mother'. It feels like he's going to have a long wait before someone risks a big sum on box 23 - and then he has to hope the gamble goes wrong in order to redress the balance of the players who have had blue wins substantially increased because of box 23!

Full breakdown of box 23 stats here: viewtopic.php?p=821017#p821017

Shocking. You would expected a few more than that...

Seems there is a new twist that will be introduced in October...

No idea what it is.

Box 24?

Maybe it’s time to either modify Box 23, or retire it outright. Honestly, it seems to have done more harm than good. When it was introduced, the show officially jumped the shark.

Last week was undoubtedly the best week so far for box 23 helping the players!

Thanks to the three +£10,000s and the 'double' that it produced after it had been dealt, winnings increased by a whopping 334.8% from £13,200.50 to £44,200.50. The two box 23s that weren't dealt contained 'half' and 'nothing', so the players definitely did the right thing with box 23 last week.

This means that box 23 has added over £100k (£100,224.45) to players' winnings. Had every player dealt box 23, winnings would've increased by £365,971.95 - a statistic which is somewhat skewed by Roop's game.

Full stats here - http://www.dond.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=25920

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am glad Box 23 was there last week, for without it it would've been the worst special week EVER, with a top win of £7,100 (which was Lydon's cautious pre-twist Deal), a second highest win of £3,000 and 2 blue winners that had dealable 8 box offers.

If you take out the Box 23 winnings then you'd get an average win of just £2,200.08! That would put it at second to last!

How about an option called 1/5 of winnings. Instead of NOTHING.?

Or make QUARTER a regular option replacing NOTHING.

I wonder if they'll change the Box 23 set-up for 2015.