Deal-Eye is BACK!

Although I was initially reluctant to do so (and a bit cynical about the Mulhern era), out of curiosity more than anything else, I decided to boot up my Deal-Eye spreadsheet after all these years, which brought back some mixed memories after Box 23 turning it into something of "Frankenstein's Monster" for me, but anyway... )

Of course, it's taken a bit of rejigging with the new reduced-amount board, but works by the same original, classic principle, before Box 23 came in like a wrecking ball - that is being the Average of the Median Pair Fair Deal Value and the Fair Deals of the Remaining Pairs.

Don't think I'll be able to do the daily updates of the past (in its heyday!), or more pertinently whether it'll be as interesting without the £250k, but here at least are the starting values with the new board for reference:



Mean: £12,916.66 (was £25,712.12)
Fair Deal: £4,733.66 (was £9,215.40)
Deal-Eye Benchmark: £5,341.93 (was £11,070.97)

Let's see how it goes...

Here we go with Sian's game summary then...



We're not going to see many decent five-figure wins on the reduced amount board, so this was a decent start and a good settling show for Mulhern!

I'm already questioning the value of this tool until 5-box, if we're going to see previous joke offers after an all-blue opener! Perhaps the Banker is unclear where to pitch on a board of densely-packed 'oranges' and a Power 4...

What might've been on an equivalent £20k/£75k/£250k board... and that's the trouble, we naturally compare, for the time being at least.

Anyway, a totally justifiable 5-box for the player with possible utility regret round the corner. Deal-Eye being cold of emotion and a bit overly-aggressive with 2-box games at 5-box pushes on and benefits from the extra offer!

One way or another, it's 1-0 to Deal-Eye!

Ooh interesting to see this back

I recall doing it for a while.

Prediction: all offers until 5-box won't be deal worthy. 5-box itself usually won't be but will often be enough to tempt the contestant. Deal Eye then deals the overinflated prove outs.

Probably nothing new but the values now seem to offer so little wiggle room in terms of offers.

Yeah… I think it will benefit from the inflated prove-out offers, but then again, most games are probably worth chasing to the end utility-wise, where the losses are not astronomical.

I don’t think Deal-Eye is going to be earth-shattering, in the respect that before when we were conflicted on really precarious boards, a few would “wonder” what DE would’ve done, whereas at lower-stakes we don’t care as much, sadly.

Still interesting in seeing the wacky banker behaviour, it could be there’s a lot more method in the over-inflated proveout offers than before, to prove there IS big money in the game, and will more players gamble on a 50/50 when they haven’t had an earlier crash in offers?

Basically a day behind at the moment, but here's Daryl's game:



These early offers are obviously abysmal, but a genuinely decent offer sprung up at 5-box, and it's a pretty borderline No Deal from Deal-Eye by £574.75!. I do think the 3-box offer changes the dimensions of the decision here, and gives DE more value for its aggression on the 2-box games. Another pretty strong 5-box, decently spendable money won't last long I'd venture, but good news for this version to start so positively!

2-0 to Deal-Eye!

Raj's game:



£6,100 actually only under a grand off the benchmark for Deal-Eye, and although a bit cautious maybe some grounds for going then... otherwise, an unavoidable crash after that, and DE gets the pedantic blue win, by taking the £330 that no one else would! (A few of us might've lost out to the Player by taking the above-average £60 though )

3-0 to Deal-Eye!

You've not changed the players name in last graphic.

Thanks, now adjusted!

Katie's game:



Some quite decent offers today at 8, 5 and 3-box, the latter probably being the most obvious to take, but justifications for going earlier. Think we'll see a few early low-stakes deals from DE with this rather mad banker. I think most would've managed to avoid a blue win today though, apart from Katie...

Still a clean sheet for DE - 4-0!

241% of the FD. That shows how generous £7,500 really was!

Sylvia, a lively game to round off the week with...



DE under £44 from going at 11-box, but mostly we'll see a lot of players go on here with decent offers being more modest low-stakes in this version. I would say that would lead to more blue wins, however the banker's generosity is holding up in the latter stages, and a clear 8-box deal for DE. In the past, these boards may well have been forced to the end and a blue win...

Kyra's game:



Bit of a strange one, actually managed to extract some tension for such a low-stakes game, thanks to some very generous banker offers and a contestant willing to push it a bit further than perhaps they should have. Might well see a lot of games where the values on the board aren't really looked at, and the offer just wants to be discarded as it's a bit modest compared to the original. Banker providing a sticking plaster to a trainwreck, not sure how I feel about that...

Nonetheless, DE's first defeat... 4-1

Karen's game:



Ironically, DE wanted around £3,200 at 8-box!

Not the best policy to say she'd only managed to save £3k over 6 years, there wasn't going to be any tension after that... like most games in this version really. It's quite stark to see how much people's circumstances have changed certainly since 2005 and the first few years of the show, so perhaps the board wouldn't make a whole lot of difference...

5-1 to Deal-Eye with 1 Draw.

Alicia's game:



Quite a well-pitched offer at 8-box for the player actually, DE wanted about a grand more. The Deals are rather plateauing into quite a narrow range, as expected really, and it's all becoming a bit predictable...

Another outlandish final offer of course, not in keeping with the "evil" persona of the Banker (think they should just ditch that concept, as there's been so many late offers when the banker has just lost control of the overall maths...)

6-1 to Deal-Eye with 1 draw!

Wow, games have been going near perfectly for Deal-Eye, allowing it to capitalize on mistakes players made in both directions!

It's one loss was pretty deserved too, taking a utility defying £650 deal no human player would seriously consider.

Brad's game:



Probably the most emotional game to date. I suspect most would've gone at £12,600, but enough stability to justify going on, and understandable in his circumstances that he wanted to go for it. Last offer just bizarre...

An Outright Deal-Eye Win for a commanding 7-1 lead!

Stevie's game:



A player willing to push on with calculated risks. I'm glad I have a separate spreadsheet for this banker, as he seems to be on a different universe with these 2-box offers, a whopping 115% of the mean!

7-1 to Deal-Eye with 2 draws

I think there were only two occasions where the offer was above the mean in the C4 series: £4 on £1 / £5 and £140,000 on £10,000 / £250,000

I think it happened a few more times actually - pretty sure it did in proveout at least.

Yeah, it happened several times both in proveout and live play. £5 Irene, 50p Dennis, 1.5k Wendy just to name a few examples in live play, and in 2005 and early 2007 above mean proveout offers happened a number of times.