Have the banker's offers changed after Laura won the £250k? As has been mentioned in other threads, there certainly seem to have been some near-mean offers since the £250k was won on Sunday 7/1... is this because the banker knows that the players are more likely to gamble after seeing Laura win £250k... and that a near-mean offer might just make someone deal and lose the courage they may have gained after watching Laura's game?

I'm not convinced that the Banker actually gives a *beep* about saving money; I think the generous offers might be to try to ensure that Laura's win was followed by some other good ones to keep up the momentum, rather than a load of trainwrecks. (Although Craig and Don scuppered that a bit by turning down all their generous offers anyway...)

Regardless of why he's doing it, I hope he stops soon...I don't want to see stingy offers, but the fourth offer being practically at the mean (as it has been in every game this week except Nicola's, I think) is just dim.

I think that since Laura's win there might be an expectation for contestants to gamble more so that any viewers that might have got hooked as a result of watching Laura's game last Sunday (or last Tuesday 11am on More 4 or yesterday's repeat on Channel 4) will enjoy tense exciting games by the obvious momentum created by the jackpot win. At the same time if there are too many big money wins in close succession then the novelty might wear off, so seeing a variety of games that rewards gamblers and cautious players is a good recipe for viewer interest. What makes the show exciting is when contestants have real dilemmas about whether to deal or no deal, and some gamble and others are more cautious. The mean or near-mean offers are the best way of sustaining these dilemmas. I also think that while Endemol enjoy healthy finances, they wouldn't enjoy their overheads getting too high, so I don't agree that they don't care about saving money. What will be especially interesting will be to see how the banker will pitch his offers today in the light of this being another Sunday show.

Without question, the strategy has changed. I can only presume that the Banker has assumed that the result of Laura's game was 21 contestants all willing to be reckless gamblers. With four eight-box offers out of five this week above 90% of the mean, of which only one was accepted, you have to say that assumption is almost completely right.

Endemol are certainly concerned about saving money to some extent, this show is offering prizes completely incomparable with previous afternoon game shows and any means of keeping them down has to be of interest. However, the best way to fund those prizes is advertising revenue, which is why we're going to see Endemol throw every trick imaginable at the show to attract views - and Laura's final 'hey, open your box' offer to force a jackpot win that could be leaked across the tabloids was unquestionably an example of that in my opinion.

Giving gamblers enough rope to hang themselves with! Though I think Brian's and Jennifer's final pairs are warning to anyone, so I think it's going to settle down a bit now. I even thought Jennifer's £32k offer was a bit on the low side if anything, compared to Billy's, the last time we had a similar board.

I thought that was quite a fair offer. I was expecting it to be somewhere between £22k and £27k, to encourage her to continue.

I'm with James on this one. I thought Jennifer's £32,000 offer was too low, it should have been at least £40,000 in my opinion.

It should have been a bit higher but remember Tom's game May 18th? He had 100K, 250K and 3 low blues left and was offered £33,000 which he dealt at. Jennifer had 75K, 250K and 3 low amounts when she was offered £32,000. Maybe there are more examples that people have of similar boards from past shows to give a comparison.

I think May was a "nasty banker" period. Simone had Jennifer's board and was only offered £25k! Then again Gaz wouldn't have won £100k if the banker had been nice, I'm sure he would have dealt if the offer at 5-box or 2-box had been higher. Gaz's game is the one that bares the most resemblance to Laura's if you ask me!

There again, apart from the early days with this generous late offers, the banker seems to have been a lot nastier than nice in general terms anyway, with the exception of the early offers which not many contestants deal at anyway!

I think after today's game there has definitely been a change in banker tactics! I don't think Phil scared the banker that much, yet most of his offers were almost the mean...

Dan made an interesting point in chat earlier...we haven't seen a single offer under £10k since Ray's opening offer on Thursday. Every single offer since then, all 23 of them, have been over £10,000. When you consider that Joseph's game was the first ever to have all six offers over £10k in September, and the last three games have matched this feat (as well as Julie on Wednesday), it's very surprising!

Although, to be fair, the last three games have all had power 5 amounts on the table, so that justifies the high offers a little. In fact, if there's a power 5 today then it's the longest run of power 5 boxes ever!

Very interesting statistic - and quite a shocking one! What is the banker up to? The Power 5 value on the table helps - but some of the very high, near mean offers have come quite early on in the game, sometimes when there are still blues left on the board, and even with the 1p still there!

I thought Phil's game was the game that contained the highest percentage of the mean offers, and...



79.9% of the mean on average during Phil's game! Why is the banker doing this? Is he afraid people will gamble on after seeing Laura do so and win the £250k? Does he think people who witnessed Laura's £250k win are more courageous, and he can get people out of the chair by making generous offers?

I remember thinking in Wayne's and Ashok's games, how ridiculously high their second offers of £19,999 and £21,000 respectively were, with some significant reds gone (Wayne had lost £50k and £15k, Ashok had lost £35k, £20k and £10k). I was thinking there and then "I'd be off without a second thought here", and that was before I saw how rubbishly their games turned out.

Now offers like that are run of the mill!