I was going to post on there after the result but the people who comment on the DOND thread on DS are usually very negative and I was sort of expecting someone to suggest it's a fix

Coincidentally, the Deal-Eye benchmark was a slither over £60k...

I think KP summed it up best early in the thread where he stated that this finish is due to happen occasionally. The banker needs to do his best to make sure the player isn't in live play at that point. He didn't. Even I would have ended up at £165k and I'm usually quite a cautious dealer!

Below the median at 5 box was still certainly insanely low however, she obviously wasn't a Kathleen! I think 55K could have been offered there. Maybe it was insanely low paradoxically because of the 1 box rule which changed the psychology.

110K was dealable but below the 125-130K which might been offered on a 50K vs 250K finish.

I wouldn't deal on the dream finish unless there's an AMO but a 150K offer on 75K vs 250K would have had me thinking.

Yes, the psychology was definitely different for having the blue - and after two worst-deal-ever contenders in the prior four games they were more concerned with preventing another early Deal than getting Suzanne out of the chair. If the blue had stuck around to three-box we might have been talking of this in the same manner as Alice and Laura after all. (Although possibly not given the danger in any ND on such a three-box - remember Lauren, anyone?)

Looking from the side of the production team a 250k winner or anything over 50k has become such a rare situation , a big payout that Suzanne had is just playing the odds. Especially when you consider that since Suzanne we have had a pittance of a payout. Assuming that with every show they allocate a 20k prize fund, which rolls over to the next show(Eggheads style as someone mentioned), it wouldn't take that long to accrue a five figure pot or even 400k plus. Coupled with the image of the 'nasty banker' which encourages low dealers or punishes braver players onto a banker p5 win.

Maybe in the early days of big payouts as the show found its feet they were a little nervous - but they did have the extra income from the premium rate phone ins to act as an insurance. But in the last 5 years, the statistics have surely been laid out for all to see in that we have a extremely small number of big payouts with the huge majority wins being less than 15k. The worst case for the production team would be if every player refused their offers and just took what was in their box. I think that would push up big wins, but in reality we are talking about humans who only have one shot at taking some 'smile money' home and daren't risk going to the end.

Historically, the mean win has been just over £15k, the median win around £12.5k. That's slightly trended downwards post-recession, but not by much, certainly not by as much as the loss of revenue from the Legalised Telephone Lottery once it was clear that wasn't quite so legal after all.

The mean of all 22 boxes is £25,712.12 - roughly speaking, long-term winnings would increase £10k per show if nobody Dealt, and there would be three blue wins a week, and no tension midway through the game. The show relies on a majority of contestants not playing to the end, and yet the producers persist with low offers and a gambling-friendly script for Noel, both of which increase the risk of players going to the end.

Humans nearly all have a utility function of diminishing returns as the stakes rise - the gap between £10k and £20k is not as big as the gap between £1 and £10k, so essentially everyone would take £10k on a £1/£20k finish. Where the tipping point lies for each individual is where the decisions come from. This rule generalises, and is more complex and intriguing, at 5- and 8-box... That's the game. Nothing to do with "courage", or necessarily even luck (as that just decides which scenarios get played out), but how people value money.

I know I'm a month late - but I've only just found this.
Must have been brilliant to watch..for me, Kirsty's time was much better as you didn't have the complications, it was all "genuine" to put it one way. But still...makes me wish I still had that obsessive impulse in me for DoND..very well-played Suzanne.

What was that someone said, a good few years ago? "Playing to the end is the only way to truly win a game of Deal or No Deal". We've seen proof of my statement 3 times now...

And yet we've also seen 36 examples of why it's the only way to lose DOND

1p is a lot of money. I mean, didn't Nick Bain sell his 1p check for a profit?

It's not necessarily the winnings but what it means - so perhaps my statement takes on new meaning. For instance, if I were to go to the end and win £1,000, knowing that £1,000 would get me started with "X" project or "X" activity or indeed my life, then I would have to pose the question to myself: Would I have won, given that I was happy with a grand? Or should the show be taken statistically only?
I know my statement is absolutely correct in the statistical sense - £250k can only be won through it being in a player's box, or the box the player swaps for. But should I follow my statement if, one day, I were to play - and statistically lose the game - but still go away with £1,000, would I have won because I was happy with that?

I am intrigued - for the first time in four years - by a game of Deal or No Deal. I must be very ill..

You have possibly inadvertently touched on the subject of utility which is fundamental to the entire game - it is the concept of money being what you make of it that sparks differences of opinion, of different "right decisions".

Playing to the end will only get you £1k or more half the time - much, much more on occasion, mind - while dealing the first offer will get you £1k or more almost all the time. Does that make dealing then wise? Of course not, only very rarely is there any merit in going then, but it goes to show.

For a lot of contestants £20k is that tipping point, and so too many of the most fortunate players make very poor Deals in the £20-30k bracket, yet weak boards with £20k or £35k intact get chased maybe too often, leading to blue wins. If the two conditions were not mutually exclusive you would probably see the same people making both of those decisions.

A statistical approach does nothing more or less than maximising the probability that you make decisions consistent with how you value money. If you know it's a 10.7% chance of losing the top two at eight-box, and a 35% or so chance of keeping both to five-box, that doesn't tell you what to do, but you can weight that against what you can anticipate from each board and make an informed choice accordingly.

Or if you're Suzanne you can get five rubbish offers and then be in a position with such a good worst-case scenario that chasing the money feels risk-free even though it isn't...