I don’t have my figures with me at the moment, but the mean of all the values is a shade over $131,000; and the median, IIRC, is around $7,500. Given that Duh Bankuh (in reality an automatic calculation, but you knew that) invariably lowballs until very late, never mind 1M, getting to even .1M is a challenge.
Bluster. Hype. Smack talk. Contestant doesn’t know. Howie Mandell doesn’t know. It’s luck and chance. At best it’s superstition or blind hope. You should know that.
See initial comment. And are you suggesting that smaller awards are tax-free or something?
Of course there’s lots of speechifying; that’s the fun part! And, as was pointed out before, nobody ever takes the initial bum offers (which are almost always quick decisions). The first one is at best 25% of fair value.
- Criticizing based on 20/20 retrospect is automatic “biggest horse’s rear end on the planet” status, and I guarantee you that anyone moronic enough to do this will catch a thousand times as much hell as the unlucky contestant, 2. the contestant brought them on for support; accepting the invitation and then getting all upset just because the contestant was UNLUCKY is really not advisable, and 3. the next hypothetical picks aren’t always good ones. I remember at least two occasions where the next case the contestant Woulda Picked was the highest value remaining. In other words, taking the deal is always the wrong choice, except when it isn’t. BFD.
Scripted? Predictable would be a better word. The producers have a winning formula and, just like for American Idol, they’re damn well going to run it into the ground. Barring a radical redesign of the game’s mechanics or completely new case values, we’re unlikely to ever see any surprises.
(Just once…JUST FREAKING ONCE…when Howie asks “Now, would you like to do the customary after-the-fact too-damn-late-to-change-anything 20/20 retrospect tripe where you die an inch at a time if your decision turned out to be wrong and gain jumping jack squat if you were right, oh yeah, and if your case has a big value we’ll conveinently forget that you have the option of switching?” I want someone to say, plainly and simply, “No.” Or if that’s just a bit too blunt, “No thanks.”*
Shayna - Seriously? I recall a previous thread (might be here, I don’t remember) where someone started by opening cases 1-6 in order, and the initial offer was $123,456. If I’m in that situation…a figure much better than anything I’m likely to achieve honestly, and without breaking a sweat…I’d take it in a heartbeat. (Then politely refuse to open My Case to see if I Made A Good Deal. And if Howie or the audience absolutely insisted on it, I would rip the numbers off all the cases, throw them into messy pile, then tell Howie, “Fine. Open my case.” 
)
Cyberhwk - Believe me, that’s far from the worst of it. One contesant who was doing really good for a long time got just a wee bit too aggressive…and left with $5. The next-to-last contestant on the million dollar challenge…y’know, the next seven highest values after the $1M replaced with $1M…won $100. “Greed” aside, with a board as bottom-heavy as that, the odds are far more in favor of a tiny payoff than a huge one.
BobLibDem - But see, that’s the crux of the problem; the only way to win the million is to keep it alive to the end (I’d like to point out that it makes absolutely no difference whether or not the million is in His or Her Case, since the contestant has the option of switching at the end; all that matters is not opening it.), and that means sweating out a series of increasingly tough deal refusals. Furthermore, forget the $.01. What about the $1, or $100, or $500? It still amounts to risking a shade under half a million for the chance at a shade under half a million. Even if it’s the $200,000 (and that’s a phenomenal game by any standard), that amounts to a $400,000 gamble, a far greater risk than most contestants…on the hot seat, in real time, the one and only chance, no takebacks…would go for.
That was the whole point of the Million Dollar Challenge, so that someone could have two million cases at the end and make it academic. Unfortunately, because the extra millions replaced the highest values, once there was only one million left, we’re back to the no-way-in-hell gamble. (And even nine millions is far less than half of the total cases, so the chances of two millions going the distance was never that good.)
- Alternatively, “I have a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is ‘no’. The long answer is ‘No, and stop wasting my time, dammit’.”**
** Ooh, I got another one. “‘That’ and ‘screw’, not necessarily in that order.”***
*** Or how about this: “Okay, imagine that the two is the letter of the alphabet most commonly mistake for a 2. Then imagine that the zero is the letter of the alphabet that looks like a zero. Then rotate the first letter 90 degrees…that’s one-quarter turn…in either direction. Hey, you figured there was a reason I chose that case?”
