That out of the way… what are the thoughts on best play strategy? The first several times I watched the show, I assumed, as I think th eplayers did, that the best approach was simply to play your strongest during the question round, and vote to eliminate the weakest player during the voting portion.
Lately, some players have blatantly admitted that they’ve targeted stronger players during some of the rounds, in an effort to remove the competition. By this logic, if you see a player stronger than you are, it makes sense to remove him – after all, why work to build a large money pot only to ultimately lose it to some genius? Far better, in this view, to have a good chance of winning $40K than a weak chance of winning $100K.
On the other hand, you can’t take this startegy too far. In the ealry rounds, of course it makes sense to target a weak team member. And if it becomes clear that the reward for answering questions correctly is being voted off, players will sandbag.
So - what’s the way to best play this game, assuming one is selected as a contestant?
FWIW, the other day I met the woman from Ashburn, VA who won $107,000 on the show, and she said she formed an alliance with 3 other players and they agreed not to kick each other out… of course, at some point that alliance had to break down.
I only watched the show once, but it was painfully obvious that when it came down to three people, the two stupidest ones definitely knew who they were–and teamed up to vote off the smart guy.
Finally, a game for the weasels who can’t win by ability alone!
IMHO, this show is fundamentally flawed because it has a major rule missing: after each round, the strongest link(s) should be immune from being voted off. If they added this rule, it would make the show much more exciting and give the smart players a good chance to make it to the final round.
As it is right now, I agree with the others, it’s boring and frustrating. I don’t even understand why they go on about who’s the “strongest link.” Unless they’re trying to say “look at this shmuck, he/she’s gonna earn all the money and then will get booted off at the last vote.”
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I was quite impressed with host Anne Robinson’s treatment of George Wendt during the first celebrity edition of the game. Despite his not getting a single question wrong over the course of the entire game - a feat I have yet to see duplicated by any contestant to that point - Wendt was voted off by his fellow comics, illustrious brains like Rob Schenider and Kathy Griffin. Robinson questioned several of them on why they were voting off the smartest member of the team; ‘Talk Soup’ hostess Aisha answered, honestly, that she was removing a threat.
The usual formula is for Ms. Robinson to announce that the target got such-and-so many votes, and that he/she is The Weakest Link. The hapless player is then dismissed with a curt and contempteous, “Goodbye.”
When dismissing Wendt, she courteously said to him, “Goodbye, sir.”
Class move.
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I agree that passerby’s rule change would make this a much better show. But the OP remains: what is the winning startegy with the show as it now stands?
Much like the show Survivor, the ability to make alliances (IMHO) defeats any real mathematical strategy, there is too much element of chance and psychology involved. I think the constestants shoudl not be allowed to interact before the game startst.
Don’t be the weakest link. Don’t be the strongest link. Hard to imagine you could get more sophisticated than that.
One more thing about alliances: the winner who I met said that the contestants were expressly forbidden to make a universal alliance/agreement to just split the pot eight ways regardless of the outcome of the game. The show might look pretty strange if all 8 contestants agreed to this-- you might have people voting themselves off. “Yes, I answered too many questions wrong. I obviously don’t deserve to stay.” But I doubt all 8 participants would agree to an alliance that split the pot equally. I was at the tryouts in DC and it seemed like they were looking for people with big egos. (Though I wouldn’t describe the winner I met that way.)
Apparently all the contestants are in the same hotel and can spend most of a day and evening together before the game.
Given the opportunity, form an alliance with a large (3-5) bloc of people.
If at all possible, create secret individual alliances with every member of your bloc alliance. Obviously, this is risky, but if you can secure individual alliances within the bloc, when it comes down to the wire every one of those back-stabbing schmoes is thinking “at least I’m safe with Sofa King.” One of them is right. If you make it to three people, signal the dumber of the two and vote the smart one off. It’s not about sportsmanship, otherwise there wouldn’t be a cast-iron bitch for an emcee.
If no interaction is allowed before the show:
Early in the game, carefully select which answers you are going to get wrong. The wrong answers cannot be given when a lot of money is at stake, nor can the answer be, “I don’t know.” People seem to remember that. Instead, the wrong answer has to be either the most obvious wrong answer or a fair-to-middlin’ guess. Mediocrity is key.
Never be superlative in any way. Don’t answer the most questions correctly, don’t get the most wrong. You might consider going for the money points. After all, you’re dealing with greedy, back-stabbing losers, and money could go a long way with those types.
So there it is in a nutshell. Be conniving, stay in the middle of the herd, intentionally conceal your superior plan and intellect by giving the players and the home audience incorrect answers at opportune times. Great fucking show.
Get rid of the ones that cost the team a whole lot of money. Try not to do it yourself or you will be kicked out. If you are middling-smart, see to it that two real smarties are with you among the final 3. Don’t make too many istakes, but don’t give too many right answers. The smarties thinking that you are dumb will vote each other off; kick the one that is used to being under pressure out. If however, you be really dumb (phrasing for effect), then make sure a dumb one just like you and a smartie is among the final 3 so that you can gang up and kick the smart ass out.
If u are the smart-ass, then have a real crash dummy and a very confident smart-ass to complete the final 3. The dummy should be so bad that all the money goes down the drain when it’s his turn. Smart ass 2 will want to earn money, and will be happy to kick the runt off as well as u.
Get rid of the ones that cost the team a whole lot of money. Try not to do it yourself or you will be kicked out. If you are middling-smart, see to it that two real smarties are with you among the final 3. Don’t make too many mistakes, but don’t give too many right answers. The smarties thinking that you are dumb will vote each other off; kick the one that is used to being under pressure out. If however, you be really dumb (phrasing for effect), then make sure a dumb one just like you and a smartie is among the final 3 so that you can gang up and kick the smart ass out.
If u are the smart-ass, then have a real crash dummy and a very confident smart-ass to complete the final 3. The dummy should be so bad that all the money goes down the drain when it’s his turn. Smart ass 2 will want to earn money, and will be happy to kick the runt off as well as u.
Actually, muttrox, not only is this problem mathematically well-defined, there’s actually a whole branch of mathematics, called game theory, devoted to problems of this exact sort. You figure out the optimal strategy based on the assumption that your opponents are already using the optimal strategy.
I’ve given a little thought to this, based on what I’ve heard of the show (not having a TV can make things difficult at times), and it seems to depend on a few hard quantify factors: Namely, how smart you are (question-answering ability, that is, not game strategy), how smart your opponents are, and how difficult the questions are. In the first-order approximation, you assume that who gets voted off is random. In this case, the optimal strategy is to try to ensure that the network loses as much money as possible, so you would want to always vote off the true “weakest link”. In second order, of course, the weakest player must follow a different strategy, since (barring profit-sharing deals) voting against oneself is never advantageous. So now you assume that everyone except the weakest player will vote off the weakest player, while the weakest will vote off the second-weakest. Then, in the third order approximation, you have people trying to ensure that they’re never the weakest link, which means keeping someone around who’s weaker, so the second-worst player now wants to keep the worst player around, and votes for player number 3. Now, the worst player still doesn’t want voted off, so he’s better off voting for #3, who already has one vote against him (from #2), and so might actually get kicked off. Continue making more iterations until your strategy converges. I don’t think that it ever becomes advantageous to vote off the best player until there’s only three people left, but I’m not certain.
I think that the strategy breaks down like this: Try to answer questions in such a way that you’re always the second-strongest player, if possible. If you’re above the median, always vote for the weakest player; if you’re at or below the median, vote for the third-worst player, unless that’s you, in which case vote for the worst player.
If the game were as you described, I agree, it would be amenable to game theory analysis. However, I think there are additional factors to the game structure that doom it. Mainly, the interaction of contestants before the show. Just hanging out in the hotel bar, making alliances and such. It’s chance who you meet, who you talk to first, if you got to check-in on time or you missed the informal gathering, etc.
This is why I think psychology is so important. At least half the game is forming alliances with other contenstants before the official game ever offically begins. The accounts of actual players bear this out. I don’t see how this part could be reduced to game theory without reducing out those very features that drive the mechanics of making alliances and such.
During the first few rounds it would be wise to get a lot of right answers, then later, appear dumb. Then they wont vote you off later as youll suddenly look like you wouldn’t be much challenge in the final rounds.