# Price Is Right Contestants Who Bid $1 More **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** reality-or-game-show\ **Created:** [February 4, 2023, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324 "2023-02-04T22:52:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2023, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/61 "2023-03-10T21:14:25Z")
As does my housemate Cerridwyn. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2023, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/62 "2023-03-10T22:21:37Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Has any contestant, not understanding how reality works, bid a dollar _under_ another bid? Yes, more frequently than one might expect. Bob typically pointed out why it’s such a bad idea after reading the actual price but there was one recent instance on the TPIR Roku channel when he didn’t. I guess he was pressed for time. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2023, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/63 "2023-03-10T22:46:05Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Has any contestant, not understanding how reality works, bid a dollar _under_ another bid? BobLibDem gives a link to that happening. The guy actually won! > [@BobLibDem](#): > > Of course, one guy bid $1 UNDER someone else’s bid and [won](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lAJZMF830s) ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2023, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/64 "2023-03-11T00:18:57Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > Yep. And The Range game is always just about the middle, The Secret X is _never_ on the bottom. About that game… let’s say you were a smart-ass and were sure you knew the prices of the little shit to get the 2 extra X’s. Could you just line them up all on the side for a vertical 3-in-a-row? I’d LOVE to do that! There’s a game called “Cover Up” where you have to guess the price of a car. You have two possible numbers for the first digit, three possibilities for the second digit, etc. You guess a price, and as long as one of the numbers is right, you get another guess. I found this example: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/aqLuco_uerA/maxresdefault.jpg "The Price is Right - Cover Up - 1/25/2022") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqLuco_uerA) Seems to me that everybody plays it wrong. You want to have as many guesses as possible, so you want only one correct number each time. In the video, she gets the second and third digits right on her second guess. One her next guess, her chances are 1/3 and 1/4. If she’d gotten the third digit wrong, her chances would be 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > My childhood life was the same. I watched game shows all morning. I could name game show hosts like other kids could name baseball pitchers. Do you remember Bart’s incantation to raise the dead on _The Simpsons_? “Cullen, Rayburn, Narz, Trebek!” ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2023, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/65 "2023-03-11T00:50:42Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Do you remember Bart’s incantation to raise the dead on _The Simpsons_? > > “Cullen, Rayburn, Narz, Trebek!” Ha, no I just have missed that one. But in my experience, Joe Garagiola was a game show host. Later I learned he did some other things, too. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2023, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/66 "2023-03-11T20:17:21Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Seems to me that everybody plays it wrong. You want to have as many guesses as possible, so you want only one correct number each time. In the video, she gets the second and third digits right on her second guess. One her next guess, her chances are 1/3 and 1/4. If she’d gotten the third digit wrong, her chances would be 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4. Your strategy amounts to picking numbers that you know are wrong, so you can eliminate them from your future guesses. But if you already know they’re wrong, you can eliminate them from your future guesses anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2023, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/67 "2023-03-11T20:31:54Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Seems to me that everybody plays it wrong. You want to have as many guesses as possible, so you want only one correct number each time. In the video, she gets the second and third digits right on her second guess. One her next guess, her chances are 1/3 and 1/4. If she’d gotten the third digit wrong, her chances would be 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4. In this example, I guess she could have known (if she’s quite knowledgeable about car prices) that the second digit couldn’t be 9 or 7. But the rest is a crapshoot. How would you deliberately pick wrong numbers for the last three digits? If she deliberately picked the wrong first two digits (say by knowing that the price couldn’t be over $25,000) then she’s taking the chance of getting eliminated on that turn. You want to pick exactly one more correct number per turn, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do that reliably or even to improve your chances of doing that. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2023, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/68 "2023-03-11T21:04:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Your strategy amounts to picking numbers that you know are wrong, so you can eliminate them from your future guesses. But if you already know they’re wrong, you can eliminate them from your future guesses anyway. You can make educated guesses on the first three digits; the last two are pretty much a crap shoot. Watch the video. When the contestant makes her second guess, and gets two more digits correct ($209XX), she looks happy. She’d have been better off to get the third digit wrong ($20XXX). She couldn’t have known for sure that the 9 was correct, but I get the impression she hoped it was. Yes, if you knew for sure what numbers were wrong, then you could just guess the right numbers and win. I still think you can try to hold back your guesses on the first few digits to give yourself as many chances as possible. I wonder if anybody has ever won that game in the way I’m suggesting; taking five guesses and getting the digits from left to right. ---
**Author:** ![tullsterx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tullsterx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tullsterx)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324/69 "2023-03-13T17:54:44Z")
Yeah, I think I’d do that almost every time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/price-is-right-contestants-who-bid-1-more/979324.md?page=3)