It may not be your million dollars, but you have invested a lot of time and energy.
If they really use the computer as has been described here, it would have an adverse effect on the contestant’s strategy. That makes it look like a form of cheating, comparable to if a casino would say, “We said they’re dice. And they are. We never claimed that they were balanced evenly.”
If the computer removed the wrong answers randomly, then the best strategy would be to use the 50/50 in a situation where I am pretty confident in excluding two of the answers, and my uncertainty lies only in the other two. In such a situation, I have 2/3 odds that I’ll be left with the correct answer and one of the two which I know to be wrong. Thus, if I save the 50/50 for such a situation, I have a 67% chance that using the 50/50 will clinch it for me.
But if they really do it as has been described here, such a situation would be a big waste of the 50/50, because they’re probably going to remove the ones that I already rejected myself, and now the 50/50 got wasted, and my chances of guessing correct have not changed at all.
If they really do it as has been described here, then the best strategy (I think) might be to use the 50/50 on a question where I am totally clueless, to increase my odds of being correct from 25% to 50%.
Well, MAYBE they’ve given viewers the impression that the two answers removed on a “50/50” are random, but as I’ve noted, Michael Davies explicitly TOLD us contestants that the two choices we’d be left with if we asked for the 50/50 had already been determined.
So, the players certainly are not deceived or misled, which is really all that should matter.
Knowing this, Keeve is quite right- the 50/50 is MOST useful in the instances where the contestant is stumped, and needs to improve his chances of guessing right, just a bit.
According to what you said earlier I would hardly say he “explicitly TOLD” you. He answered a question that someone asked. Unless you indicate otherwise I would really doubt that he just offers up that point if someone doesn’t ask.