
Victory on “The Price Is Right” Made Them Change Their System - yitchelle
http://www.urbo.com/content/this-guy-cheated-on-the-price-is-right-and-made-them-change-their-entire-system
======
scrubby
It might be different now, but I'm pretty sure back in the Bob Barker era
contestant selection wasn't random. The entire audience had to introduce
themselves to the producer one by one and answer his questions about where
they were from, what they did, and if they were there with anyone. The people
selected were fairly attractive and charismatic. The selection also leaned
toward people who came with larger groups. I assume so they could get camera
shots of cheering and helping during the games.

~~~
larrymcp
Yep, it's still like that now, too! I was on The Price is Right a few months
ago, and I got called to "come on down" to be a contestant.

Before the show, producer Stan Blits greets every member of the audience while
they're waiting in line. He chats with each audience member (for about 20
seconds) to gauge their liveliness & enthusiasm. As he's chatting with each
person, he gives a subtle hand signal to an intern who is standing behind him
with a notepad. For each audience member who he thinks might make a good
contestant, the intern writes down the person's name on the notepad.

After the audience is seated, he continues to refine the list by standing on
the side of the stage and observing the potential contestants in their seats.
He checks to see which ones are still energetic and cheering while they're
sitting in the audience too.

~~~
dmix
So that could be easily gamed too is what you're saying.

~~~
katastic
Well, people smart enough to be the kind of contestant they want, are still
fulfilling what the producers want.

------
paulcole
[http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-
pe...](http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a7922/price-is-right-perfect-
bid-0810/)

This esquire article adds a layer of intrigue about a guy signaling from the
audience and helping everyone on that episode win.

------
fjsolwmv
Short version: TPIR used to recycle prices/products, so with studying it is
easy to guess prices of products on the show. Many contestants and avid fans
know this, and one of them got extra lucky in the showcase showdown by
guessing the exact price, at about 1/1000 odds (after accounting for common
sense and attentiveness) , which is likely to happen eventually for a daily
show like TPIR. (Or possibly he was cheating or plain lucky after all. The
article claims that showcases are generally $24k, and the winner's was $23743,
but the opponent had a $30k showcase and bid it within $550 accuracy)

Now they randomly vary the products/prices slightly, as they should have done
all along.

~~~
ambrosite
Here's a little psychological trick I always wanted to try, if I ever got to
the showcase showdown on TPIR. Suppose the other contestant passes the first
showcase to me, and I believe it is the lower valued of the two showcases. I
bid one dollar. If the other contestant is not paying attention, they just
might bid two dollars on their showcase. That strategy works on contestant's
row when everyone is bidding on the same item, but it will fail during the
showcase showdown, because my bid of one dollar will be closer to the actual
price of my showcase than their bid of two dollars will be to the actual price
of their showcase.

I don't know if I would have the guts to really try it but I think it might
actually work (assuming the host didn't interfere and tip off the other
contestant).

~~~
noitsnot
How likely is someone to do the $2, though? My guess is they would be really
confused by the $1 bid then just bid as they would normally.

~~~
ambrosite
It's risky, sure. You would have to have a good read on the other contestant,
like maybe someone who bid $1001 to get out of contestant's row, so you know
they are inclined to use the plus-one-dollar strategy. I probably wouldn't
have the guts to try it myself, but if someone did and pulled it off it would
be legendary.

------
mjevans
Also of interest, the less 'predictable' nature of the show made me completely
loose interest in it when they modified the format.

I felt like the old format rewarded the contestants for studying and knowing
the answers, even if unintentionally by just buying stuff in their life. The
luck element was more about where / when you got selected and how well other
contestants used their advantages.

------
RobbyMcCullough
This reminds me of a great thought piece that I studied a lot during my gaming
years: Playing to Win.

[http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-
win](http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win)

Particularly relevant to the Jeopardy contestant that buzzed in when he didn't
know the answers to block others from getting the cash.

~~~
macintux
I'm reminded of the first season of Survivor.

I didn't watch, but followed along on (IIRC) a Diplomacy discussion forum of
all places; it seemed clear that Richard was playing an extremely strategic
game, even deliberately sandbagging an endurance contest when it was down to 3
players, knowing that the woman who won it would have to eliminate the other,
much more popular male contestant to have a chance to win the vote of those
who'd already been dispatched.

~~~
busterarm
I believe it. Playing Diplomacy, especially for years on Dipbounced, taught me
more about strategy and game theory than any other resource. The community of
players are all deep thinkers and incredibly ruthless. We used to have 2-3 day
Diplomacy sessions back in college where we'd just do game after game and I
miss it sorely.

If you were to ask me to pick the most pure strategy games, Diplomacy would be
#1 and maybe EVE Online would be #2.

~~~
raldi
I'm looking for hardcore Diplomacy players to fill out the roster of a one-
move-a-week, online-only game. Send me an email if you're interested.

~~~
busterarm
Very tempting offer that I passed along to a couple of people. At the moment
I'm preparing to change jobs and launch a business simultaneously and I'm
trying to reduce any commitments that I have.

Thank you for the offer.

------
guywithaphone
My show that I've "solved" is cutthroat kitchen. In this show, you don't need
to be the best cook until the final round. Before that the object is to "not
lose".

The solution - buy the sabotages. Give the sabotages to the cook with the most
money. Taking everything personal and retaliating hurts your chances of
winning because it increases your chance of losing the round -- and if your
retaliee loses, the remaining contestants have way more money than you. Caring
about how much money is in your hand also hurts your chances of winning
because you become less likely to buy the sabotage.

Bidding strategy is also interesting.

~~~
kevmo314
> Caring about how much money is in your hand also hurts your chances of
> winning because you become less likely to buy the sabotage.

I haven't seen the show, but if you buy all the way to zero, what's the point
of playing then? Is there a prize besides the amount of money you keep?
Because if I won and only walked home with $100, it would seem like a waste of
time.

It does seem like a good strategy on that game would be to intentionally not
win though, as you don't want to come across as a strong cook until the very
last round.

~~~
guywithaphone
I hadn't thought of it that way, but that is a good point.

You start with $25k, then bid on sabotages.... you take home what you keep.
It's usually a few thousand, but once I saw someone take home $25k.

If I were an aspiring chef or successful chef -- I see the show as having more
risk than possible reward. If you lose, you might be subject to criticism of
your cooking, when it should be criticism of game theory.

------
paulcole
>buzzing in when he didn't know the answers to prevent other contestants from
winning money

Can anybody explain this part of Arthur Chu’s Jeopardy strategy? Don’t they
still get the chance to answer? Or is his strategy that he’ll figure it out
within the allotted time?

Also was anyone else unimpressed by the main character in the articles uncanny
ability to predict weather in Las Vegas? Let me guess, it will be hot.

Also how did he win a Southeast Regional Emmy for working in Las Vegas?

~~~
eropple
_> Can anybody explain this part of Arthur Chu’s Jeopardy strategy? Don’t they
still get the chance to answer? Or is his strategy that he’ll figure it out
within the allotted time?_

As I recall, he went hunting for Daily Doubles to take them off the board and
away from other players who might be able to answer them. Only the finder gets
to pose a question for those.

~~~
paulcole
But that has nothing to do with:

>buzzing in when he didn't know the answers to prevent other contestants from
winning money

~~~
emmelaich
I think it does. He chose daily-doubles when I didn't know the answer and bet
low. It denies the others the D-D and means he didn't lose much.

This is explained in detail later on.

It's not the most felicitous of phrasing but it makes sense to me.

~~~
eridius
Are the Daily Doubles not randomly-placed? How do you "hunt" them?

~~~
whoopdedo
They're actually not distributed evenly, so it is possible to hunt and find
them with a reasonably high probability of success. This has probably been
discovered multiple times by people independently, but was most widely
publicized by Flowing Data two years ago. I don't know if the producers ever
explained why Daily Doubles are more likely to appear in certain places.
Perhaps they intend for observant contestants to be able to guess at their
locations.

[http://flowingdata.com/2015/03/03/where-to-find-jeopardy-
dai...](http://flowingdata.com/2015/03/03/where-to-find-jeopardy-daily-
doubles/)

------
JoshMnem
It's nice to see more websites using Esperanto words. ("Urbo" is the Esperanto
word for city.)

------
c3534l
I'm only surprised no one did this sooner. It's not a hard system to beat, the
whole show is based around if you remember what a gallon of milk costs.

~~~
qdpb
The whole story is shockingly boring. It's like a counting cards except you
don't even need to know probabilities.

------
stevewillows
re: Michael Lawson, This American Life has a great piece on his story both
before and after Press Your Luck.

[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/412/...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea?act=4#play)

------
davb
I've no idea what's going on on this page, but my iPhone got really hot and
Firefox (on my desktop) warned me that the page was running slow. The profiler
on Chrome hung when trying to profile the page and I had to kill the tab in
task manager.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
Privacy Badger on my Chrome Windows shows 22 trackers and uBlock Origin
blocked 49 requests. That's a lot of bloat that is probably eating the CPU.

~~~
davb
I’m not convinced it’s the volume alone. I’m using ad blockers on all of my
devices, and I’ve seen mainstream media sites with more than that. It could be
an errant script that’s not being caught by an ad blocker and has wound up in
an infinite loop.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
I wonder if there is a javascript Hot Spot detector you could use to identify
it.

