Deal or No Deal

As much fun as it is to consider the implications of this game show, it is not much fun actually watching it. I must admit with some shame to having viewed a few episodes recently. (Please see Wikipidia for details.)

I can recall the blissful days of youth when I did not own a television. I can recall the somewhat blissful days of slightly older youth when I did own a television - but I did not have a cable, satellite, or antenna connection. I would only use the TV to watch movies on the old VHS format, which in my day was a magnetic media stored in a plastic case about the size of a large paperback. You kids now-a-days probably don't even know what I'm talking about.

Now in my later years of life I watch TV a few hours per day, and not just "good" stuff like movies, but the really bad, depraved stuff, like NBC or ABC. Can your mind contain the horror of thinking back to the days when there were three networks and the mindless drooling zombies that fill this wasteland we call America were tuned in night-after-night-day-after-day to one of these three channels?

Whenever I hear the theme song for "Friends", sometimes I want to run and hide in a closet curled up in the fetal position. Other times I hear the theme and I want to find a weapon and destroy the television. More than ever, you can find reruns of "Friends" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Will and Grace" running virtually 24x7. Is it any wonder we are the infidels to be destroyed by radical Islam? Watch a few episodes of prime-time television and sit throuugh the commercials and then tell me you don't want to fly a plane into a building and kill a few of the miserable assholes who put this shit on TV, or the so-called "innocents" who merely watch it.

But I digress.

Deal or No Deal is quite Zen, when you really get down to it. Do you have a deal? Or do you have a no-deal? I will take the no-deal almost everytime. And most of these gamblers, I mean, game show contestants do as well. I've come up with some strategies that would work and would immediately render the show worthless. I mean to say, more worthless than it already is. To wit:

1. I have a devious little, tiny, secret that most average, run-of-the-mill idiots don't seem to get. The cases are assigned randomly, so it doesn't matter which case you choose. You can choose "number 8" because that's your birthday or choose "number 22!" because that's how old you were when you first realised you had a lot of years left on this miserable planet, and you decided then that you probably would rather shoot your brains onto the wall and put an end to this nonsense and suffering we call life. But none of those numbers mean anything to your selection of the cases "filled with money" (really just placards with numbers and symbols).
   
   Strategy: Pick cases in numeric order.
   
   
2. Another secret of the game is that the "mysterious" banker will generally make a mathematically fair offer. Naturally, if the first offer is $7,000 or something small like that and you don't need that kind of money anyway, you don't take the deal. Or rather, you do take the no-deal. But hey, $7,000 is a good number and that's roughly $3,500 more than you had previously (after taxes, naturally!) So at any moment, it is not generally a mistake to take the deal. In general, the deal will increase as the levels progress (to a certain point), so there is some future expectation that is not counted. Close enough.
   
   Strategy: Take the deal whenever the dollar figure is big enough that you are happy with it.
   
   Sub-strategy: Assign a dollar figure you will be happy with before you get on stage and announce, "When the deal gets above $100,000, I will almost certainly take the deal. And I will pick cases in numerical order until I get there."
   
   
3. The game works by increasing the deal amount until the value of the deal proposition is such that you decide to take it. In general, you can continue to take the no-deal as long as you have enough cases with values above your target amount, and the number of these cases above your target amount is less than or equal to the number of cases you have to pick. With the exception of one single case and one single dollar amount remaining. In that case, you take the deal. Here are some examples:

   Cases to pick	Cases above target amount	Deal or No-Deal
   2	3	No-deal
   2	2	No-deal*
   1	3	No-deal
   4	2	DEAL!!!
   1	1	DEAL!!!
   2	1	DEAL!!!

   
   

   *You can take the deal if it is above your target amount and also if you have very few below-target case amounts
   
   Strategy: Continue to take no-deal as long as the offer is below your target amount and you have more or equal target cases above your target amount than you have cases to pick. The exception is one single case above your taget amount, in which case you should take the deal even if the offer is below your target amount.
   
   

4. Final cases. There are only a few cases where you would actually choose to open your case! In 99% of the cases, I doubt any fool would do it. But there are a lot of fools out there, and there are many of them reproducing as we speak. The only time you would open the case is if a) both dollar amounts remaining are above your target (big money!) and b) the bank's offer is below the mathematically fair offer (it is usually). If the bank's offer is above the fair number (which would simply be the average of the two at this point -- it's even money), then you take the bank's offer. They are not going to do that, but it's possible. As I say, you only open the case if both remaining dollar amounts are above your target and the bank's offer is not above the fair value. IN ALL OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, YOU STEADFASTLY REFUSE TO OPEN YOUR CASE AND YOU TAKE THE MOTHERFUCKING DEAL.
   
   Strategy: Do not open your case unless you are down to the two options, $1,000,000 and $750,000. The bank's offer will be slightly below the mean, say, $870,000. Do not open your case, under all circumstances other than the one I have posed.
   

Summary: Set a target amount you would like to win. Pick cases in numeric order and take no-deal as long as the offer is below your target. If you have less cases above the target than cases you must pick (and thus, eliminate), take the deal. If you have only one case above the target amount, take the deal. Take no-deal at the end only if you have both the $1M and $750K left. Otherwise, take the deal.

I do so hate TV. But I like to watch.