On Wednesday night's Wheel, one of the contestants decided to employ a rarely-seen strategy in the Final Spin/Speed Up round.
Entering the round Nura had $13,970, Troy had $4,300 (-$9,670), and Steve had $0. With consonants at $1,600, the category was "What Are You Doing?" https://youtu.be/N_DBzNtPaQ4 For those who don't want to watch, Nura effectively decided to call either less likely or unlikely letters (C, M, Q, and X) or no letter at all (twice!). The theory: Don't give the other two any help to solve the puzzle and hope they can't amass enough cash to pass her. It wound up working, but just barely: Steve solved the puzzle for $6,400, but Troy had $9,600. Had Troy landed one more consonant and solved, he'd have taken the game. While Nura's behavior during the round caused people to wonder if she'd had a metaphorical stroke, I have two thoughts: 1. I'm assuming somewhere off camera the contestants can see the full game totals. I'm curious how frequently they're updated (i.e., could Nuna see in real time what the totals were, or could she only see what the totals were after the toss up round that preceded it?). 2. This situation brings to mind (for me) one of the fundamental flaws of Jeopardy v2: the "dollar values" are purely metaphorical unless you win. You have to play to win, which makes Final Jeopardy into much more of a mathematical problem than it should be. In Wheel, you keep what you win on each puzzle, which means as the game progresses, you have to take into account what your ultimate goal is: are you willing to put actual cash on the line to try to win the overall game, or take the cash as it stands now. (Sidebar: this is why I think Pay The Rent is the perfect Price Is Right game: there's pricing knowledge, strategy, and actually risking cash in hand) I've had an idea on how to "adjust" Jeopardy v2 to bring back that risk, but I want to run it against actual data to see how it'd affect the cash payout. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
