Sell the box before going on the show. On the UK version of the show, the box is worth (0.01+0.1+0.5+1+5+10+50+100+250+500+750+1000+3000+ 5000+10000+15000+20000+35000+50000+75000+100000+25 0000)/22= £25712.1186. On the UK version of the show the banker is really evil and never offers anywhere near the true value of the box. My strategy is to sell your box on eBay (for just under its EV) and sign a contract that says the buyer keeps whatever is inside the box. The box would sell for under its EV but it would be very close to its true value because there would be a very large number of bidders. The large bonus is that you minimize risk. For everyone except millionaires, the reduced risk highly valuble. Could this strategy break the game? If everyone starts doing it then there's no point in watching the show.

people watch that show?

Bet there's something in the contract disallowing that, and if not there certainly would be as soon as someone did it. Like the idea though, you may even end up with some degen bidding and a +EV sale.

srsly who cares

Lots of people watch the show. It isn't just an american show, it's international. There's many versions of the show. See the wikipedia page.

I'm interested to know if anyone's thought of this strategy before and if anyone has actually done it.

Do you get to take an offer or do you have to play down to 1 case?

If you get to take the offer at any point, I am sure there will be spots that you will be offered more than the value of the bid.

You don't accept an offer (unless the offer is higher than the EV of the remaining boxes, but in the UK version of the show this never happens). I'll explain how it works again since it seems you have misunderstood.

I've been informed that I'm going to be on the show Deal Or No Deal. I go onto eBay and make an auction selling a contract that says "Whatever I win on Deal Or No Deal, you get to keep". People would bid on this and its final value would be close to £25712.1186 because that is the EV of the box. I am selling my box because I am poor and hence very risk averse. Rich people are far less risk averse and would be happy to make a profit on my box because they don't care about the risk involved. I go through the game without accepting an offer and at the end I give the amount of money in my box to the person who won the aucton on eBay.

Ahhh. In the American version, they have episodes that have multiple millions. You do not know before hand if you are playing the regular game or the multiple game.

It would still be possible to use my "sell your box before the game starts" idea. You'd just have to sell two seperate contracts, one for each potential game.

They do occasionally offer +EV deals, including on the UK show - it tends to happen when the contestant has a lot of high value boxes left and/or doesn't seem afraid to gamble, the production company is no doubt self insuring and are somewhat risk averse themselves.

Never seen a +EV deal (some very close to neutral ev when they have 50k and 75k left and obviously aren't afraid to gamble).

The show in the UK has no chance of going broke since they give so little away. Do you know how much money Noel has (I assume he owns the production company that makes it)?

To OP: obviously you'd have to sell the box privately.

What if you get offered an amount higher than what you sold the box for on ebay? Do you take the deal and just refund the bid to the ebay bidder or would you still continue on and open the box?

Obviously you take the offer, unless the bidder requests you refuse certain offers or play a particular strategy, which would be their prerogative. But of course it has to be possible that they will win more than their bid otherwise they are getting freerolled and have no incentive to bid.

Feel like I've seen a few on the UK version, but is possible I'm wrong and lost track, I've watched quite a few version and might be merging. Even if they are bankrolled for it though it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to make correct EV decisions, outside of poker most people don't.

As an aside, it's really culturally telling the differences in international versions of deal or no deal. The UK version is just a bunch of people chatting, in Australia they raise both arms and do a hard man X for no deal, in Czech Republic there's lots of glitter and girls in skimpies - and here in Malta there is a lot of dancing and all the contestants are huge degens, haven't seen anyone deal yet.

Sell case, get rich, nail model that held the case

It's not rocket surgery. I've sold my box on eBay - the contents are no longer mine. It is my job to open my box and ship the contents to whoever bought my box. In the game, I decline all offers that are -EV (virtually all offers are -EV) and accept any +EV offers (because this is what the person who bought the box from me would want). The fact on some rare occasionsthe offer is +EV pushes up the true value of my box up slightly higher than £25712.1186

The idea may create a secondary market.

e.g. There is 250,000 and 0.01 left, and the banker offered 80,000. The purchaser may be able to sell the box on e-bay for 100,000 (say) - making a sure profit of 75,000 if he paid around 25,000 to the contestant.

That's very unlikely. A person wouldn't buy the box from me if he's simply going to burn money (£25000 in EV in your example) in high risk situations. If he uses a strategy like that he may actually end up losing money on average after buying my box. The person who bought my box wants to make the most money. If he was significantly risk averse he wouldn't buy my box in the first place.

this strategy sounds great, until the winning bid on your box is 900 dollars

You can set a reserve - agree you might have to settle for an amount quite a way below EV if you want to sell it IRL though.

Why bother with eBay? Couldn't you easily sell this contract at over 99% of EV to any bank? Assuming, of course, that the terms of the show don't prevent such deals. I expect that they would at least attempt to.

There are several insurance companies that write policies for sport and gambling prizes, i.e win 50K for a 300 game in bowling, hole-in one contest etc. A casino can buy a policy on a single million dollar blackjack bet. If you are going on the show I would contact on of them to see their deal on insuring the value of the box.

http://www.esportsinsurance.com/bask...t-prizes.shtml

omg so not true

Since you raised the show why dont we put more value in this thread by providing answers to the following questions;

1) What is the fair offer when N prizes a1,a2,..aN are left. (easy to see what it is for 2 or 3 and therefore i guess with induction you can see what it is for n so its trvial although proving it is technically needed)

2) What is the fair offer for people who earn 50k per year ( i guess seirously below what it is for a millionaire who doesnt compromise for anything other than the fair value) . How would you approach such a utility theory problem?

3) What is the chance while playing the game that you will face an offer over 100k?


And other similar ones you may think.