There was a playing from November of 1993 where a contestant used SIX chances on the first prize and still managed to win the car. One of the best moments I've ever seen in that game.
I didn't know about this particular playing, but it perfectly illustrates my point.
To Priceisrightsuperfan93--nobody here will disagree that it would be nice if people won their games more often. I enjoy seeing excited winners and let's face it, who doesn't love seeing those high winning totals flash onto the screen at the end of the show. But as often as I see people around here complaining about people not winning often enough, and coming up with ways to make games easier, no one ever stops to think about two inescapable realities of the show:
1) They have a budget.
2) They're in this for the ratings.
Making games easier may increase the frequency of winners, but that would also bust the budget. We all (rightly) made fun of the low-budget version of the show that had everything sponsored by the same company--I think the logo was a big yellow "W," someone help me here--because the prizes were cheap. That's the future of the show where everyone wins all the time. There has to be some reward for people being smart shoppers, since that is (after all) what the show's all about. It's no different than Jeopardy rewarding trivia-saavy people for their knowledge...it's the object of the game. Likewise for smart viewers. (At least, it worked for Michael Larsen...)
Then we have ratings. The show stays on the air only as long as it's good TV. Like it or not, that means not everybody can win (although that said, I would like to see more perfect shows than we get nowadays). There has to be some reasonable possibility of failure in order to celebrate wins. Otherwise everyone starts to take winning for granted, and then there's less reason to tune in. Ratings go down, budgets get slashed, and...you get the idea.
So moral to the story...don't try to fix what ain't broke, and I suggest steering away from change for the sake of change.