‘Card’ Games

[wheelfan1991]

^ Well, there's a fly in the Metamucil. I didn't think about its not having a pricing aspect involved. Not having that takes away from the crux of the whole show. So scratch all of that. It would never work. 

[actual_retail_tice]

Maybe my memory is really bad...I don't know why I thought Poker Game was retired well before '07. I watched Bob's final season pretty regularly, especially the last several months and over that summer. Maybe I just didn't pay close enough attention.

During the last 10 years (or more) of its life, Poker Game was being played very rarely...possibly only 3 times a season or so. It would be easy to miss.

[pricefan18]

^ Well, there's a fly in the Metamucil. I didn't think about its not having a pricing aspect involved. Not having that takes away from the crux of the whole show. So scratch all of that. It would never work. 

What if you worked it this way? Prize 1 would be a 3 digit prize, and the contestant's hand would be made using it and two random numbers. You'd be allotted up to 2 changes representing those 2 digits (as before the new numbers would be random) if you wished of any of the numbers in your hand. Rest of game plays as described, you beat the House's hand, you win. Prize 2 works similar, except now you get just 1 random number and 1 allowed change. Then for the last prize, your hand is made up of the 5 digit prize strictly with no changes allowed at all.

I can see some flaws in this perhaps, but it'd be the best way I can think of to mix pricing with the cards. Hard to pull off otherwise.

[jhc2010]

During the last 10 years (or more) of its life, Poker Game was being played very rarely...possibly only 3 times a season or so. It would be easy to miss.

Poker Game
Season 4 - 34 appearances
Season 5 - 49 appearances
Season 6 - 41 appearances
Season 7 - 37 appearances
Season 8 - 38 appearances
Season 9 - 40 appearances
Season 10 - 37 appearances
Season 11 - 38 appearances
Season 12 - 35 appearances
Season 13 - 35 appearances
Season 14 - 36 appearances
Season 15 - 39 appearances
Season 16 - 30 appearances
Season 17 - 21 appearances
Season 18 - 20 appearances
Season 19 - 13 appearances
Season 20 - 12 appearances
Season 21 - 9 appearances
Season 22 - 9 appearances
Season 23 - 8 appearances
Season 24 - 7 appearances
Season 25 - 6 appearances
Season 26 - 5 appearances
Season 27 - 5 appearances
Season 28 - 4 appearances
Season 29 - 4 appearances
Season 30 - 5 appearances
Season 31 - 2 appearances
Season 32 - 4 appearances
Season 33 - 4 appearances
Season 34 - 4 appearances
Season 35 - 5 appearances

Total: 636 appearances, 33rd most frequently played pricing game in TPIR History
http://tpirstats.com/other/allseasons.html

[LiteBulb88]

A graph of the data is attached to this message. Poker Game playings fell off a cliff after season 15. It's a bit of a miracle it lasted for 20 years after that.

[pricefan18]

A graph of the data is attached to this message. Poker Game playings fell off a cliff after season 15. It's a bit of a miracle it lasted for 20 years after that.

I'd say Season 20 is a better barometer for that. It never went above 10 playings a season again after it.

[PunchABunchFan]

I know others have said it, but my issue with poker game (and I say this as someone who has played hundreds of hours of poker in casinos and card rooms) is that it requires prior knowledge about the relative ranking of poker hands.  I would venture that many more people *don't* know this information than do.  The best data I could find was a website that said in 2009 7% of Americans were playing poker online.  While certainly more know hand rankings than play online, it's still probably a relatively small number.

Furthermore, as many have stated, under the rules of the game as played, there really wasn't a pricing aspect.

To me, either one of these issues are very troubling.  Combined, I'm surprised the game lasted as long as it did, as it really was a random chance game* masquerading as a pricing game.     *with some help to a player that knows relative rankings of hands

While I find some of the proposals to rework the game interesting, it's still hard to get over the relative ranking knowledge problem.  Even if you had a big prop showing the ranking of hands as a "cheat sheet", I think it would be difficult, if not impossible, for any contestant to process that information, in front of 300+ people (in normal times) under the lights and under time pressure.

The other issue I had was that if you had a player who was clueless on the ranking of hands, Bob would sometimes hint about the right choice vis a vis keeping or passing.  To me, a game that needs this is problematic.

[TPIRZippy]

As a matter of fact, a bad setup showed up on Pluto just now:

MINI TV                           399
GRANDFATHER CLOCK   850
WASHER & DRYER          880
SEWING MACHINE        699

The contestant logically went after the two most expensive prizes and kept his full house...only to lose to a 4 of a kind because the two other prizes ENDED in 9! Was he supposed to know to pass the full house (with 8s high!) because it didn't have any 9s in it? I don't think anyone would have done that.

That one happened to run literally just now again on Pluto....the contestant said he was a poker player too.  Nothing about card game knowledge or order of hands could have helped, and the looking for 9s where they show up at the end of prices is really, really hard unless all the prizes are ones that show up a lot and people would memorize them.  Makes Poker Game really harder than it should be.

Hit Me, on the other hand, is one game that I wanted to get to play if I ever got on stage...winnable every time just by knowing simple math.