Studio 33 - Price is Right Discussion > The TALK Is Right

The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide

<< < (2/49) > >>

TPIRfan#9821:
I'll throw this up here, since it's a common "hidden" theme; 2Ps, 3Ps, and 4Ps very rarely have the same thousand's digit. Although missing a couple shows, so far, the only exception to that rule this season is Swap Meet, which is self-explanatory.  Usually, this means something like a 1-2-3 setup in a game like Most Expensive, which usually is enough to eliminate one of the two choices.

Also, One Bids nowadays are never under $500, the bare minimum you are going to get if you fully win a pricing game is $5,000, and never bid lower than $20,000 on a Showcase.

LiteBulb88:
Items up for bids
Blog post: https://stoseontpir.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-ultimate-price-is-right-strategy_5.html

Random fact: If you want to impress your friends, you can call these "one bids," as that's the term used by the show to refer to the prizes the contestants bid on. This term goes all the way back to the original The Price is Right hosted by Bill Cullen in the 1950s and 1960s. You can even use that fact as a pick-up line: "Hey, if they used you as a one bid on The Price is Right, it would be impossible to for anyone to overbid because you're priceless." If you do use that pick-up line, feel free to *not* tell the person you heard it from me.

Key stats (seasons 29-46):

* Bidder #1 won 18.19% of the time.
* Bidder #2 won 19.94% of the time.
* Bidder #3 won 22.05% of the time.
* Bidder #4 won 39.82% of the time.Pricing patterns:

* One bid prizes are never less than $500. There has not been a one bid prize worth less than $500 since season 39 (8 years ago). There have been a number of one bids that were exactly $500 since then, but none under.
* I've rarely seen trips used as one bids cost less than $2,000. I don't have an easy way to check this with any exact stats, though, so use with care.Strategy: Your strategy in contestants' row depends on your position. But your bid should never be less than $500.

Contestant #1: Bid what you think the price is, with a minimum bid of $500.

Contestants #2 and #3: Bid what you think the price is, except:

* Your minimum bid should be $500. This supersedes all points below.
* If you're going to bid less than someone, give yourself at least $100 of wiggle room. For example, if bidder #1 bid $1150 and you think the prize is $1100, bid $1050. (Note: I admit the $100 is more gut feeling and less something stats can back up, but only having a $50 range of prices you can win on just isn't enough.)
* DO NOT overbid someone by $1 in position 2 or 3. All that does is tempt the person after you to do the same to you. I would advise that if you want to bid more than someone else, your bid should be at least $50 over their bid. (Again, that's arbitrary, but a $50 range at least gives contestant #4 something to think about when deciding whom they should bid $1 more than.
* Similarly, DO NOT bid $1 in position 2 or 3. Not only are you in violation of the $500 minimum bid rule, that just tempts someone to bid $2.Contestant #4: The fourth contestant should bid $1 more than someone else. Yes, the person you 1-up will be mad at you, but that's the show. Also, it is almost always wrong to bid $1 or similar. There are two reasons:

* The minimum price of the one bid is $500. You might as well bid $500 and try to hit it right on the nose. But you shouldn't do that either because...
* More importantly, your chances of winning when you bid $1 (or $500) drop from 33.33% to 25%. Let me explain with an example:
* Anne bids $600
* Bob bids $750
* Charlie bids $900
* David bids $751What is David's chance of winning? Unless Bob got it exactly right, David has shut him out, which means only 3 contestants (Bob, Charlie, or David) can win the prize. Thus, David's chance is 1/3, or 33.3333...%. Even if everyone has bid too much, everyone just bids again, and David's chance of winning is still 1/3 if he overbids someone by $1. But if:

* Anne bids $600
* Bob bids $750
* Charlie bids $900
* David bids $1 (or $500)Now, David's chance of winning is 1/4 (25%), as no contestant is shut out. "But Brian," you may be thinking, "those percentages assume that you're picking the winner randomly. Contestants aren't bidding random prices so this doesn't apply!" The stats suggest the opposite. From seasons 41-46, less than 27% of $1 bids from the fourth bidder ended up as winning bids--that's pretty close to the 25% you'd get from random chance. That means that over 73% of the time, $1 bids that were made were wrong--that's almost 3 out of 4. Compare that to the fact that when bidder 4 doesn't bid $1, they won 44.1% of the time--that's more than 50% more often than when they bid $1.

To be fair, I said bidding $1 or $500 is "almost" always wrong. I can think of two rare exceptions:

* If you are somehow absolutely positive that everyone else has overbid, then go ahead and bid $500. But you'd better be really positive. Prices are almost always higher than you think they are.
* If one of the first three bidders has bid $1 (or something similarly low), feel free to 1-up them, even if that means bidding $2 or $70. They deserve to lose for having that horrible of a strategy. Technically, you should still bid at least $500 in that case, but as a viewer, I take sadistic pleasure in it when the fourth bidder bids $2 after someone else has bid $1 :-x.

tpir04:
LiteBulb, let me say upfront that I'm thoroughly going to enjoy this series. Keep it up!

Do you happen to have any info on the first known $1 bid?

LiteBulb88:
Thanks!! Unfortunately, I don't know when the first $1 bid was.

tpir04:
I don't know if you can edit entries on that site, but if you can,


--- Quote from: LiteBulb88 on June 25, 2019, 02:42:21 AM ---
* Anne bids $600
* Bob bids $750
* Charlie bids $900
* David bids $751What is David's chance of winning? Unless Bob got it exactly right, David has shut him out, which means only 3 contestants (Bob, Charlie, or David) can win the prize.

--- End quote ---

If David 1-ups Bob, then the three contestants in the running are Anne, Charlie and David, not Bob, Charlie and David, as in the post.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page