Deal or No Deal .. Home Game

[motoxkx]

After watching the show a few times, and being the crazy gambling addicts that we are having to gamble on everything, my roommate and I created our own version of a “at home” Deal or No Deal Game.

We start out with 15 suitcases (playing cards in our case) valued from $1-$14, and a $20 suitcase. To start off, you pick 5, and then a deal is made. You can take this deal or pick 3 more. Another deal is made and you can accept or pick 2 more. After this another deal is made which can again be taken or denied and from here on out you pick one at a time and get a deal until you don’t have any left.

Since NBC won’t hook us up with our own show, my question is, what should the price to play this game be if you do not want any EV either way? I’m not quite sure how to approach this one mathematically.

Yesterday we played around and charged $7 per play, took equal turns being the banker, and if I had to guess, I think the appropriate amount would be around $8.

Thanks!

[motoxkx]

In my previous post, I forgot to mention the obvious, that you pick one suitcase before eliminating any.. and when I say "pick", I mean eliminate.. same style as the show.

[Caldarooni]

Genius.

[Velocity]

To make this the closest to 0EV you can it should cost $8.33 to play. It is slightly +ev at 8.33, but -EV at $8.34.

[Thythe]

[ QUOTE ]
To make this the closest to 0EV you can it should cost $8.33 to play. It is slightly +ev at 8.33, but -EV at $8.34.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure it's quite as clear cut as adding up the $ values and dividing by the number of cases, though I could be wrong. Doesn't the fact that deals are made throughout the game affect the EV?

[motoxkx]

Thanks for the input..
Thythe - when first thinking about it that's what I thought too, but if you were going to make all deals to have no EV, then it would not hurt a player by not taking any deals, and thus has a EV of 8.33 for the game. Sond right?

[OrangeKing]

Even if every deal was -EV, the EV of the game played properly would be 8.33 - the player's best long term strategy would simply be to never take a deal.

If you're going to add in some +EV deals, then...that may complicate things.

[Double Down]

I think there's something I'm missing here. Why did you charge each other $ to play if you took turns being the banker? Why was there an exchange of $7 back and forth?

[motoxkx]

Actaully, no there is nothing you are missing, you bring up a good point. I think the reason we originally charged because our intentions weren't to take equal amounts of turns banking.