DEAL or NO DEAL (TV Game Show) How Decide?

[pococurante]

Oddly enough, I've also seen reverse tilt on the show. Someone recently had an offer of $107k... the average case was worth about $135k, so it was a reasonable 80% of EV offer. The contestant chose to keep playing though.

In play was the 750k, 200k, and five small numbers.

She then eliminated the 200k case. The next offer was only $50,000... only 40% of the value of the average case. The loss had affected her, and she decided to take the deal.

As they played through the "what ifs", her next case was a small number, and the offer was $120k... back up to the 80% level. If she had continued, she would have had a 5/6 chance to more than double her money.