Budgeting Question on Luck-Based Shows

[Dbacksfan12]

Just curious--
How do you "control" the budget on a show such as Card Sharks?  Obviously, for a show like Family Feud, you can stack the questions to where there's only a couple of routes to a win.

[TLEberle]

In the early weeks there weren’t lots of ways to help a contestsnt—change just the first card and pushes Are losses. Press Your Luck had smaller money slides. Once the show is successful and the budget expands then those tight elements are loosened,

[SamJ93]

While it certainly wouldn't be 100% predictable, they could cast contestants whom they believe are more risk-averse and less likely to make huge wagers in the Money Cards.

[TimK2003]

IIRC, in the early months of The Magnificent Marble Machine, in order to reach the Gold Ball/All Cash Round, you had to meet or exceed the point goal.

This is one of the few (if not only) shows in which if the goal was not met, the goal would be reduced by 1000 points each time thereafter until someone reached the goal.

Unlike a bonus game like the Classic Concentration car game, where you get more seconds for each trip to the end game, the MMM method was a more unconventional way to keep the budget in check.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Just curious--
How do you "control" the budget on a show such as Card Sharks?  Obviously, for a show like Family Feud, you can stack the questions to where there's only a couple of routes to a win.

I guess my follow-up to anyone who has an eye to this- have game shows ever hired mathematicians to calculate average expected wins in the same way a hopeful casino game developer would publish the math on house edge? Either that, or there's been enough run throughs to calculate budget.

[JasonA1]

I guess my follow-up to anyone who has an eye to this- have game shows ever hired mathematicians to calculate average expected wins in the same way a hopeful casino game developer would publish the math on house edge?

All the time. And this is the correct answer with regards to any game with luck. You have enough data to tell you what you should expect over X amount of games in the production cycle. The classic endgames in this space -- the Big Numbers, the Money Cards -- have payouts that are manageable over the long term. All the tweaks to the Money Cards speak to making the averages more comfortable.

-Jason

[TLEberle]

To answer Jeremy—David Hammett was hired on to the Greed crew to figure out how best to have reasonable odds for the top shelf questions. Interesting to me is the fact that the ten percent buyout was never really close to the straight pot odds of any question and was rarely tempted unless it was obvious a mistake was made.

More interesting is hearing from Aaron Solomon about Snoop Joker and how the magic box in Beat the Devil was a useful way to not pay out $50,000 as often as the odds might, but that Mr. Dogg was perceptive in knowing how much additional money would make the winner sweat the decision.

[Matt Ottinger]

I guess my follow-up to anyone who has an eye to this- have game shows ever hired mathematicians to calculate average expected wins in the same way a hopeful casino game developer would publish the math on house edge?

A dear friend of mine -- someone a lot of you know and someone who still stops by this forum now and then -- was a high school math teacher in LA who had a side gig doing exactly that.  Obviously there are a lot of intangibles that can't be perfectly accounted for (the difficulty of game material, the risk aversion level of contestants) but because he understood both the math AND the game elements, he could be eerily accurate about expected payouts. Until he got tired of doing it he was highly in demand.

EDIT: Yeah, David.  It was David.

[rebelwrest]

There was a week of Eubanks Card Sharks (1986?) that gave away over $90K.  Around that time, the rules about the three spare cards were changed from you can change a card at any time (including one position twice) to only one card per line.  Was this an example of cause and effect? It's possible that the $90K week happened after the rule change or CBS was giving away too much money during the original rules.  It's also possible I pulled that week of CS out of my butt.

[Ian Wallis]

There was a week of Eubanks Card Sharks (1986?) that gave away over $90K.  Around that time, the rules about the three spare cards were changed from you can change a card at any time (including one position twice) to only one card per line.  Was this an example of cause and effect? It's possible that the $90K week happened after the rule change or CBS was giving away too much money during the original rules.  It's also possible I pulled that week of CS out of my butt.

When the 1986 version started, there were many big winners ($10,000 or more) during the first month.  Even me as a viewer thought it was too easy to win big dough.  When they changed it, it made more sense and the big wins became fewer and further between.

[JasonA1]

Was this an example of cause and effect?

I think it had to be. I understand wanting to change something about the original Money Cards in order to meet a TV landscape that was already bigger and bolder than the one Card Sharks premiered in with Jim Perry. But they obviously got snake bit real fast.

-Jason

[TLEberle]

Somewhere in the GSN/Buzzr section there was a discussion about the Money  Cards and the fact that the first six weeks in 1978 were a bit of a slow boat by comparison.

I was a keen viewer and pasteboard reprobate aged six but I did not remember the original change card rules, and I don’t think the money round was worse for the change. That’s about all you can do—it’s not like you’re going to pull the car prediction or have Bob talk to to audience after coming back from breaks.

[Card Shark]

Somewhere soon into the run of CS '86, they had more commercials to limit the number of money cards rounds played per episode. The '78 version tried to jam pack the number of questions asked and move the show along. The '86 version ended up being a somewhat slower pace.

[TLEberle]

You don’t even need that. You direct Bob to string out the e plantations of why is it higher than fifty-five divorcees, or setting up the situation with the cards.