[quote name=\'BillCullen1\' post=\'218742\' date=\'Jun 22 2009, 02:33 PM\']What happens if you throw out this rule and one person is fifty bucks under and one person is fifty bucks over?[/quote]
Seems it'd be rather easy to deal with, actually. If there's a tie, give it to the one who didn't go over. Or the one who bid first. Or the one wearing polka-dotted underwear. There are any one of a crapload of workarounds, some easier than others. If anything, the difficulty would be in figuring out when there's a tie when both bids are far apart. If the retail price is $2,561, contestant one bids $1,772 and the other bids $3,350 - that that's a tie that may well require some math work to even recognize as such, and might well cause a problem if no one notices it right away.
I could see how one would want to change the rule, though. Let's say the item up for bids is a MacBook Air (since those have become popular items to give away under Drew). MSRP right now is $1,499 (after the recent price cut.) Contestant 1 bids $1,500. Contestants two through four, not as familiar with Apple's pricing, bid $420, $750, and $751. To a lot of people, it looks just short of absurd that contestant 1 loses for being *one dollar off*, while contestant 4, the next closest, is off by $749 - just under 50% of the value of the item. And I can think of a lot worse changes to the show they could make than to say that the guy who bid $1,500 on the $1,499 laptop wins.