Pyramid hour proposal

[TLEberle]

But they didn\'t do \"as little as possible.\" They gained control of the dice and prudently passed them off. The problem is that if you dangle the carrot of a bonus round prize, most players will choose to get over the difficult hurdle the easiest way possible--that is to say by making the opponent play with fire.

Here was my Pyramid idea: four new players compete in the first half hour, going for $5,000 a throw. Contestants are removed from the pool after losing the front game twice. The winners from the first half play in the second half for $10,000 or $20,000 if they win both halves.

[clemon79]

I\'m not saying that it\'s a great idea, but I remember plenty of times when people would pass without hesitation when there was only one or two bad rolls out of the 11 possible number combinations.  I just want to see less of those early \"chicken\" passes, when the odds are 80-95% that you\'ll land a good roll, and see some more players keep control & roll their own demise.

 

Your proposal isn\'t going to come close to accomplishing that.

 

What is wrong with having an incentive(s) on the board to keep the \"active\" play strategy happening more often than the \"passive\" play strategy?

Nothing, until that incentive has to be so big that it marginalizes your endgame, which is where the big prize is SUPPOSED to be. And I\'m suggesting the sweet spot of \"big enough to be worth the risk, but small enough to keep the Big Numbers important\" does not exist on High Rollers by the very nature of the front game / endgame format.

 

Honestly Travis comes closest to an actual feasible plan by removing the Big Numbers outright (which is the common thread in your (and in fact most modern prime-time) examples: they don\'t have endgames, or are ALL endgame, depending on how you want to look at it), except I posit that removing the Big Numbers from High Rollers is roughly akin to sucking the peanut butter out of a Reese\'s cup.

[TLEberle]

Here\'s a worst of both worlds, then. Players get to play a single best of three match; each column cleared bestows upon that player an insurance marker to take to the Big Numbers should he win the game. After that, we welcome out two new players. (I thought as a further bonus, the two players who do best at Big Numbers come back on Friday for a tippy-top prize.)

If you want contestants to roll the dice in the main game, it has to mean something. If a lavish prize package can\'t do that; what will? The incentive has to be stronger than \"but if I pass I might win.\" I played the box game with my cousin in 1989; even then as children of nine and thirteen we knew to pass the dice to the left-hand-side.

[Neumms]

If you want contestants to roll the dice in the main game, it has to mean something. If a lavish prize package can\'t do that; what will?

Yeah, that\'s what it boils down to. I suppose it\'s like \"Wheel,\" where nobody risks it and keeps spinning once they know the puzzle. Back in the day, if you had almost enough to buy the Chevy hatchback, you might, but not anymore.

[TLEberle]

I have my own ideas about Wheel of Fortune, but we\'re already plenty far afield.

[MikeK]

I have my own ideas about Wheel of Fortune, but we\'re already plenty far afield.

If they involve the Cyrillic alphabet, the battery from an AMC Gremlin, and jumper cables, I\'m way ahead of you.