Something unusual on Buzzr's PYL on 4/4

[BillCullen1]

In the Prime Time showing of Press Your Luck airing on 4/4 at 10:30 pm EST on Buzzr, there was a contestant named John, who did not get any spins during the first half of the show. I have never seen that happen before.

[Matt Ottinger]

Did you get any sense at all that he might have deliberately done that for strategic reasons?  Because yeah, the show is pretty much deliberately set up so that doesn't happen.

[BillCullen1]

I never really thought that. I just figured he was nervous being under the lights and all. He did miss some fairly easy questions. If this was a strategy, it backfired on him since he lost. He did get two spins for the second round, and ended up having two spins passed to him. 

[parliboy]

Did you get any sense at all that he might have deliberately done that for strategic reasons?

Given that one of the few non-random things that happens in the spin rounds is gaining information about the game state, that would be a pretty shitty strategy.

[Matt Ottinger]

Not that I think it's a *good* strategy, but I could see a line of logic that says the money is a lot less in round one, but the Whammies are still just as bad.  If you avoid playing in round one, you avoid having Whammies at the start of round two.  I'm just trying to come up with a justification as to how you get *zero* spins for what are supposed to be four pretty easy questions.

[TLEberle]

I too would be curious to hear what his answers were, and what the other contestants piled up. How did he do in round two? Did he end up winning?

I can see buzzing on the fourth question if you have lots of spins to deprive your opponents of the three for a buzz-in answer, but why not just get the spins and unload them on an unwitting contestant?

[MSTieScott]

I don't think he did it deliberately. The first question was a survey question with fractions as the answers where you're just trying to hope you guess the right answer. He buzzed in and gave a plausible answer for the second question. The third question was difficult. And even though the fourth question was one of the "finish the simile" questions that showed up a lot as the emergency easy question during this period of the show's run, it wasn't a complete gimme.

Plus, he gave a couple of bad answers to the first two questions of the second round, and why wouldn't you want to accumulate spins at that point?

Here's the episode:

[Winkfan]

Here's another PYL installment with the same situation.....what happens here, though, well.....



Cordially,
Tammy

[Kevin Prather]

Not that I think it's a *good* strategy, but I could see a line of logic that says the money is a lot less in round one, but the Whammies are still just as bad.  If you avoid playing in round one, you avoid having Whammies at the start of round two.  I'm just trying to come up with a justification as to how you get *zero* spins for what are supposed to be four pretty easy questions.

If you want to employ this strategy, you might as well get some spins and pass them. As long as you're trying to avoid whammies, you might as well try to force one or two on an opponent.

I've played this strategy before when playing PYL online. The downside to it, which is really quite a downside, is having to play first in round two. Sure you go in to round two with zero whammies, but you're a sitting duck to two players now.

[clemon79]

If you want to employ this strategy, you might as well get some spins and pass them. As long as you're trying to avoid whammies, you might as well try to force one or two on an opponent.

...unless you end up forcing more money on them instead. Admittedly, Round One is more about positioning for Round Two than it is the money, so maybe that's negligible.

[TimK2003]

I thought I once saw an episode in which a player just flat out passed all of their earned spins in Round 1.  Can anybody confirm?

[Ian Wallis]

I thought I once saw an episode in which a player just flat out passed all of their earned spins in Round 1.  Can anybody confirm?

I remember this happened in round 2 at least once.  The player was in first place so he played last, passed all his spins (I think he only had 2 or 3) in hopes of causing the other player to whammy.  As I recall, his strategy didn't work.

[Kevin Prather]

If you want to employ this strategy, you might as well get some spins and pass them. As long as you're trying to avoid whammies, you might as well try to force one or two on an opponent.

...unless you end up forcing more money on them instead. Admittedly, Round One is more about positioning for Round Two than it is the money, so maybe that's negligible.

Probably pretty negligible, since any money accumulated in round one will be lost to a whammy in round two fairly often.

[tyshaun1]

I remember this happened in round 2 at least once.  The player was in first place so he played last, passed all his spins (I think he only had 2 or 3) in hopes of causing the other player to whammy.  As I recall, his strategy didn't work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PuxklZKNk0#t=16m48s

This episode has this particular scenario in question. (Never mind the audio sync error..... that actually was from the network feed)

Tyshaun

[jimlangefan]

I thought I once saw an episode in which a player just flat out passed all of their earned spins in Round 1.  Can anybody confirm?

I remember this happened in round 2 at least once.  The player was in first place so he played last, passed all his spins (I think he only had 2 or 3) in hopes of causing the other player to whammy.  As I recall, his strategy didn't work.

BUZZR about a month ago aired an episode where the player with the advantage in round 2 was down by more than $10K and she only had three spins.  When it was finally her turn, she passed them and he got a whammy on his first spin.  He was so shocked he couldn't play on and passed them back to her.  She ended up winning the game with almost $7K in cash and prizes.