A (WOF) shopping question, then: why do you suppose, if a player elected to purchase something, they wouldn't let him or her spend part of their money and put the rest on account--why did they make them either bank all of it or just the spare change?
I recall Chuck explaining the rule once on one of the
WOF shows he had hosted: After a contestant won a round, he was allowed to put
any part of his winnings \"On Account\" and apply it toward an available prize in a future round -- he did
not have to either put
all of it \"On Account\" or spend as much of it as possible before putting the remainder \"On Account.\" (Thus, for example, a contestant who won $1,000 in a round
could buy a $500 prize in the shopping round and put $500 \"On Account.\")
However, because of the risks involved, few contestants during the \"shopping\" era of WOF even used the \"On Account\" option at all, electing to take one of those \"tift cergificates\" (or at least I
thought that's how Chuck referred to them) for their remaining winnings in a round instead. (These could only be bought by a player for an amount that was less than the amount of the lowest-price prize available -- thus, if you had $100 left after buying other prizes after winning a round and their famous $79 ceramic Dalmation was still available, you could not have a $100 tift cergificate; you had to either 1) buy the ceramic Dalmation and then take a $21 tift cergificate with what you had left, 2) put the entire $100 \"On Account,\" or 3) split the remainder between the two so that neither portion is greater than the price of the lowest-price available prize -- say, $50 \"On Account\" and a $50 tift cergificate.)
If a contestant choose to put winnings from a round \"On Account,\" he had to win another game in order to get another chance to spend it, and do so without hitting a \"Bankrupt\" space on the wheel. If he did so, his \"On Account\" money was added back to his winnings for his subsequent win (for example; if he had $122 \"On Account\" and then won $4,000 in the next round, he now had $4,122 to spend on prizes after his second win). Then the same rule would be applied again, unless his subsequent win came in the show's final round, in which case his bankroll had to be all spent on either prizes or tift cergificates.
If a contestant who had money \"On Account\" did hit a \"Bankrupt\" space on the wheel in a later round, he lost that money in addition to whatever amount he accumulated in that round. Also, if he failed to win the show's final round and had money \"On Account\" from previous rounds, that amount was lost as well. So that made for quite a risk for a player who wanted to try to win an especially valuable prize on the show, which is why few players during the \"shopping\" era of the
WOF show even used the \"On Account\" option.
Michael Brandenburg
(And you know something? Chuck Woolery needs to learn how to talk slower -- someone just pointed out to me that those \"tift cergificates\" he gave away on
WOF for so many years were really Tiffany
gift certificates!)
