I'm really rather keen on this quiz.
For anyone that doesn't know it, the contestants start with £1 million in bundles of £50K. They have to answer 8 questions, placing the money they have on 4 possible answers. If you're absolutely certain of a question, you stick a million on. If you can't decide between 2 possibles, you maybe put half a million on each. That then means you have half a million for the next question and so on. The last question is simply that all the money goes on your answer (out of 2).
The reason they aren't constantly handing out huge amounts of money is that most people aren't very good at compounding. They'll sometimes get an answer they're certain of, but stick a little on another answer, just as a backup in case, but of course, each time you do that, you reduce the stake. So, if you start with £1m and place 1/8th of that on another answer, even if you're lucky enough to be quite certain, here's where your money goes:-
After Q1: 875,000
After Q2: 750,000
After Q3: 650,000
After Q4: 575,000
After Q5: 500,000
After Q6: 425,000
After Q7: 375,000
(I've stuck with rounding to the nearest £25K as the game requires that). So, even if you get some certainties and put a bit on "but it might be", you lose most of your money. In reality, there's quite a lot of answers which are 1 of 2, and of course, 3 of those and you've lost 7/8ths of your cash. And on the odd occassion that someone does get the wrong answer and has 125,000 after the first question, they never make it through with anything, because the remaining questions will whittle it down long before the end.
So, typically, people either end up with nothing, or maybe £25K, and a lot of it is because they're overcautious. If people played with calculated risks "I'm really certain of this answer, so we put the lot on it" they'd have better outcomes.
Debate Magazine
