According to Wikipedia, who have linked to a semi-reliable source, the ITV1 show Golden Balls starts again on Monday!

The reason I’m so excited, other than the fact that it’s an absolutely brilliant game show, is that I went along to 3 recordings of it, twice by myself and once with my sister and a good friend of mine.  Twice I sat in a position where the camera was right on me… so I bought a PVR (personal video recorder) just to record the show in case I’m on TV!  I could have my 15 minutes of fame!  Well, more like 15 seconds.  But I’m still excited.

ITV1 used to show this for months, then they went into this weird mode of showing a new game show every 2 weeks for the 5pm time slot, which meant that Golden Balls had to take a back seat.  Some of the replacement game shows were good (e.g. The Chase, Divided), others not so good (e.g. The Fuse – it’s so American!  Let’s light The Fuse!!!  Haha bollocks).  But this time, hopefully it’s back to stay.

To sum it up, four people go through a procedure (which involves bluffing and deception) to build up money into a pot.  Two people are left at the end who have to split the prize money between them, which could be as high as £150,000.

Each of the two have to make a decision whether to split the money between them, or take it all themselves (steal).  The other person doesn’t know what the other person has chosen.  If they both choose to split the money, they get half each and everybody’s happy.  If one chooses to split, and the other steals, whoever decided to steal gets all the money, and whoever decided to split gets nothing (and if you’re in the studio during the recording, here’s your chance to boo them).  If they both decide to steal the money, they both get nothing and everyone laughs about it.

The choice that each of the two chose is revealed at the same time in a very dramatic fashion, and it’s guaranteed to have you stop whatever you’re doing and stare at the TV to see the result.

I saw a show where a girl “stole” over £100,000 off some guy and you could see he was devastated.  But then there were two people who split £76,000, netting each of them £38,000, and it was a nice happy ending.  They said in the recordings that people who steal such large amounts of money get recognized in the street and heckled.

As I studied mathematics, it’s clear that if you don’t consider human nature, the best thing to do for maximizing your winnings is for you to steal all the money for yourself.  But of course, if you’re playing against someone friendly and nice, it would be better to split the prize money because then you both get something.  But what if you think they’re going to steal from you?  Gaah, there’s no easy answer.  I’m glad I don’t have to make the decision.