Games - Money Game

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	Games - Money Game

Money Game is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right
. It is played for a car and a nominal cash prize.

Gameplay

The contestant is shown a board containing nine two-digit number cards. The contestant is spotted the third digit of the five-digit car's price; it is up to the contestant to find the first two and last two digits of the car's price.

The front half of the car is hidden behind one of the number cards, the rear behind another number card. The remaining seven cards conceal a dollar sign. If the contestant draws a dollar sign, he wins the cash value of the number card (e.g., a "28" card wins $28).

The game ends in one of two ways:

Uncovering both halves of the car before revealing four dollar signs: The contestant wins the car plus any cash found on the board.
Revealing four dollar signs before finding both halves of the car: The contestant wins the cash value of the number cards drawn as a consolation prize. The maximum possible is $390, although it seldom exceeds $200.

Trivia

Originally, this game was played with just four-digit cars, with no free digits given.

: Also, this game's top prize has not been limited to cars. On several occasions up through the early 1990s, a motorboat was the grand prize (with players trying to find both halves of the boat).

Often, the winning combination is located adjacently on the game board (i.e., front and back, back and front, or top and bottom). Another "trick" is "Old El Cheapo" (as coined by host Bob Barker) – hiding the back of the car behind the smallest number on the board.

:* "El Cheapo" generally refers to numbers lower than 10; indeed, numbers this low do not normally appear in Money Game unless they are concealing the back of the car.

On the 1985 syndicated TPiR hosted by Tom Kennedy
, Money Game was sometimes played for cars worth at least $10,000. The game was dubbed "Big Money Game," and the last digit was revealed first. The contestant then had to find the first two digits and the third and fourth digits of the car.

During this game, the displays in Contestants' Row are used to keep track of the total amount of money that has been accumulated; this is generally not seen on-camera.

Money Game is one of the few pricing games in which it is impossible to walk away completely empty-handed; every contestant wins either the car, a small amount of cash, or both.

Money Game premiered on the same day that Give or Keep
did.

While most viewers are familiar with seeing Money Game on the Turntable, it was not always staged there; until 1981, it was played on the stage and was concealed by the Giant Price Tag. The game even had a unique camera angle for its car reveal – a straight-on shot of Door #3 opening with the Giant Price Tag bordering on the left.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Money Game (The Price is Right pricing game) ]

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