Gameshow greed and crab mentality

The popular US-based tv game show Wheel of Fortune finally made its debut on local television this year.

It replaced another popular gameshow Deal or No Deal that was showing in the evenings at prime time. While I found this gameshow exciting watch, I wasn't really a fan because I became disappointed and disgusted with most contestants' decisions which so obviously showed their greed and total ignorance of probability. Common scenario: Php1M is still on the board along with other amounts smaller than Php1K. The banker offers Php700,000--which is really a huge amount in such a poor country--and yet the contestant decides to ignore that and go for the Php1M even if his chances getting it are just 1 in 6. Invariably contestant ends up not getting the Php1M anyway.

So when this Wheel of Fortune came along, I thought it would be a welcome change and finally showcase the people's better qualities. But nope, was I wrong.

One will probably have observed that a common strategy by Wheel of Fortune contestants in the US is to buy vowels if chances of naming a consonant that is found on the puzzle are small. They know that having a vowel on the board often helps them solve the puzzle even if it cuts down their winnings. But here I have noticed that contestants avoid buying vowels and prefer to continue trying to guess more of the consonants. What an obvious ploy to avoid losing any of their earnings!

And then worse, whenever a contestant spins the wheel, the other contestants clap their hand as others do elsewhere but then--here's the shocking part--jeer at the same time saying, "Lose turn... lose turn!" or "Bankrupt... bankrupt!" Such crab mentality. How sad.