Or no deal?

Since Deal Or No Deal first hit the air earlier this year, we’ve been pretty regular viewers of the show. This is partly due to the fact that I find the show entertaining, much like we enjoyed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? a few years back. But it’s largely because my seven-year-old daughter loves watching the show. She loves the drama of the game. She loves trying to guess whether or not the case that is about to be opened is going to be a “good one” (low amount) or a “bad one” (high amount). She loves pointing out that a given contestant should have taken the last deal they were offered, and that the next case will probably be a “bad one” and their offer will go down. And, for reasons that now escape me, her favorite case-toting model is Anya, who’s always holding case #10. Last spring, she wanted us to take a trip to Los Angeles in order to visit Anya. We’ve yet to take that trip.

Yesterday, my wife was busy and I had my kids out and about here in town, killing some time, and we stopped by Toys-R-Us to look around. I was hoping to get some ideas for Christmas gifts. One thing we found, however, was several different home versions of Deal Or No Deal. I’ve seen the advertise a home version, but apparently there are (at least) four different versions. There was a card game, a board game, an electronic game, and a DVD game. We ended up leaving with the DVD game, so that we, too, can play Deal Or No Deal anytime we want, just without receiving a check at the end (which, of course, is really the best part of the game.)

Last night before bed, we put it in and my daughter played a round. She finished with $253,000.

Since she’s too young to actually be a contestant on the show, I’m now planning to attempt to make it on myself so that I can take her along to assist me in choosing which cases to open. I could always use a couple hundred thousand dollars.