OK, never watched that game all the way through before. Even though I knew what would happen, it was still pretty gripping.

Not sure where I stand on the idea that Trevor was 'unsympathetic', though I can see where psychokiller and others are coming from. The closest was the rather aggressive way he turned down the third offer. I was reading an old commentary the other day where an actual contestant said that they were told not to disrespect any offer, no matter how bad it was for the board, as there'd be at least one viewer for whom the sum in question would be a lot of money.

I had read that the game was a suspected fix as the Banker knew there was 1p in the box due to Sequencegate, but the notion that he got such bad offers because he didn't properly consider the third offer does ring true.

I do agree with psychokiller that he seemed kinda embarrassed at the end after he'd crashed, and he was clearly trying to hide his disappointment/frustration after the £250,000 went, after which he said nothing except 'NO DEAL' and declining the swap.

That's all really. One of Deal's most memorable games, whatever your interpretation of it, and finally watching it all the way through and writing it up again here was time well spent. Hope anyone still out there reading this enjoyed my take on it!

Back either on Sunday or next Wednesday with another classic commentary. Until then, sayonara!

It's fascinating how different that 8-box decision looks in the context of latter-era Banker strategy. In a world where a stick for blue/blue/£50k seems entirely plausible, I'm absolutely gone at 8-box. In a world where you could realistically expect a huge uplift for such a round, I'm absolutely playing for one!

Very strange board, I'd forgotten just how quickly it got that strange, and it made for an odd interaction with the more Dutch-style offer patterns of the very early games. By the sounds of how he worded his 5-box thoughts, I wonder if Trevor might just have been playing for £20k, and if he got the game to support that, nobody would even have remembered him.

He certainly seemed disappointed at the second £9,900 - deflated, even. It was as if he thought, 'right, we've had nothing go right all the way through this, paltry offers and a paltry board - now I've got to get something decent, I don't want to carry on, I know he's going to make me a good offer and I'm walking now before it all falls apart'. His earlier reference to £30,000 might also be a clue as to his true intentions.

I'm quite sure he never wanted to go all the way, but it seems he felt he had no other option when the fifth offer came in, that he was either going to take the money and run now, or charge on and hope for the unthinkable, and with that choice, the script was written.

I think we remember him more for the circumstances, though - the fact that it was the last box of the last round. If it had been the first, he would have been unfortunate, but not really notable; we'd have reasoned that it was a trainwreck from start to finish, and that leaving the £250,000 and then taking it out in the last round was just his luck, but it was worth a shot anyway. Alas, it was rather more painful than that.

So close, yet so far.

Not saying he'd have poured a pint over you and pulled your pants down in front of your Netflix n chill buddy, in 2020 a well-off retired company director looking to go on casino trips and a 'feet up' flight to Australia wouldn't do enough to rally up a support mob. Those curiously stingy offers are no coincidence. You hear me. 2006 was a foreign country to 2008, let alone nowadays.

This is why re-evaluation is fascinating. You learn new facts about a show you thought you were over-familiar with, and new nuggets can be mined from the old iron. Trevor's game, and that final round crash, is up there with peak DOND's most iconic moments. Play that out now after 14 years of financial and political self implosion and rodding, knowing the retired company director was yearning for a nicer flight, and the shocks will be replaced with shrugs.

Oh yeah, I agree with you in that sense, someone like him crashing wouldn't get much sympathy nowadays.

I'm pretty sure someone like him wouldn't have been accepted onto the show in its later years, where they were almost entirely focused on 'entertaining' players and those who needed money. Even statistical players became rarer eventually.