If I'm being honest, while I do still enjoy the show, it's largely because of nostalgia for the 'classic era' of DOND and not on the new series' own merits. But even that's starting to wear thin with the offers the banker keeps making.

I get that they don't want anyone to even think about dealing for the first few rounds. But they really don't need to be making the offers as poor as they are. Less than 2k for an all-blue opening round like in Donna's game is absurd. Except in Myles' case where his first round was exceptionally poor, you know for a fact the offer will be somewhere between just under 1k and just under 2k, regardless of how good or bad the round was. It's reaching the point where it's scarcely worth tuning in until 8-box, that's how same-y the offers end up being.

Then on the flip side, at 2-box the banker seems to lose all mathematical sense. Out of the last five shows, the only one where he DIDN'T make an above the mean final offer was Gemma's, ironically where she'd already dealt! And while I was happy he went away with a good amount, Mike's was especially absurd. £5,950 on a 3k/7.5k finish? Why the hell would anyone risk £2,950 on a coin flip when the upshot is only an extra £1,550? It would be less idiotic to go into a casino and place 3k on either black or red than it would be to take that gamble.

Another above-mean offer that really stood out was Jane W's from last year - 1.6k on a £750/2k finish. £400 short of the top prize. You may as well have had the producer screaming 'Please, we don't want you going home with a blue!'

I know it's been on lower stakes this last week, but it's also bizarre to me how, apart from Mike, none of these above-mean offers got taken, and no one in the studio is pointing out how over generous these offers are!

It could still settle down with time, but for now it's just producing too many games that feel too homogenous. And it's a shame because in days past each game felt radically different from one day to the next...

This is an eventuality I must admit that I had foreseen - not to claim any great credit in the hallowed (and completely made-up) art of clairvoyance, of course! If I could do that, I'd have won the lottery and disappeared to Tuvalu for the rest of time, well before now...

I do find these above-mean offers very interesting. I wonder if the plan is to gradually introduce more statistically-aware contestants, as happened quite early on in the original show, and to use this as a pivot to move the banker away from the current pattern, scaling great heights and dropping into equally-deep troughs, and toward a more evenly-balanced approach. It may be that this isn't even a twinkle in the producers' eye and I'm barking up the wrong tree - I could go on wheeling out tired old clichés - but whatever the reason is for this offer pattern, it is rather bizarre! Is it just that the banker has no idea of the meaning of such terms as 'average', 'median', or 'square root'? Could they really be a producer or associate, sat in a room on the other end of a phone line, reckoning up the figures and thinking, 'yeah, that should do, that seems fair enough'?

On the original Channel 4 run and on the Australian revival it was around Show 65 to 70 when the Banker wised up and started making stingier late game offers, so we still have around 2 months to go of the current offer patterns if this version follows a similar trajectory. It would fit into the lure for this Banker as well, with him making a new year's resolution to be more cruel/stingier with his offers.

There is probably an element of game theory to this. The contestants have a strangely generous banker at 2-box.

The players could always take the mean or above-mean offer. If they consistently do, that sends a signal to the banker that the offers might be too generous, and adjust accordingly.

Since the players will either win the mean or above, they can't lose in terms of the offers themselves. Only pure chance can decide whether they win the lower or higher amount on the board, and if the stakes are low (which often happens at 2-box in this version), there's little harm in playing on.

Only when the offer is hundreds of pounds above the mean does it give the players pause, because it is completely free money. They then focus on what they would lose, rather than what the effects of dealing would be on future players.

Effectively the banker is playing the role of a fool and the players are taking advantage of that. The show is taking advantage of the players' desire to maximise their payout, so that viewers watch all of the ad breaks.

When Deal started in 2005, I recall that there were three producers behind the scenes who came up with the offers together. The only restriction was that the offer range was bounded using a spreadsheet (or mathematical system equivalent).

My hypothesis is that the current version uses a spreadsheet, but with a more restricted bounding, to the accuracy of £5 rather than £100s. The effect is exaggerated as the value of the board has been halved. I suspect that there is a different system at work as well now which makes the offer structure more linear, from initially poor early on to ridiculously good at the end.

Eventually the banker might start to deviate significantly from this, but it might take a while.

The show is very different from its original form. It might take another series before it starts to become good, though I fear that by then, ITV will already have started to consider putting something else permanently in its place.

I have to say especially with the higher stakes games we've had recently I'm not too bothered by the ITV Banker's offer patterns.

8 and 5 box are generally tricky decisions if the game hasn't collapsed yet and the the 3 box offer is usually only a no brainer if it's a one box game, a scenario where especially in this climate it would feel so depressing if the Banker made a low offer and pushed the player on to a crash. Yes the 2 box offer is usually way too high currently but the prospect of an overly generous final offer is a big part of what makes the earlier offers such tricky decisions.

At the very least it certainly beats what the Australian version's Banker currently does, tailoring his offers based on what the player have in their case and often pushing them on to a crash with really low offers whenever the player has a small amount in their case.