The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Balance Game

Balance Game

Rules

A prize is shown. Next to the contestant is a table with 4 bags. One of the bags has a 3 digit price on it; those are the last three digits of the price of the prize. The other three bags have values that are multiples of $1,000. The contestant must choose which two of those bags, when added together with the 3 digits from the 4th bag, correctly match the price of the prize.

Random fact

This is the second iteration of Balance Game; the first iteration ran from 1984-1985 and was nothing like this one except the fact that scales are involved in the prop. However, that game involved Barker dollars to balance a scale, and thus the Barker dollars (and now Drew dollars) that are supposedly in the bags of the current version are an homage to the 1984 version of the game. Here's a video of the old version:

Win-Loss record (seasons 34-46)

(Note the current iteration of Balance Game was introduced in season 34.)

• Actual: 80-109 (42.33%)
• What it would be by random chance: 1/3 (33.33%)

Number of times when, in order to win, the contestant had to pick...

• The two largest valued bags: 63 (33.33% of playings)
• The largest valued bag and the smallest valued bag: 69 (36.51%)
• The two smallest valued bags: 57 (30.16%) 

Strategy

Know the price. Those numbers above aren't statistically far enough away from pure randomness to suggest a strategy.