The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Five Price Tags

Five Price Tags

Rules

A car is shown as are five price tags, one of which is the price of the car. Then four small prizes are shown one at a time. For each small prize, the contestant must guess whether the price displayed is true (correct) or false (incorrect). For each small prize they guess correctly, they get one choice of the five price tags for the car. If they can choose the price of the car within the number of guesses they have, they win the car.

Random fact

This game was host to one of the more memorable bloopers of recent years on the show:

Win-loss record

• Actual (seasons 29-46): 65-114 (36.31%)
• What it would be by random chance: 40%

The correct price...<voice from offstage again.> Hold it, hold it, hold it. I thought Cover Up was bad with its win rate just above random chance. But now you're telling me people play Five Price Tags WORSE than random chance?!?! What in the ?!?!?!

Ugh. You again. I thought I shooed you off after Cover Up was over. Nope. Nice try.

OK, OK, I'll get there and this time it'll be pretty quick. Happy? Yup!

Small Prize Pricing

Let's start with the first half of this game, the pricing of the small prizes. The "worse record than random chance" will become clear pretty quickly...

# of times _____ was correct (seasons 32-46)

• True: 359 prizes (60.64%)
• False: 233 prizes (39.36%)

# of times the contestant chose (seasons 32-46)

• True: 129 prizes (21.79%)
• False: 463 prizes (78.21%)

Any questions on where the discrepancy comes from? Yikes. The contestants love to say "false"; the producers know this and make most of the prizes "true." Remember, things almost always cost more than you think! So here's the strategy for this part...

Strategy (small prize portion)

 If you have any doubt, CHOOSE TRUE!!!!!!! Though don't forget the "all choices will not be the same" rule; at least one price will be false. But if you just choose true for everything, you're very likely to get at least 2, if not 3, picks. From seasons 40-46, here was how often different combinations of true and false came up:

• 1 True, 3 False: 5 playings (6.58%)
• 2 True, 2 False: 20 playings (26.32%)
• 3 True, 1 False: 51 playings (67.11%)

It was never the case that all four prices were true or all four prices were false. But choosing true for all four prizes would have gotten you at least two picks over 93% of the time.

Car pricing

If you followed my advice above, you should have two, if not three, choices for the price of the car. Let's look at some stats for this portion of the game...

Correct car price was...(seasons 32-46)

• Tag #1 (the top tag): 35 playings (23.65%)
• Tag #2: 23 playings (15.54%)
• Tag #3: 19 playings (12.84%)
• Tag #4: 30 playings (20.27%)
• Tag #5 (the bottom tag): 41 playings (27.70%)
  
• The cheapest shown price: 53 playings (35.81%)
• The second cheapest shown price: 52 playings (35.14%)
• The middle shown price: 8 playings (5.41%)
• The second most expensive shown price: 17 playings (11.49%)
• The most expensive shown price: 18 playings (12.16%)

Strategy (car pricing portion)

Remember the pick the endpoints rule. Choose the bottom tag and then the top tag. If they're both wrong, then choose the cheapest price left unless the top and bottom tags were the two cheapest prices; if that's the case, then choose the most expensive price left.