The Ultimate Price is Right Strategy Guide: Card Game

Card Game

Rules

A car is shown. The contestant starts by drawing a card from a deck of cards showing different values between $1,000 and $5,000; whatever they draw is how close they must come to the actual retail price of the car without going over. They then start with a bid of $15,000 (except if playing for a luxury car) and draw cards from a standard deck of 52 playing cards. All cards except aces are worth their face value times $100 (2's are worth $200, 9's are worth $900, face cards are worth $1,000), and the worth of each card drawn is added to the contestant's bid. If the contestant draws an ace, they may make it any positive number they want, or they can tell Drew what they want their bid to be. The contestant may stop at any time, including before drawing any cards. Once the contestant stops, the price of the car is revealed, and if the contestant was within the range without going over, they win the car.

EDIT: As Guint at golden-road.net pointed out, as of the 2014 refurbishment, you can no longer save an ace. You must use it immediately.

Random fact

This game was out of the rotation for almost 3 years (most of season 40, all of season 41, and most of season 42) while it was being refurbished. All stats below are from the post-refurbishment era, and they exclude the two luxury cars Card Game was played for in season 43 (both of which were lost.)

Win-loss record (seasons 42-46): 37-46 (45.68%)

What range card was where? (seasons 42-46)

  Card  # picks # reveals $1,000 $2,000 $3,000 $5,000  Avg.

1 (left)    3       12       2      1      2      7   $3,750

   2       16       21       3      6      9      3   $2,714

   3       25       31      11     15      2      3   $2,000

   4       18       25       7     10      6      2   $2,200

   5       23       36      19      4     12      1   $1,889

   6        8       23       5      5      8      5   $2,783

7 (right)   4       16       3      2      8      3   $2,875

I owe a serious debt of gratitude to TPIRfan#9821 at golden-road.net for going to YouTube, watching every Card Game playing they could find since the refurbishment, and coming up with the above table for which range card was where in the range deck. (If you're curious how the # of reveals is larger than the # of picks, it's because sometimes Drew shows the whole range deck after the contestant makes their choice to prove it's fair.) I also should give credit to Flerbert419 at golden-road.net for pointing out the range deck isn't shuffled and thus we should look at that deck for any trends.

Stats per range...

Range   W-L    W-L %  Avg. diff.*  # overbids

$1,000  2-20   9.09%    $1225           6

$2,000 12-14  46.15%    $1618           4

$3,000 18-12  60.00%    $1401           6

$5,000  5-0  100.00%    $2515           0

* Average difference between the car and the contestant's final bid.

Stats per range if we take out the overbids...

Range   W-L    W-L %   Avg. diff.

$1,000  2-14  12.50%     $2297           

$2,000 12-10  46.15%     $1967           

$3,000 18-6   54.55%     $2255           

$5,000  5-0  100.00%     $2515 

Bar graphs of the contestant's guesses and the actual prices of the car...

(Note: while the second bar graph above shows that no non-luxury cars over $24,000 were used in Card Game up to and including season 46, they have used a couple of $24,000+ cars in season 47.)

Strategy

Part 1: Drawing a range card.
As you can see by the table above, "pick the endpoints" very much applies here. Choose the card either on the far left or the far right of the range deck and you're much more likely to have a $5,000 range.

Part 2: Bidding on the car
I admit I went into this thinking contestants constantly way underbid on the car, and that turned out to be wrong. I'm happy to see that! But as for an actual strategy, the numbers don't present any patterns that I can see other than "know the price." (EDIT: As Guint pointed out at golden-road.net, there hasn't been a car in this game worth less than $20,000 since 4/13/18. So if your bid is $19,000 or less, you should absolutely keep drawing.) Here are a couple of things that can help, though:

1. As soon as you see the stagehands wheel out Card Game, think about what you think the price of the car is, and stick to it. Then set your desired bid to be that price minus 1/2 the range. For example, if you think the price is $23,000 and the range is $1,000, set your bid to $23,000-1/2*$1,000 = $22,500. I say you should drop by 1/2 the range in case the price you're thinking of is below the price of the car.
2. The temptation in this game is to stop too early because you feel like you just can't keep drawing. But if you draw nothing but 2s and 3s, you need to keep drawing! If you have a specific price in mind you're targeting (see point #1), you're much less likely to fall for the temptation of stopping because it just feels wrong to keep going.
3. If you draw an ace, use it immediately and stop the game. If you followed point #1 above, you already have a price in mind you want to stop at. You gain nothing by waiting to use an ace, and you certainly gain nothing by using the ace to be a specific amount and then continuing to draw.