Golden Balls

This article is about the British game show. Golden Balls is also an informal nickname for English soccer player David Beckham and an alternative name for the movie Huevos de oro. Golden Balls is also a registered trade mark and Golden Balls Ltd licensed their name to Endemol UK for the game show in the UK. Golden Balls started trading in 2002 and sell merchandise from their website.

Golden Balls
File:GoldenBallsITV.jpg Golden Balls titles
Presented by	Jasper Carrott
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	98 (shown), 178 (total). Series 1: 40, Series 2: 58, Series 3: 80
Production
Producer	Endemol
Production location	BBC Television Centre
Running time	60 minutes (including adverts)
Original release
Network	ITV
Release	June 18, 2007 – Present

Golden Balls is a British daytime game show on the ITV Network, presented by Jasper Carrott. It is filmed at the BBC Television Centre.

Gameplay

Round 1

At the back of the studio is the 'Golden Bank', a giant contraption like a Bingo machine. Inside it are 100 golden balls, containing cash values, ranging from £10 to £75,000. 12 of these golden balls are randomly drawn from the machine and 4 'Killer' balls are added by Amanda Grant, the 'Balls Assistant'. These 16 golden balls are split equally and randomly among four players, who place 2 golden balls on their front row and 2 on their back row. The golden balls on the front row are visible to all players, with the golden balls on the back row being secret to their owner.

The contestants in turn announce the contents of the golden balls on their back row. After each contestant has done this, they discuss who they think is lying and try to establish who has the worst set of golden balls, either in terms of having the lowest amount of money or the most Killer balls

The players then secretly vote for which of them they would like to leave the game. In the case of a tie, players must try to reach a consensus in open discussion. If this does not occur, who is eliminated is decided at random. This is decided by giving each player involved in the tie another golden ball, one being a Killer ball and the rest completely empty. The player who had the Killer ball is eliminated. At the end of the round, each player reveals the contents of the golden balls on their back row and the eliminated player's golden balls are 'binned', namely they are out of the game for good.

Round 2

The remaining players' golden balls are put back into the ball machine, along with two more cash balls chosen at random from the Golden Bank, as well as one more Killer ball, leaving 15 golden balls in play. These 15 golden balls are split among the remaining three players randomly and equally, with 2 golden balls on their front row and 3 on their back row.

As with Round 1, players reveal the contents of the golden balls on their front row and must announce what is in the golden balls on their back row. Players then discuss the veracity of the others' claims and vote another player off in the same fashion as in Round 1.

Bin or Win

The two remaining players' golden balls are again put back into the ball machine and one more Killer ball is added, leaving 11 golden balls in play. The two players sit at a desk with the 11 golden balls between them. In turn, starting with the player who brought the most money into the final, the players pick a golden ball to 'bin' (eliminate from the game) and pick a golden ball to 'win' (add to the jackpot). If a cash ball is picked to be won, then the amount of the golden ball is added to the jackpot. If a Killer ball is 'won', then the accumulative value of the jackpot is divided by 10. For example, if the jackpot stands at £10,000 and a Killer ball is chosen to go into the Golden Five, the jackpot is reduced to £1,000. This process is repeated five times.

Split or Steal

After 5 golden balls have been won, the players have one last decision to make over the final jackpot total. They are each presented with two golden balls. One has 'Split' printed inside it and the other has 'Steal' printed inside it.

• If both players choose the Split ball, the jackpot is split equally between them.
• If one player chooses Split and the other chooses Steal, the Stealer gets all the money.
• If both players choose the Steal ball, they both leave empty-handed.

The table below shows how much of the jackpot is gained by each player with the different combinations of choices:

	Split	Steal
Split	50%, 50%	0%, 100%
Steal	100%, 0%	0%, 0%

This is similar to the Prisoner's Dilemma, a well-studied problem in Game Theory. The 'Split or Steal' element of Golden Balls is subtly different for two reasons. Firstly, the Prisoner's Dilemma proper is not a zero-sum game. Secondly, it has rules such that regardless of the opponent's choice, the agent is 'always' better off defecting. In the 'Split or Steal' game, choosing to steal will only improve the player's personal winnings if the other player has chosen to split. This difference causes the game to only be a weak Nash Equilibrium. The 'Split or Steal' game element was also used on Shafted, a previous Endemol production, and in the US game show network game Friend or Foe.

List of Golden Ball Values

File:GOLDENBALLS 007.gif

Jasper Carrott with one of the 'Golden Balls'

At the beginning of each game, we are told that there are 100 golden balls in the Golden Bank. Below are the 85 cash values seen at least once during the first run of 40 shows and the second run of 58 shows:

£10, £20, £25, £30, £40, £50, £60, £70, £75, £80, £90, £100, £125, £150, £175, £200, £250, £300, £350, £400, £450, £500, £550, £600, £650, £700, £750, £800, £850, £900, £950, £1,000, £1,100, £1,200, £1,250, £1,300, £1,400, £1,500, £1,600, £1,700, £1,750, £1,800, £2,000, £2,500, £3,000, £4,000, £5,000, £5,500, £6,000, £6,500, £7,000, £7,500, £8,000, £8,500, £9,000, £9,500, £10,000, £11,000, £12,000, £13,000, £14,000, £15,000, £16,000, £17,000, £18,000, £19,000, £20,000, £22,000, £23,000, £24,000, £25,000, £26,000, £29,000, £30,000, £31,000, £33,000, £35,000, £40,000, £45,000, £50,000, £55,000, £60,000, £65,000, £70,000, £75,000

The following 34 amounts were observed in two golden balls on a particular programme: £100, £150, £175, £200, £250, £300, £400, £500, £600, £700, £950, £1,000, £1,200, £1,250, £1,500, £1,600, £1,800, £2,000, £2,500, £4,000, £5,000, £6,000, £6,500, £7,000, £7,500, £8,000, £9,000, £10,000, £11,000, £12,000, £14,000, £15,000, £18,000, £20,000

The following 1 amount was observed in three golden balls on a particular programme (giving a total of 120 known golden balls): £10,000

In the unaired pilot, the highest valued golden ball was £200,000 and £100,000 was also present.

Popularity

The first show opened with 1.6 million viewers and continued to climb to a steady 2 million. In the same 5.00pm timeslot, eight of the first 11 episodes beat Channel 4's Richard & Judy and The Weakest Link on BBC Two also took a dent from the show's success.

Series Guide

The first series of 40 shows were filmed between March 2007 and April 2007 and shown between Monday 18 June 2007 and Friday 10 August 2007.

The 60 episodes of series 2 were filmed between September 18, 2007 and November 16, 2007, although only 58 were shown. The series was broadcast on weekdays from January 2, 2008 to March 21, 2008.

A third series of 80 editions has been commissioned by ITV for screening between 21 April and August 2008. Filming began on March 11, 2008 and continues though until May 2, 2008. (Source: ITV Network)

Records

• The biggest amount won in the first series was £61,060, when contestant Helen stole all the cash from final opponent Sam, having taken through a record £164,500 potential jackpot. (broadcast August 6, 2007).

• The largest jackpot so far was featured in the second series on March 14, 2008 (The day Jasper Carrot turned 63). The accumulated jackpot was £100,150 and the entire jackpot was stolen by Sarah, making her the biggest winner on the show to date. All four players in the game were returning players from previous games, who all split where their opponent stole.

• The largest split-split win was £43,950 (from a jackpot of £87,900), broadcast on March 21 2008, the last episode of the second series.

• The smallest non-zero win was £3 (stolen by Robbie on the episode broadcast July 12, 2007).

External Links

• Golden Balls at itv.com
• Golden Balls at crashthatch.com
• "Golden Balls" at goldenballs.tv