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Split Decision was a pricing game on the American television game show, The Price Is Right. Played from November 9, 1995 through January 16, 1997, it offered a car and a three-digit prize worth between $300 and $999.

Gameplay

The contestant was shown a row of eight digits, which represented the five-digit price of the car and the three-digit price of the other prize. The prices were in order within the string, but not necessarily side-by-side, so the contestant had to pull three digits down from the first row to leave the car's price in the top row and the other price in the bottom row. Doing so won both prizes.

The contestant was given a 20-second time limit in which to attempt to find the correct prices. When the clock started, the contestant had to pull three numbers from the top row down and press a button to stop the clock. The prices were checked, and if they were not correct, the numbers were reset, and the clock was started again for the contestant to repeat the process. If the contestant did not find the correct prices before the clock hit zero, they did not win the prizes.

Toward the end of the game's life, if the contestant did not pull down the three correct digits for the smaller prize, Bob Barker left the digits as they were and did not reset them. This proved to help the contestants more than starting from scratch and resulted in a slightly better win percentage before the game's retirement in 1997.

History

On a notable playing on May 16, 1996, two numbers fell off their markers (the third and last attempt) and during the second attempt the clock froze. After the first number fell off, Barker attempted to place the number back. When that failed, he threw the number out onto the stage. Unfortunately, the game ended in a loss.

Contrary to popular belief within the game show community, this only happened once and had nothing to do with the game's retirement.

The clock also froze on one attempt on the first playing of the game. However, the contestant still failed to win with the extra time. This happened a second time on April 8, 1996. However, the contestant managed to win.

The clock was not used on the game on May 24 and 30, 1996. Instead, the contestant was simply given three chances to guess the correct prices. The original format returned on June 5, 1996 and lasted until the game was retired.

Retirement

Split Decision was retired due to its confusing rules. Throughout its one and a half seasons in the rotation, the game's win ratio was 50%. For the time that it appeared, the game was played more frequently than Any Number, another game that uses the same prize combination.

This is one of five pricing games that premiered in the 1990s to be retired (the other four being Gallery Game, Buy or Sell, Joker, and Fortune Hunter).

• The Price Is Right pricing games