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The Showcase Showdown is a segment on the popular game show The Price Is Right. It first appeared on the shows for September 8-12, 1975, when the show did a week of trial hour-long episodes. It was returned permanently when the show permanently expanded to an hour later that year on November 3. This segment was introduced shortly after Wheel of Fortune debuted in 1975, and is considered to be part of a trend in the 1970s of adding wheels to certain segments of game shows (similar to the Melody Roulette on Name That Tune and the Star Wheel on Match Game).

On the show, six pricing games are played per episode. After the third and sixth pricing games, a Showcase Showdown is played to determine which of the three preceding game players will advance to the Showcase held at the end of the program.

Until the program expanded to one hour, the two leading contestants of the three, in value of winnings, automatically advanced to the Showcase; even after the hour expansion, this format continued to be used on the occasional half-hour episodes that were done to accommodate CBS's scheduling needs.

The contestants, in ascending order of winnings so far (or descending winnings on the Davidson version), spin a wheel with 20 uniquely marked sections. Each section is marked with a multiple of 5¢; the lowest value on the wheel is 5¢, the highest $1.00. After the first spin, the contestant has a chance to stay or spin again. The contestant's score is the sum of the two spins (or one spin if he decides to stay). The goal is to have the highest score without going over $1. Any contestant who goes over $1 is immediately eliminated. If the first two contestants both go over $1 in their two spins, the third contestant wins by default and is given one spin so that he can try to get a dollar.

Bonus spins

If a contestant gets a dollar on the wheel in one spin or a combination of two spins, he wins a bonus of $1,000 and is granted a bonus spin at the end of the Showdown. In a bonus spin, the wheel is reset to 5 cents (done so because the rule is the wheel must go all the way around at least once to count, and a bonus spin starting on $1 could theoretically land on 5 cents, voiding the apparent $5000 bonus), and the contestant is given one spin. If the wheel lands on a green section – 5 or 15, the spaces before and after the dollar, respectively—in that spin, he wins $5,000 more; if it stops on the dollar, he wins $10,000 more. If the wheel doesn't go all the way around, the contestant does not get another try.

Some primetime specials have changed the bonus for hitting a dollar in a bonus spin; the Military Specials in Season 30 increased it to $100,000, and the subsequent Million Dollar Spectaculars increase it to $1,000,000.

Special cases

There is a rule that the wheel must make one full rotation each time it is spun, to make it hard to aim for a specific square of the wheel. The audience usually "lightly admonishes" the contestant if he or she fails at this, and the player is given another chance. In the case of senior citizens and other contestants who may be too weak to spin the wheel fully, host Bob Barker usually helps them spin the wheel or spins the wheel for them.

If two (or very rarely all three) contestants are tied, there is a spin-off consisting of one spin only each. The $1,000 bonus and subsequent bonus spin can still be earned in a spin-off. If two contestants tie with $1, there is a spin that is simultaneously a bonus spin and spin-off. However, a contestant cannot win more than one $1,000 bonus. Until late 1978, however, there was no "bonus spin", and contestants simply won a $1,000 bonus every time they spun $1 (so if two people tied at $1 and had a spin-off, they could win another $1,000 bonus by spinning $1 again).

Strategies

The question of strategy naturally arises: When should a contestant choose to spin again? Probability dictates that spinning again with a score below 50¢ gives odds in the contestant's favor of emerging with a dollar or less; spinning with 50¢, the odds are even; above 50¢, the odds are against the contestant. Historically, the show's consensus seems to be that 60¢– 65¢ is a score that a contestant should give serious thought to staying on with a single spin. Spinning on 70¢ or above when it is not necessary is likely to get a bad reaction from the audience. On one episode in 1997, an incident similar to this happened. A contestant spun 75¢ on his first spin, and without knowing that he had an option to quit, spun again, and went over. Bob eventually made the decision that he was indeed over, and could not spin again.

A few Usenet threads have discussed the optimal strategy for the Showcase Showdown. One of the earliest references is 1993, noting that an unnamed student, probably a U.C. Berkeley student, determined the optimal strategy. Others have since independently derived the same strategy. The optimal strategy is as follows:

The first contestant should spin again on 65¢ or less and stand on 70¢ or more.

The second contestant should spin again if behind (in which case he must spin), or ahead of the first contestant with 50¢ or less, or tied with the first contestant at 65¢ or less.

The third contestant should obviously spin again if behind and stand if ahead. The third contestant should spin again if tied with one other contestant at 45¢ or less, or tied with the two other contestants at 65¢ or less.

One subtle point in computing the optimal strategy for the Showcase Showdown is that a contestant might consider taking a second spin, when doing so slightly decreases the contestant's chance of winning, in order to have a chance at the bonus spin (see below). The closest decision is when the second contestant spins 55¢ and beats the first contestant. To spin again reduces the second contestant's probability of winning from 0.2875 to 0.2803, but gives the second contestant a one-in-twenty chance of spinning 45¢ and being awarded a bonus spin. If the second contestant thinks that winning will cause him or her to eventually bid on a showcase worth about $9,000 or less, the second contestant should spin again. But, since the average value of a showcase is more than that these days, the second contestant should stand after spinning 55¢ and beating the first contestant.

Note that the increased bonus spin prizes during a "Primetime Special" may change the contestants' optimal strategies, especially in the second Showcase Showdown after a contestant in the first Showcase Showdown was awarded a bonus spin. In this situation, spinning a second time is worth about $2,500 (the contestant has a 1/20 chance of hitting $1 total, after which the contestant has a 1/20 chance of winning $1 million). So, for example, the second contestant should spin again after spinning 55¢ and beating the first contestant.

Trivia

The beeping sounds heard while the Big Wheel is spinning are triggered by sensors on the side of the wheel. Each space has a white section and a black section on its left side; every time one of the white sections moves in front of the sensor, the beep is activated.

Game Show Marathon rules

A Showcase Showdown was inserted after the third game in GSM's half-hour show format, with two of its participants advancing to the Showcase.The on-air explanation of the Showdown's rules was very confusing; at this point, no one has yet been able to obtain a complete explanation of how it was intended to work. It appears that the top scorer advanced to the Showcase as the Top Winner with the other two players spinning again for the position of Runner-Up, unless there was a tie, in which both players would advance to the Showcase and their positions therein would be determined by their winnings up to that point.

The Price WAS Right

The Price WAS Right was a completely different Showcase Showdown used on most episodes of the short-lived 1994 version of The New Price Is Right. In it, the three contestants were placed at three podiums at the front of the audience (a quasi-Contestants' Row) and were shown an old TV commercial. After the ad was shown, the players would bid on what they thought the product being advertised had cost at the time the commercial had originally aired. The person who was closest without going over won and advanced to the Showcase.

• The Price is Right