Ten Chances

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The "Ten Chances" board from August 29, 1975.

Ten Chances is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on July 15, 1975, this game is played for a car and two additional prizes – one worth between $10 and $99, and another worth between $100 and $999.

[edit] Gameplay

The objective of this game is to correctly price three items (in ascending order of value – the grand prize being the car) within 10 turns – hence the name, "Ten Chances" – in order to win them all.

Each prize corresponds with a jumble of numbers – three for the two-digit prize, four for the three-digit item and five for the car. Each number scramble, except for the car, has one extra digit thrown in, which adds to the game's challenge.

Starting with the two-digit prize, the contestant uses two of the three digits available to form a price. Each number in a given scramble is used just once, and there are no repeating digits. If they are correct, they win the prize. If not, he uses the second chance to form a different price. Play on that specific prize continues (using the third chance, and so on) until the contestant makes a correct guess.

Once the player wins the two-digit prize, they move on to the three-digit prize. The rules are the same as before, with the only difference being that the contestant is given four digits to select from and must use three of them.

If the player has chances left upon a right guess for the three-digit prize, play moves on to the car. Here, the player must use all five digits to form the price. A correct answer here wins the car.

However, if the player exhausts their tenth chance before correctly pricing all three items, they win only what had been correctly priced up to that point.

[edit] Rules changes

In the days of four-digit cars, the grand prize's five-number scramble also had an extra digit.

[edit] Trivia

While not technically a rule, virtually every prize's price ends in a zero. In the rare case that 0 is not among the digits provided for the price, the last number is always 5. Host Bob Barker tends to criticize contestants when they forget this rule or don't seem to catch onto it.

The zero rule was not in effect early in the game's history (e.g., a three-digit prize could be worth $418), but has become standard since the early 1980s.
Contestants who claim to watch the show every day -- and thus, who should know the zero rule -- are the contestants who more frequently violate it. This behavior is not unlike Check Game players who claim to know how to play the game, but fail to explain it when Bob challenges them to.

There is technically a time limit of 10 seconds per chance, for a total game time of 1 minute and 40 seconds. While Barker will warn contestants who stall, the rule has not actually been enforced since the early 1980s.

There are only six possible prices for the two-digit prize; as such, not winning it is impossible.

If the zero rule is in place and the contestant follows it, it is also impossible to not win the second prize.

If a contestant makes a duplicate guess, host Bob Barker will often point it out; whether the contestant is given another chance tends to depend on Bob's mood.

One playing of Ten Chances had the correct prices (instead of the scrambled numbers) immediately behind all three prize cards. The contestant won all three prizes without writing anything down.