'Price is Right' contestant came so close to winning $10,000 but a single number changed everything

"The Price is Right" contestants are known to get lucky and pull off unbelievable wins, but in many cases, they lose out after coming very close to a big prize. Sometimes, the smallest mistakes or even a single number could turn out to be decisive for a player. That’s what happened to a contestant, who lost her chance to win big by just a single digit.

The contestant named Sylvia was playing the game ‘½ Off’ for a chance to win $10,000. Here, a contestant gets 16 boxes, out of which only one will have the prize money. Contestants also have the chance of drastically reducing the number of boxes down to just two. They also get to see three pairs of products, with each product having a corresponding price attached to it. However, for each pair, one item will have the correct price displayed and the other will have half of its actual price shown. The contestant has to guess which item is the latter.

For each item they guess correctly, the number of boxes will be halved. So 16 will become eight, then four, and eventually two. Sylvia did not have the perfect start as she guessed the wrong item in the first pair. She got the next two right, bringing the number of boxes down to four. The remaining boxes were numbered 6, 7, 10, and 11. One of these boxes contained the $10,000 prize money that she hoped to win.

The contestant looked at the crowd once, before crossing her heart and going for box number seven. Since it is considered to be a lucky number by many people, Sylvia had hoped that the superstition would help her win. She held the lid of the box and yanked it open, and Drew Carey counted to three. Unfortunately, seven was not a lucky number that day as it revealed nothing more than an empty space.

The correct box was the one right before it, numbered 6. “It’s six. Oh, it was right next to seven,” a disappointed Carey said. Sylvia had seemed excited when she had come to the stage, but wore a disappointed expression for a short moment. The contestant was still very happy to have been a part of the show, despite not winning the massive payday. The crowd cheered her efforts as well.

The result just showed that ‘½ Off’ is a game of fine margins. Had the contestant guessed correctly for all three pairs of items initially, she would have had to choose from two boxes, which would have drastically improved her chances of winning the massive five-figure sum, but unfortunately, that did not happen.

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