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Gambit (game show)

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Gambit was a game show, created by Wayne Cruseturner, produced by Heatter-Quigley Productions, and aired on CBS from September 4, 1972 to December 10, 1976. Some years later, a slightly retooled version, Las Vegas Gambit, aired on NBC from October 27, 1980 to November 27, 1981, originating from the Tropicana Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Both versions of the show were hosted by Wink Martindale, and announced by Kenny Williams. Elaine Stewart was the card dealer for the CBS version. On the Las Vegas Gambit version, the card dealer was Beverly Malden; she left half-way through the series' run and was replaced by future Sale of the Century hostess Lee Menning.

A British version of the show was produced by Anglia Television for ITV. It ran from 1978 to 1985, and was hosted by Fred Dinenage.

A pilot of Gambit was videotaped in the early-1990s. It was hosted by Bob Eubanks and featured single players instead of couples. That version never made it to the air.

Contents

Rules of the game

Main game

2 married couples competed. Host Martindale asked a question, either multiple-choice or true-false, to both couples. The couple who buzzed in and answered the question correctly got to control the next card off of an oversize regulation deck of 52 playing cards. (The first would be shown before the question, the rest would be presented face-down.) Once a couple got control of a card, they had the choice to either add the card to their own hand or force their opponents to take it (unless they're frozen; see below). The objective of the game is quite similar to Blackjack, to get your hand as close to 21 without going over as possible or of course, obtaining blackjack with an ace and a face card or a ten. As in blackjack, the value of cards 2 through 10 are as shown; face cards (Kings, Queens and Jacks) count as 10s and an Ace counts either as a 1 or 11.

After a couple received any card, they could elect to freeze their board, disallowing any more cards to be added to their hand. Once this happened, the other couple answered questions until one of the following conditions occurred:

Conditions for winning

$100 plus $50 for each tie game was awarded for each game won. Two wins earns the match and the right to head to the Bonus Round.

Bonus round

The Gambit Board (Original version)

The winning couple played the Gambit Bonus Board. They faced a large game board with 21 cards, numbered 1 through 21. Each card concealed a prize; along with each prize the couple won, they received a card added to their hand from the deck.

The game ended in one of three ways:

One prize occasionally offered during the bonus round was "Beat the House": contenstants winning this prize would then have the opportunity to play one hand of blackjack (standard single-deck rules, with the possible exception that there did not appear to be any cases in which contestants "split a pair" or "doubled down") against the house (as personified by Martindale) for a cash prize.

Bonus rounds (Las Vegas version)

The Gambit Board
For the first portion of the year this version ran, a bonus round like the original was played, with three differences:
The Big Numbers
The second half of the season featured "The Big Numbers", a game based borrowed from another Heatter-Quigley game, High Rollers, which Wink Martindale would eventually host in 1987. The couple was presented with a pair of dice, and was asked to "knock off" the numbers 1 through 9 from a board in front of them. To do this, the couple eliminated numbers that added up to the total they rolled (for instance, if the couple rolled a 10, they could eliminated 4 and 6; 3 and 7; 1, 2, 3 and 4 or any other comination that added to 10.) Each number the couple knocked off won $100 per number, and if all nine were knocked off, an accumulating "Gambit Galaxy" prize package was awarded. In the event a double was rolled (e.g. a pair of ones, twos, threes, fours, fives or sixes), then an insurance marker is awarded and can be used in the event a bad number is rolled.

Episode status

It is believed very few episodes exist except for one episode of the original series and a few episodes of the Las Vegas version. In the fall of 1977, reruns of the original CBS version of Gambit aired in syndication (primarily on WPIX New York and KHJ-TV Los Angeles), so it is possible that the episodes from the original version may exist.

Trivia

The style of cards used in the show would later come back for The Price Is Right in the pricing game "Hit Me", also based on blackjack. A smaller version of this style deck is also used for the "Joker" pricing game . Ironically, The Price is Right and Gambit both debuted on CBS on the same date (4 September 1972), along with The Joker's Wild.

The show experienced strong ratings on CBS, particularly in its first 18 months (1-1/2 Seasons) against "Sale of the Century" and "The Wizard of Odds" on NBC. When the network moved it to 10:30 a.m. Eastern/9:30 Central in April 1974, though, it had some trouble against the original Art Fleming-hosted "Jeopardy!", but before any damage could be done, NBC put Bill Cullen's "Winning Streak" in its place, which performed poorly. But in January 1975, trouble came again in the form of the smash hit "Wheel of Fortune." Once again, CBS bailed "Gambit" out by returning "The Price is Right" to the 10:30/9:30 slot, returning "Gambit" to 11/10, where it debuted in 1972. Strangely enough, for most of the rest of the year, it faced its sister show "High Rollers", something packagers Heatter and Quigley would likely not have preferred. Unfortunately, they certainly would have preferred it to facing "Wheel" again, beginning near Christmas time, when NBC moved its new hit to 11e/10c.

Over the next year, the puzzle game eventually stole most of "Gambit"'s audience, and two weeks before Christmas 1976, CBS cancelled the show in favor of a Goodson-Todman entry called "Double Dare", a quiz entirely unrelated to the later children's game that aired on the Nickelodeon cable network in the 1980s and 1990s. Its host: none other than "High Rollers"' own, Alex Trebek. Despite the rivalry induced by circumstance, Martindale and Trebek are said to be good friends in the game-show-host fraternity.

All the glamour and glitz of Las Vegas didn't translate into high ratings for the NBC version, however. By this time, poor ratings performances by the show's predecessors in the 10:00 a.m. Eastern/9:00 Central slot had prompted local affiliates to put on syndicated programming during that part of the day. Talk shows such as "Donahue," "Hour Magazine" and Richard Simmons' exercise show, which often brought better ratings and more local advertising revenue, became too attractive for many NBC stations, and this show took the brunt of pre-emptions needed to clear those shows for a mid-morning audience. Even the weakness of the competition, reruns of 1970s situation comedies like "The Jeffersons" and "One Day at a Time" on CBS didn't help things, because, in some instances, CBS (and ABC) stations carried some of the attractive syndicated programming themselves, in place of their networks' offerings (this only applied to CBS; ABC didn't begin its daytime schedule until 11 a.m. Eastern).

External links

 

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