Deal or No Deal

Greetings and Salutations,

I was watching last night Deal or No Deal and I'll occasionally watch it with my parents. Now many of the contestants have a strategy for picking cases. One of them is to pick a case that has some sentimental value to them. For those who don't follow the show, there is a million dollars in one case. You get to choose one case which is yours. During the game, you want to pick out anything low and leave the million dollar case in play(this is assuming that your case isn't the million and the odds are you probably do not have a million in your case). There are several high values ranging from 100,000 to 750,000 followed by low amounts such as 1 cent, $5 or $1000.

This is what I don't understand about this particular strategy. People are seeking to get rid of the lower value cases and they do so by choosing numbers that mean something to them. For example, I was born on the 13th so I might pick case 13 hoping that it is a low dollar value. Wouldn't it make more sense to pick numbers that I didn't like or had a negative association? For example, my grandfather died on the 28th, so I'll go with case 28. Or I dumped the love of my life on May 4th so let's open up case number 4.

This whole idea of picking cases that have some positive association seems rather counter intuitive to me.

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My informant has informed me that my crush has been absent due to possible strep throat. I have forgotten what he looks like. If I do not see someone, usually if I have feelings for them or am irritated by them, I usually forget my feelings unless I see them and they are around me and then I seem to remember my feelings towards them. That's true to some degree as some people from my past haunt me even though I do not see them and haven't heard from them in years. I think every encounter we have with someone leaves some imprint on your soul, whether you are aware of it or not and whether it was positive or negative.