Hit Me

Hit Me was a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Lasting from November 13, 1980 to October 13, 2006, this blackjack-based game was played for a four-digit prize, worth between $2,500 and $10,000, and used grocery items.

Gameplay
Six grocery items were shown, each concealing a standard playing card. A price was also displayed with each item, which represented the actual price of the item multiplied by the value of the concealed card - face cards were worth ten, and aces worth one (showing the actual price). Note that, as in blackjack, an ace is worth either one or eleven in a player's hand - whichever is most beneficial to the player.

The contestant would cut a deck of playing cards, and a hand would be drawn for the "house" - the hand against which the contestant would play. The house received a standard blackjack hand consisting of a face-up "up" card, and a face-down "hole" card, both placed on a game board.

The contestant was then asked to select a grocery item. The actual price was revealed and the playing card was placed in the contestant's hand on the board. The process was repeated for a second item. The contestant could then stand, or continue to select grocery items if they wanted. If the contestant's hand totalled 21, they automatically won; if they exceeded 21, they busted and automatically lost; otherwise, the game continued.

Once the contestant's hand was complete, the house's hole card was revealed. The house would then draw additional cards if needed, until its hand totalled 17 or above. If the house went over 21, it busted, and the contestant automatically won. Otherwise, the contestant's hand was compared to the house's, with the larger total winning, and ties going to the contestant.

The rules for dealing with a house "soft" 17-21, in which an ace treated as an eleven forms a value which the house would stand on, were never particularly clear. Sometimes, host Bob Barker treated the ace as a one and continued drawing. Other times, he treated the ace as a hard 11, and stood. There was no apparent pattern to this behaviour.

Strategy
The Hit Me board always contained one item that was marked at its actual price and one whose price was multiplied by 10. The ideal outcome would be for the contestant to choose these two items, to get an ace and a ten or face card. The contestant woudl then have a "blackjack", and would automatically win.

The rules of multiplication could be used to aid the contestant in determining their choices. For example, a price multiplied by ten would have to end in a zero; there was sometimes only one prize displayed with a last digit of zero, ensuring that product was multiplied by ten.

Conversely, a price which could not mathematically be a multiple of two to ten had to be the actual price. For example, an inexpensive price which was odd could not be multiplied by any even number; if its digits did not add up to a multiple of three, it could not be a multiple of three either; if it did not end in zero or five, it could not be a multiple of five. This eliminated all multiples from two to six. If the price would obviously be too inexpensive to be a multiple of seven or larger, the price would have to be the actual price.

Outside of the always available ace and ten, the other four cards were often (but not always) two pairs of numbers which each added up to 10.

Retirement
Hit Me was retired because the staff felt that its rules were beginning to confuse too many contestants. Having been played for nearly 26 years, it is by far the longest-lived pricing game ever to be retired.

Hit Me was the last pricing game to be retired during Barker's tenure as host.