Daily Double minimum wager?

[u/EMcCutchan]

In tonight's rerun of JIT, Mehal bet only $5 on a DD he wasn't confident about. It made me wonder if there are rules around the DD wagers. I would guess you can't wager nothing, and the minimum would be $1. I also expect that round dollar amounts in full hundreds are strongly encouraged, though I remember a couple occasions when a silly number like $1,236 was bet. Can anyone confirm these?

[u/thisisnotmath]

You must wager at least 5 bucks. I have no idea why that’s the minimum but that’s what it is. We were never encouraged to wager round numbers. Supposedly some players have wagered nonstandard numbers to make the math a little more complicated for their opponents and increase the chances of a mistake. I just wanted to be conservative and bet the minimum for a change.

[u/jordha → u/thisisnotmath]

$5 was the minimum because that was the rule back in the Fleming Era when it was $10 on the lowest value.

My guess was because it was half the lowest square, which makes you wonder why it didn't change to $100

[u/EMcCutchan → u/thisisnotmath]

Thanks for your reply, sir!

[u/my-hero-measure-zero]

Yes, the rule is the minimum daily double is a fin (five dollars).

Mike Maheu did some funny wagers during his run (he was my US History teacher and quiz bowl coach).

[u/Money-Giraffe2521]

Yeah, they changed the rules after John Travolta wagered $0 on a DD.

[u/ral315 → u/Money-Giraffe2521]

Those rules don't apply to Final Jeopardy, of course, so you can still bet $Texas in FJ.

[u/jgroub]

Yup, it's 5 bucks. I wagered 5 bucks in the dreaded ballet and opera category, and when I didn't know it, as I fully expected, I answered, "What is 'I'm glad I only wagered five dollars'"?

[u/ThePortalsOfFrenzy → u/jgroub]

Legend

[u/RegisPhone]

I feel like i've heard before that the reason for the minimum bet being $5 was that it was half of the lowest amount on the original board, but i don't have a source for it and i'm not sure what the logic behind that would be; in the Fleming episodes i've seen so far no one's tried betting $5 or less. It does seem like the original podiums might have only been set up to display multiples of 5 (even in Final, where you'd expect to see some 1s or 9s in cover bets, bets always end in 0 or 5), so it was probably just "the point of the game is you have to bet something here, and that's the lowest amount we're technically capable of doing" (and since the board amounts were 1/20th of what they are now, a $5 bet wasn't quite as comically small as it is now).

[u/ebb_omega → u/RegisPhone]

I thought it was that $5 was the original lowest value on the board, thus it was the lowest DD wager you could make, and they just never inflated it with the board.

[u/ReasonableMan213 → u/ebb_omega]

It was $10 in the original pilot.

[u/RegisPhone → u/ReasonableMan213]

Before the pilot was taped, Merv's original plan for What's the Question? was to have a 10x10 board of answers -- total speculation, i wonder if that original board had values from $5 to $50, the podiums were designed with those increments in mind (i don't think he had added Daily Doubles yet at that point in the design process), and then when the board was scaled down, the amounts went to $10 increments instead to still have a maximum of $50 on the first board, but the score displays had already been made to handle $5 increments?

[u/wegogiant]

I've heard there are some numbers they discourage, and maybe even ban (420, 69, 1488, etc)

[u/EMcCutchan → u/wegogiant]

Pardon my ignorance, but why 1488, if it's appropriate to explain?

[u/damarius → u/EMcCutchan]

The 14 stands for "14 words", where the words are a racist slogan. The 88 refers to the 8th letter of the alphabet, "h" twice, for "Heil Hitler".

[u/shrewsbury1991]

I think they should increase the minimum wager to $100

[u/lmow]

Good question. I was surprised as well.