Greenie has to go…he tries too hard to be howie mandel with the commercial break and straddling abuses and he just dragged the show down with his repetive nature. I repeat my nomination of Kenny Mayne.

some small production things…they were very inconsistent with their graphics, sometimes showing greenberg’s name on the screen sometimes letting greenie introduce himself, same with showing the leaderboard and the randomizer.

I think with the strike duel will get a 2nd chance. It could work as a weekly but it needs some improvement.

Yes, absolutely. Everybody and their grandmother won a single duel and then got knocked out next time. The only way anyone won a duel and pulled down a lot of money was by having their opponent goof up an early question. That’s less about how well you did and more about how unlucky/foolish your opponent was. (q.v. the final duel. That? Had to suck.)

By that metric, someone who won twice demonstrates skill at playing. Out of 19 or 20 duels, how many people won two?

Tim Connolly:
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Mike Greenberg said the exact same thing, the exact same way, when a player was pressed. “Ken, you have been Pressed. You have seven… seconds… max.” Couldn’t he switch it up a bit.
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Oh, they probably wanted to, but notice that he still went through with saying it even after the pressee locked in. Including before he even *started* the sentence. Their big sponsor was Diet… Pepsi… Max. Coincidence? I think not.

- The fact that four player didn’t even make it onto the stage was very unsettling. I’ve heard reports that the taping took upwards of 17 hours to finish. If I was in that gallery, forced to sit there for that length of time, and then not get to play even one game, I would’ve been furious. It’s one thing to go up there and bomb out - it’s another matter entirely to not even get the chance.

- Early on in the week (as a matter of fact, after the second Duel), the top two leaderboard spots were occupied by two players who had won the same number of Duels and the same amount of money. Yet, the two women had just played against each other, and the player who lost was ranked ahead of the player who won. Shouldn’t a tie come down to who beat whom head-to-head?

- Mike Greenberg said the exact same thing, the exact same way, when a player was pressed. “Ken, you have been Pressed. You have seven… seconds… max.” Couldn’t he switch it up a bit.

- Referring everyone by their job and not their last name. Especially weird since their last names were in plain view on the leaderboard.

- Nothing they could’ve done about this one, but that last Duel was totally anti-climactic. As soon as Robert left A exposed and locked it in, I knew it was over. I even went so far as to check the progress bar on the Tivo and sure enough, there was less than five minutes left in the show. (For the record, I knew water was the heaviest - that’s why oil tanker spills are so damaging to wildlife. If the oil was heavier, it would just sink to the ocean floor.)

- And of course, the abuse of cliffhangers. When they ended an entire episode after the two players locked in, the practice just went from pointless to purely ludicrous.

-5 Duels for a Jackpot win (retires after fifth)
-still $5,000 per chip
-Jackpot starts at $250,000
-After a duel win, you either come back or take the $ won already.
-Lose a duel, leave with 10% of winnings. (Won $55,000 over 2 duels, lose 3rd and leave with $5,500.)
-Lose the randomizer, just bring in set contestants.

Put it on Friday nights before 20/20.

1. I agree this would work better as a daytime winner stays on format with the jackpot being for winning 5 duels and the randomizer using the entire audience.

2. Mike Greenberg is naferious for trying to be someone else. On mike and mike he tries too hard to be Chris Russo, on football telecasts he tries too hard to be Howard Cosell and on duel he is just pretending to be Howie Mandel and it drags the show down. Also he uses his radio sign off on TV (”This is Duel on ABC”) this isnt syndie radio, no need for that! Too bad the perfect choice for this show from the ABC family quit 3 months ago (Dan Patrick) However I woulda tapped Kenny Mayne…Mike Greenberg isnt bad but he is very annoying.

3. I still say the screen dynamic doesnt use the strategy element of not knowing how your opponent is doing that well…for one it doesnt cover enough of the platform, I saw at least ONE most likely 3 players use this to their advantage by reading arm movements. I would use twin isolation booths a la 21 OR a rotating platform to better seperate the podiums. Back to back may work well too.

4. The esclating pot gimmick lost its charm after the 3rd day because of the fact that it almost encourages players to play closer to the vest (and raise the pot while staying safe) than to risk it on questions they cleary know. For a pure tourney format a set Mil in prize money is ok with the players banking all remaining chips per win to make a very respectable 10-45k booby prize. In an In it to win it format perhaps some sort of ride or die format with the player’s prize money a la Sale of the Century or 21.

5. The unit of measure for the Leader Box needs to be Money, not duels. You telling me someone who smoked the competition with one chip is less worthy than someone who sweated it out twice to the bones or a shootout?

Final grade B-

Good show, alot more interesting and alot less of a millionaire clone. I think scaling back and going with more of a daytime budget would help, not hurt. How about $1000 per chip going into a base pot of $25,000 to be awarded on winning 5 duels and some staging and getting a better host.

It should come back…It was a fun show and excepting 1 vs 100 It was the best show to come out in a long time.

The Panic Button button effectiveness doesn’t mean you win as you bluntly say. It’s whoever can answer questions quickly and correctly. That’s the only way you win. Speed and accuracy. The Panic Button helps, but it doesn’t mean you win.

I’d appreciate if we could leave the cheap shots at me off, or just email them to me. This is not place, and that was excessively low of you to do. How my disagreeing with your opinions and not outright stating exact reasons match up to my ability as a game show producer is the most insane thing I’ve heard in a while.

As for strategy, I’m making this declaration: Whoever uses the Pressure Button most effectively (highest chips/button presses) will win Duel. Not just A duel, the whole enchilada. It’s SO critical to use that correctly. All Duel math questions should be Pressured, because you can force a mistake that way. And one mistake is all you need to win.

But you couldn’t be bothered to think about any of this, and yet you want to be part of a game show production? Hmm. I’m not so sure. You went into this thinking “Millionaire clone”, so that’s all you got out of it. And that’s a shame.

Again though, at least for it’s ABC prospects, it doesn’t look good. Thursday’s ratings:
A “CSI” rerun, 5.9/10, put CBS on top at 8 p.m. NBC finished second with “Clash of the Choirs,” 5.2/9. “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?,” 4.7/8, was third for FOX, beating the 4.2/7 ABC got from “Duel.”

Beaten by 5th Grader, and again beaten by the American Idol for Choirs.

As for a tournament format, I posted this idea at abc.com:

I’m imagining a 64-player tourney played over 4 weeks and 20 episodes. Each week consists of four heats and a Friday final. Each episode features 3 duels. Two duelists (randomly selected from the gallery) will play the first duel, and two different duelists will play the second. The winners of those two duels will face off in the third duel, and the winner of that duel will take a seat in the winners’ box and come back on Friday.

The stakes will start out relatively small, but will get much higher as the tournament goes on:
Round of 64: $1,000 per chip in the first two duels, $2,000 in the daily final
Sweet 16: $5,000 a chip in the first two duels, $10,000 in the weekly final
Final Four: $25,000 a chip in the first two duels, $50,000 in the championship

What do you think?

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I don’t think that’s a rule; I think that’s math.

Robert’s third duel was the ninth game. When he won it, he had three wins and 14 players left in the gallery. That’s enough people for four winners to come in and possibly beat his finish with three wins each and more money.

If he had won the fourth duel, there would be 13 left, and that’s not enough to produce four better scores to push him out. With a fourth win, the tournament would end before he could be unseated.

It would be nice if the viewers knew all the rules in advance, so it doesn’t look as if they are making them up as they go along. As far as I know, we were never told that a player must quit after four wins and that anyone with four wins is automatically guaranteed to be in the final — until Greenberg mentioned that little rule at the start of the car dealer’s fourth game. I wonder if that was known to the contestants in advance. And I wonder what would happen if five people all finished with four wins.