Card Sharks/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Many fans love the Theme Tune, which was recycled from Goodson-Todman's earlier game |Double Dare.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming/Tear Jerker: The final episode of the CBS version with Bob Eubanks getting teary near the end. See it here. (It starts at 1:24)
  • Fan Nickname / Fun with Acronyms: The 2001 version has been referred to as "CASINO", or "Card Sharks In Name Only". Others refer to it as "Card Guppies".
  • Moment of Awesome: Only two people won the maximum Money Cards payout of $28,800 during the NBC run, one of whom was Norma Brown. The other, Johnny, did so on one of the 1978 pilots (he returned in 1979)...but given that it was a pilot, there's a good chance that his perfect run was cold-decked. (Or if it wasn't, he might not have been paid.)
  • Older Than They Think: The concept of a game show based on Acey-Deucey dates back to the bonus round of the unsold 1975 pilot King of the Hill, which Goodson-Todman staffer Chester Feldman worked on. The Money Hill, which had absolutely nothing to do with the wordplay-based maingame, was basically an Obvious Beta of the Money Cards.
  • Special Effects Failure: On at least one occasion, the mechanical freeze bars in the Perry version failed to work, so the hostesses "froze it by hand". The Eubanks/Rafferty version kept this as a permanent fixture.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
    • In late 1988, the car game changed from a "blind draw" using up to four Jokers and a line of seven cards to the contestant having to guess how many of the week's group of 10 audience members answered a question by using a diamond-shaped slider (an idea previously used in Goodson-Todman's 1979-80 game Mindreaders). Giving the correct answer awarded the car, while being one away on either side earned $500; needless to say, the car was won far less often in those last few months.
    • Near-unanimous opinion on the 2001 revival, although a 1996 attempt strayed even farther from the established format.
  • What an Idiot!: One male contestant on the Rafferty version was given the question "We asked 100 men, do you think Madonna is sexy?" The contestant, not knowing who Madonna was, said that "if I don't think he's sexy, I don't think most men would either".