This week's game is Fish Shop which is a revamp of Fruit Stand.
In 4 rounds players compete as sellers of 3 types of seafood: hairtail, mackerel and squid.
First players select which fish they're gonna sell using tickets. Each ticket allows player to sell one fish in 1 round. Player can put forth several tickets to sell several fishes of the same kind or one of each type of fish or any other combination. Or they can opt not to spend any ticket skipping round altogether.
Once number of fish sold and who sells them is determined, players start bidding. They offer their prices to dealer privately from $1 to $5 in integer increments.
Player that offers cheapest price for that fish gets all earnings for that fish (number of fish sold * final price). If there are several players with the same low price they split earnings between themselves.
Each person has one chance to use either Secret or Check ability exactly once. Secret obscures all players' earnings for one fish for 1 round. Check allows for player to see his or her total earnings up to that moment.
After 4 rounds player who earned the most garnets wins and one who earned the least — loses. If winner gains $30 they get a garnet, if $40 — 2 garnets.
This type of game fits Kyunghoon, who won Fruit Stand last time by betraying his team. So when he announces he's gonna go ahead and sell some squids people understandably are not in the rush to join him. Kyunghoon feels he can use his image of betrayer to his advantage and hope there won't be many people joining his team which would leave him with no competition to set as high price as he wants. However 4 people join squids each of them thinking there won't any other people willing to go to the same team as Kyunghoon.
Dongmin and Kyungran are not selling anything, saving their tickets.
Yoonsun is using 2 tickets to sell hairtails. Junseok once again goes against the flow and says he will go $1 for hairtails no matter what. This forces all hairtails to go for 1$ to not to be excluded completely.
Mackerels and squids are still up for contention. People obviously are all saying they're gonna for 5$ but there are several pairs of people who plan to undercut others for $4 and $3.
Junseok's hairtails go for $1 and mackerels and squids are obscured by Secrets. Everyone blames Kyunghoon but he swears he didn't do it.
In round 2 people are consciously avoiding both Junseok and Kyunghoon' choices and a lot of people are grouped into mackerel team that neither of troublemakers have chosen.
Kyungran takes charge of mackerel sellers and convinces everyone there to agree on $3. Jinho and Dr. Yeonseung and the rest are convinced and committed to it. Later Dongmin talks to Kyungran and tells her that she shouldn't have done that because his and Hyunmin's plan is to keep undercutting everyone for $1 while pushing Hyunmin for victory and she should do the same if she wants to earn anything. Kyungran has no choice but to also offer $1. Dongmin tells Jinho to offer $1, but doesn't give him any explanation. Not wanting to betray the other mackerel sellers, Jinho makes the honorable choice and goes for $3, despite knowing he likely won't earn any money.
Hairtails and squids go for $1 because of Junseok. Mackerels are obscured, but everyone knows they went for $1.
Kyungran is upset that she even if unknowingly became a reason people got no points. She especially feels bad for Jinho and Yeonseung who she thinks got little to no points in both rounds. Dongmin convinces her to stay put and says that they are going to try to save Jinho at least.
In rounds 3 and 4 all fish sells for $1. To help Jinho Dongmin and Kyungran knowingly let themselves be undercut to give him more money but they're not sure if that will be enough.
Kyungran apologizes to Yeonseung and he seemingly has resigned to his Deathmatch fate.
Results of the game are revealed and...
Dr. Yeonseung is in first place and Hyunmin is last.
Flashback. Outside of Dongmin+Hyunmin pair who planned to undercut everyone else there were also two other secret pairs who had the very same strategy: Yuhyun+Kyunghyun and Yeonseung+Junseok.
Yeonseung+Junseok have the most well thought out plan. Junseok's role is not to allow Yeonseung's competitors to earn more than $1 per fish so he keeps loudly proclaiming that he will go $1 every time which forces everyone else to do the same limiting their profits. While Dr. Yeonseung in other team keeps undercutting others for $1 while pretending to commit to $4 (for Hyunmin) and $3 (for Kyungran) and even pretends to be sad when people are mistaken that he is getting no money and is dead last.
Yeonseung mapped out a diagram for Junseok showing which fishes to mark for $1 on each round, while Yeonseung will be trying to make some money on other fishes away from him.
The outcome of the game was decided in round 1 where Dr. Yeonseung got a fraction of points more than Kyunghoon and all other rounds went for $1 for all fishes because most active players were doing the very same "undercut everyone" strategy.
Hyunmin who got greedy and tried to sell their fishes for $3 in the first round was left out of the sale in the first round completely and he loses the main match because of it.
Winner Yeonseung can finally drop the mask and high-fives his secret partner Junseok. Everyone are blindsided by the final result and Dongmin even thinks there is a malfunction with the monitor. Hyunmin goes from thinking he's #1 to the loser of the main match.
Hyunmin can't pick neither Yeonseung nor Junseok because they won the game so he picks lawyer Yoonsun for Deathmatch.
They are playing Same Numbers Hunt which is second game from season 3 finale. Game has been tweaked since then, so with each successful answer dealers reveal a tile on a board starting from top left.
Yoonsun bases her game on it and instead of memorizing top rows like Hyunmin, she concentrates on bottom two rows because with time top 2 rows are going to be shown anyway.
She takes several points in the beginning and shows a considerable resistance. After some time, they have seen all tiles and the game is reduced to who presses the buzzer faster and then manages to make up the equation in 5 seconds. Younger, sharper Hyunmin starts to overtake Yoonsun.
Yoonsun protests that the way dealer unveils the number is giving unfair advantage to Hyunmin because of the way they stand Hyunmin sees the number earlier. Dealer addresses the problem and starts to flip hints papers vertically.
However that doesn't help Yoonsun and she still loses and is eliminated.
Tropes:
- Being Good Sucks: Jinho despite warned that there will be a betrayal in round 2 still goes for $3 on mackerels out of obligation fully knowing it's a losing move.
- Break the Haughty: Hyunmin spends most of the main match thinking he got everything figured out and that he's in first place but results of the game are in and he's in last place and loses the game.
- Enemy Mine: Yeonseung and Junseok who before that had very little interaction secretly join forces and win the game in a very impressive way.
- Flock of Wolves: most people in the main match were pretending to put in $3, $4, $5, rusing others to do the same while actually nearly always selling for $1.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Kyungran in round 2 when she delivers a "speech of peace and harmony" hoping all 8 mackerel sellers will be able to go for $3 and not undercut each other.
