Have you ever watched a game show and thought about what your strategy would be if you were given the opportunity to be on it? Well, The Price Is Right fans have, and they’ve also managed to figure out how to beat one of the show’s hardest games, 3 Strikes. The game is famous for how often it trips up contestants, so much so that it is consistently on a losing streak. So here’s what fans have picked up on to help change that.

The 3 Strikes game debuted on February 12th, 1976, and has been a part of the show since. It’s a pricing game in which contestants play to win a brand-new car, all they have to do is guess the price. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. The contestants are made to choose baseballs out of a bag. Five of them have numbers on them, and three have Xs. If the contestant picks out a numbered ball, they must put it in the spot they believe it to fit in the price of the car. If they’re right, the ball is discarded, but if they’re wrong the ball goes back into the bag. If the contestant draws one of the balls that has a red X on it, a horn sounds and the ball is discarded. If all three strike balls are pulled, the game ends and the contestant loses their chance at winning the new car.

What is the 3 Strikes Game on ‘The Price Is Right’?

3 Strikes is an extremely difficult game to win since there’s no way of knowing what ball you’re pulling. Or do you? On closer examination of episodes, fans have noticed that there may actually be a way to tell what balls are being pulled from the bag. While it may seem impossible to figure out which balls are being pulled, one fan spoke to The U.S Sun and shared their theory on how to beat the game.

“This game has a flaw that can make the win rate sky rocket. The non strike balls have numbers on them that are taped on. You need to feel the ball for a number before lifting it out.”

If you pay close attention, you can indeed see that the balls have numbers taped to them, so it is possible that contestants can feel around in the bag and avoid the strike balls. The balls weren’t always designed like this though. In fact, they didn’t use to be balls at all. They used to be wooden discs with the numbers and strikes painted on them. They changed from discs to baseballs in 2018.

Another fan theorized that the contestants could mark the balls when placing them back in the bag.

“The only concern I have with… letting the contestant place the balls in the bag themselves is that they could somehow mark the balls…to make the strikes easier to identify.”

Though this feels unlikely since the show would surely prevent this overt display of cheating. Feeling the balls for numbers though? That’s a bit harder to catch, since the contestants do dig around in the bag for a moment in hopes of pulling out a non-strike ball. The Price Is Right likely has practices in place to avoid contestants being able to identify the balls, especially now that the theory has become so public. But it is still a worthy catch by fans that could potentially break the game’s famous losing streak. The Price Is Right is available to stream on YouTube TV..