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| Gambit | |
|---|---|
 Logo used from 1980 to 1981. | |
| Also known as | Las Vegas Gambit |
| Directed by | Jerome Shaw[1] |
| Presented by | Wink Martindale |
| Starring | Elaine Stewart[1] Beverly Malden Lee Menning[1] |
| Narrated by | Kenny Williams |
| Theme music composer | Mort Garson (Gambit) Stan Worth (Las Vegas Gambit)[1] |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producers | Merrill Heatter Bob Quigley |
| Producer | Robert Noah[1] |
| Production locations | CBS Television City Hollywood, California (1972–76) Tropicana Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada (1980–81) |
| Running time | 22–26 minutes |
| Production company | Merrill Heatter-Bob Quigley Productions |
| Original release | |
| Network | CBS |
| Release | September 4, 1972 (1972-09-04) – December 10, 1976 (1976-12-10) |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | October 27, 1980 (1980-10-27) – November 27, 1981 (1981-11-27) |
| Related | |
| Catch 21 Gambit(UK version) | |
Gambit is an American television game show based on the card gameblackjack, created byHeatter-Quigley Productions. The show originally ran onCBS from September 4, 1972, to December 10, 1976, and was recorded atCBS Television City in Studios 31, 33, 41, and 43.[2] On October 27, 1980,NBC revived the show asLas Vegas Gambit, as a replacement forThe David Letterman Show, and kept it on its schedule until November 27, 1981. As the title implied, this edition ofGambit was recorded inLas Vegas at theTropicana Las Vegas. Both versions were hosted byWink Martindale and announced byKenny Williams.Elaine Stewart (co-creator Merrill Heatter's wife) was the card dealer/co-hostess for the CBS version, while Beverly Malden filled this role for the first half ofLas Vegas Gambit, and was later replaced by Lee Menning.
Another Merrill Heatter-produced, blackjack-based quiz show,Catch 21, began airing onGSN in 2008.
The object of the main game was similar toblackjack, with two married couples attempting to build a hand as close to 21 as possible without going over (busting). Number cards (2 through 10) were worth their face value, face cards (Kings, Queens, Jacks) counted as 10, and Aces counted as either 1 or 11.
Martindale asked a series of toss-up questions, usually multiple-choice or true-false. The first couple who buzzed-in and correctly answered the question won control of the top card from a deck of oversized playing cards. An incorrect answer awarded control of the card to the couple's opponents.
Once a couple gained control of a card, they had the option of adding it to their own hand or passing it to their opponents. The first card of the game was revealed before the question was asked. Each subsequent card was presented face-down and was turned up once the couple in control decided who should receive it. After a couple received any card (either by choice or by having it passed to them) that put them in the lead and could potentially bust with another card, they could elect tofreeze, preventing them from receiving any more cards. Freezing was not permitted when the two couples were tied. If one couple froze, the other continued answering questions and received a card after each one until they either missed a question, busted, or surpassed the frozen total.
A couple could win the game in one of four ways:
Each game was worth $100. The first team to win two out of three games won the match and advanced to the bonus round. If time ran out (which would be indicated by a bell), then the game would resume the following episode.
For the NBC pilot only, the couples took turns answering questions, each of which was presented as a clue leading to the correct response. The couple in control heard a clue and then hit their buzzer to freeze the "Answer Machine," an electronic screen that would highlight spaces to represent the number of words/letters in the answer and fill in some of them. A correct response within five seconds awarded control of the top card from the deck, while a miss gave it to the opponents. The number and positions of the filled-in letters were randomly determined, and couples could offer multiple guesses within the time limit.
For the entire original series and the first half ofLas Vegas Gambit, the winning couple played the Gambit Bonus Board. They faced a large game board with 21 numbered flip-panels (18 numbered video screens onLas Vegas Gambit), each concealing a prize. After selecting a number, the couple received the prize behind it and a card was added to their hand from the top of the deck.
The couple could end the bonus game by doing any of the following:
Throughout the CBS run, champions remained on the show until they either lost in the main game or reached/exceeded the $25,000 winnings limit that the network had in place for its game shows at the time.
From 1972 to 1975, the show featured an annual promotion in which the first couple to get a two-card 21 (an Ace and a face card/10) in the bonus round won either $200 a week for a year (totaling $10,400) or a flat $10,000, depending on the year.
Special awards were occasionally hidden among the numbers, including:
For the NBC pilot only, the winning couple played a bonus round called "6-Ball Gambit." They were given six balls to roll on a table styled similarly to aSkee-Ball alley, set with holes that could award various prizes as follows.
Once a couple won any prize, it was theirs to keep. The round ended once all six balls had landed in "Dead," "Ace, "Jack," or prize holes.
For the second half of the NBC version, the Gambit Board was replaced with the Big Numbers round from the earlier Heatter-Quigley productionHigh Rollers.
The rules of the game were the same as onHigh Rollers, where the champion couple tried to remove the numbers 1 through 9 from a game board by rolling two dice. After each roll, the couple had to choose one or more numbers still on the board that exactly added up to the total showing on the dice; those numbers were then removed and taken out of play. Rolling doubles at any point earned the couple an insurance marker, which enabled them to continue playing if they made a roll that could not be completed with the numbers on the board. If they made such a roll and did not have an insurance marker, or if they removed every number except 1, the round ended.
Removing all nine numbers awarded the Gambit Galaxy, a jackpot which included $5,000 cash and a collection of prizes that increased in value every time it was not won. If the couple failed to complete the round, they won $100 for each number they had removed.
CBS originally airedGambit at 11 a.m/10 Central, where it defeated NBC'sSale of the Century. It also easily beatAlex Trebek's American debut program,The Wizard of Odds, which NBC began in July 1973. On April 1, 1974 (the same dayNow You See It with Jack Narz premiered), CBS moved the show back a half-hour to 10:30/9:30, where it faced NBC's aging quizJeopardy! with Art Fleming, just over a full decade before Trebek would host a revival of that show himself. NBC movedJeopardy! to the afternoons on July 1 and placed one of the many Bill Cullen-Bob Stewart collaborations,Winning Streak in the slot. That show's weakness made late 1974 the high point ofGambit's original daytime run at least in the Nielsen ratings.
On January 6, 1975, NBC replacedWinning Streak withWheel of Fortune, which took a chunk out ofGambit's audience. On the same day, NBC expanded the soap operaAnother World to sixty minutes and the impact it had on the ratings ofThe Price Is Right, which aired at 3:00 pm, forced CBS to shuffle its schedule again on August 18, 1975, and movePrice back to the morning schedule, which it had left in 1973.Gambit moved back to 11:00 am, bumpingTattletales back to the afternoon after two months and remained there until late 1977, when it returned to the morning until its March 1978 cancellation. At that slot,Gambit initially had to go against its sister Heatter-Quigley showHigh Rollers, also hosted by Alex Trebek. However, NBC decided to air a sixty-minute edition ofWheel beginning on December 1 with the second half competing withGambit. Furthermore, NBC leftWheel at 11:00 am when the experiment ended seven weeks later in January 1976 and it continued to eat away atGambit in the ratings. The network canceled the four-year-old game two weeks before Christmas 1976 and replaced it with Goodson-Todman'sDouble Dare with Trebek taking the hosting position afterHigh Rollers came to an end on June 11, 1976.
After its cancellation, repeats ofGambit were later seen on KHJ-TV Channel 9 (nowKCAL-TV) inLos Angeles, starting in fall 1977 and running until spring 1978.
Along with Goodson-Todman'sBlockbusters (which aired immediately after), the retitledLas Vegas Gambit returned on October 27, 1980, as one of two replacements for the short-livedThe David Letterman Show (Letterman did a tribute/parody ofGambit to conclude his last program). Stan Worth composed the theme for this version, with Beverly Malden serving as card dealer before she was replaced by Lee Menning. Producer Robert Noah, director Jerome Shaw, and announcer Kenny Williams all carried over from the original.[1]
Despite limited competition (reruns ofThe Jeffersons on CBS, and local or syndicated programming onABC affiliates), the revival failed to draw the ratings of its predecessor and was cancelled after just over a year, ending on November 27, 1981.
Both the original version andLas Vegas Gambit were hosted byWink Martindale, withKenny Williams, announcer of many other Heatter-Quigley shows, as announcer.[1] Jerome Shaw was thedirector of both versions, and Robert Noah theproducer.[1]Elaine Stewart was the card dealer on the original version, while Beverly Malden served in this role on early episodes ofLas Vegas Gambit before being replaced by Lee Menning.[1]Mort Garson composed the original version's theme, and Stan Worth composed the theme toLas Vegas Gambit.[1]
Gambit creatorMerrill Heatter developed a similar show,Catch 21, which premiered on GSN July 21, 2008 withAlfonso Ribeiro as host andMikki Padilla as dealer.[3]
A good chunk of the series is considered lost despite CBS having abandoned their wiping process around the same time.The Joker's Wild which premiered the same day as Gambit (September 4, 1972) also had a majority of its episodes lost to time until the first two seasons of the CBS run were found. Five episodes of the CBS version from 1973 are held by theUCLA Film and Television Archive.[4][5][6][7][8] The pilot for an unsold 1990 revival, hosted byBob Eubanks, is also present within the same collection. Several episodes including the CBS finale exist onYouTube and Dailymotion, with some (including the NBC Gambit pilot, some episodes of Las Vegas Gambit, and some episodes with the finale of the CBS Gambit) being posted byWink Martindale himself on his channel (which he ran until his death in 2025).[9][10] Reruns of the CBS series aired onWPIX-TV andKHJ-TV in 1976 and 1977, withRhodes Productions handling distribution, but it is not clear what happened to these episodes afterward.[11]