How the pot created the season as it is.

(To avoid any confusion, I will be referring to all US Mole shows with Season 1 being the 2001 season and the current season on Netflix as Season 7.)

I, like others on the subreddit, have felt that how the cast has been playing has been... less that fun. It's certainly catchy and dramatic, but it's more of short lived moments of tension rather than a long con drama. And it's not something unique to me, plenty of people have brought it up.

Before anything else, I don't really want to fault the players. While I have thoughts on how they played, I think many of us can agree that they're playing the game presented to them, and for better or for worse the game informed them to play in a way that isn't quite what we may have been hoping for.

Specifically: The Pot and Exemptions. It seems that the pot is set up in such a way that, to a degree, player actions are justified to play fast and loose with it.

The belief is that the Producers do not want the winner to walk away with a small pot size, so will adjust later pot sizes if someone drains it.

And immediately, we see one of the more notable changes. Let me break down how the pot has been handled across the seasons:

​

||Episodes|Wagers/Drains/Loss from the Pot|Penalties| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Season 1|9|0|0| |Season 2|13|2|4| |Season 3|6|1|0| |Season 4|7|1|0| |Season 5|11|0|0| |Season 6|10|1|0| |Season 7|10 (Currently at 8)|10|0|

Couple of notes:

1. These are only the instances where money was removed from the pot. It is possible that there are more instances where money could have been removed, but wasn't. I am looking at the wikipedia articles that track this, but am not itemizing every single instance. Someone else can prove me wrong. 2. Season 2 is an odd season overall for having several instances of money removed from the pot. Potentially because it had the most episodes? They were still figuring things out? 3. More money was lost by wagering in S2, but there were more instances of rules violations with smaller penalties and a warning that future violations would go from $5K to $20K. 4. The odd instance is that one of the challenges in S2 asked 2 players to specifically break rules. The penalty was $2K and I kept it as penalty in the chart above because they describe it as such. 5. Eight of S7's instances were due to the movie night, with each contestant taking $5K away.

Across the first 5 seasons, collectively $97,000 was lost from the pot. Season 6 saw $25,000 (out of, I believe, a $26,500 pot) and Season 7 has seen $124,500 taken from the pot. Yes, Season 7 has taken more out of the pot than *all previous seasons combined.*

Now, really, it comes down to 2 moments in S7: The Countdown in ep2 and The Auction in ep5. Here we have players given the opportunity to bid on exemptions with the pot directly. And there is no cap. It should also be noted that, as I have said, S6 also had this happen with the pot nearly being drained in that instance as well.

All instances of money being removed from the pot prior to S6 have had caps. And even the largest values ($25K) did not represent the entirety of the pot (S4 had the closest with $25K being deducted from a $41K pot). The two uncapped wagers make up $84.5K of the $97K lost.

However, it seems that there may be a trick up production's sleeve. The money given out in challenges may not be a fixed amount. S6 was a rather low earning season, with $101,500 earned out a potential $250K. That would make it both the lowest amount won by a contestant and the smallest potential pot. Though, it is worth pointing out that, by ratio, it's not the worst:

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||Money Won|Possible Winnings|Ratio of Pot Won| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Season 1|$510,000|$1,035,000|49.3%| |Season 2|$636,000|$1,120,000|56.8%| |Season 3|$233,000|$418,000|55.7%| |Season 4|$222,000|$652,000|34.0%| |Season 5|$420,000|$853,000|49.2%| |Season 6|$101,500|$250,000|40.6%|

The executive producer of S6, Chris Culvenor, had [an interview and the prize earnings came up](https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2022/10/mole-netflix-chris-culvenor-interview/).

>... > >We probably knew that they wouldn’t necessarily hit that max amount, but we probably thought they might have been a bit higher than they ended up with. People are always playing the game. **People are always sabotaging; the mole is obviously sabotaging.** > >So it was a great learning experience for us as producers, **and I think it’s something we’ll re-look at in season two. More than any other show, this show is a hard one to map out from a prize potential because you’ve always got people working against you.**

I think they saw that there was something a little "disappointing" about S6, and wanted to adjust it for S7. However, they kept the element of uncapped wagering in play and just upped the monetary value of the pot.

We are currently at a pot size of $85,000 out of a potential $501,000 thousand. *That is 17% of the total pot size, with 2 episodes left.* How are they going to fix that?

In ep1 of S7, the max possible earnings was $35K. Ep2 saw $35K drained, leaving $10K in the pot with a potential max earnings of $50K. Ep3, however, saw the Heist Mission potentially hand out $20K and the Fortune Mission hand out $50K. The first two episodes had very small earning values ($35K and $15K), but the next several episodes suddenly ramp it up ($70K, $55K, *$115K*, $60K, $80K, $71K). They are adjusting the challenges to a degree, especially if the pot gets very low.

They're not anticipating a 50% ratio, but are trying to nudge into interesting situations. More sabotage, more drama, more money lost. They adjust the pot to make it so it's still worthwhile (I mean, I won't be upset if I walk away with $100K), but after both major drains, we saw opportunities for larger returns.

Now, unless the producers have the final 2 episodes being $100K challenges and they all work together to perfectly achieve that, this will likely be the lowest ratio to be won by the show. However, players can probably see that the pot is probably meant to be around what was won last season, $100K. Probably closer to $125K.

Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing (again, I would be happy to have $100K), but as I said earlier, it leads the players anticipating not $501,000 but essentially a fifth of that. The pot going to 0 is alarming because climbing back up to $100K is hard when people are being selfish. But if you anticipate that the pot will self correct, you can abuse it.

Hannah pretty much anticipated this when she and Tony were draining the pot, there will be more challenges and the pot will be replenished. And the next episode saw the possible earnings exceed the previous episodes greatly. She is right. On some level, it will adjust. She didn't lose $35K, because the pot was going to be filled up to get close to $100K in no time. >!Neesh!< emptying the pot sees it at the highest it has been all season 3 episodes later.

And if you, on some level, understand that then the pot is just a resource. Playing selfishly, drawing suspicion, sabotaging, etc are all valid because losing money is pretty much meaningless. Yeah, sure, the pot is meaningless if you are eliminated, but Exemptions mean you can go far by just being selfish.

Exemptions are weird. I don't think they have showed up any more often than in previous seasons, and the claiming of them doesn't look that wildly different. But the moment an Exemption is on the table, everyone treats it as the most important thing to get. And unfortunately, S6 and S7 has made it so that Exemptions are costly.

Previously, Exemptions could be earned doing a wide array of things. But at worst, they would just negate the earnings of a challenge. Sometimes, it would just be something and individual could do, with no real risk of losing anything (potentially adding even more money to the pot), and sometimes they could be given up for money into the pot. Sometimes, you just randomly get it.

But S7 has made the game into an Exemption competition. An exemption (or correction) is almost always at the cost of money to the pot. In fact, the only time it hasn't been is in the last episode thus far. >!Hannah!< could, in theory, earn money for the pot *and* an exemption, with no loss.

And ultimately, I can't really fault anyone. The show, at this point, seems to be adjusting challenges enough to make it so that winning seems notable, but can lead to dramatic moments with short lived tension.

It means that right way to play is not to build up the pot as a team, but instead play selfishly. Draw attention to yourself, fight for exemptions, and sabotage to throw others off. There are no incentives for working together because the pot can just be replenished easily.

They're all fine people, I am sure, but watching them play is annoying because while everyone is trying to figure out who the Mole is, everyone is acting like the Mole all the time. The Mole, in theory, could have done very little work this season with how much money was just intentionally wagered away. Yes, everyone is going to come under suspicion. Yes, the ploy of "I will do sus thing to draw attention and misdirect" isn't new. But S7, especially, has just really muddied the waters with how much everyone is intentionally sabotaging.

The earlier seasons struck a balance between all these elements, with the pot making it interesting and motivating people to work together. But S7 especially has really done a number on the meta of the game by incentivizing selfish behaviors.

Put another way, there are so many times this season where I think "It's crazy how there are so many people who are not the Mole."

I am kind of reaching the point where, when the Mole is revealed, I will be more surprised by who isn't the Mole.

And like I said, I can't really blame them. If you win the game and the pot is always going to be self adjusting, you're not incentivized to do much else either than be selfish about it.

Previous seasons had individuals challenged to add more money to the pot all on their own. No loss to it, just an opportunity to add just a bit more. Two of the wagers from earlier seasons were specifically around coming together as a team and making a decision.

Now? You have the opportunity to drain the pot to nothing. You rarely have opportunities to individually contribute to the whole. It's about being the one that wins, not working together to figure it all out.

One of the penalties in S2 was for a contestant ripping up the journal of another contestant (I wish the journals were more important, again). Now? Well, here's an exemption and $20K from the pot taken away. Off to the next challenge.