But how does "C" know, with such absolute certainty, that A and B would bet it all?

I have seen the reverse happen many times. The two high scorers "fight" it out, loose, but not both end with zero. The person in third place, just needs to gain enough cash to beet their now, much lower, non-zero score.

My amusing story would always involve Colonial Penn Insurance.

When two high score contestants fight it out in Final, and loose, the result is not always zero for both. Randy was simply trying to get as much as possible, to cover a loss by the other two that didn't result in zero. Though, true, this time that strategy didn't work, but I have seen it work in the past.

I guess it was not a three way tie (hay, they all ended up with the same score), but rather a three way loss.

I thought this related pretty well to the fact that by this time, he was wearing only underwear. If one was truly the last person, why bother with still wearing clothes at all (especially in AZ)? I understand this is regular TV, and his constant nudity would not be allowed, so just underwear was a reasonable…

Is Colossus a project of Forbin?