Laban o bawi... game ka na ba?

That was a particularly exciting edition of Laban o Bawi on Eat, Bulaga! yesterday – an afternoon that had P3 million at stake in just a wink.

From the beginning of the game, this rather short guy from Nueva Ecija named Fructuoso Austria stood out from among the pink-shirted contestants (they’re made to wear a certain color for a particular day).

The guy didn’t seem to be particularly brilliant or probably didn’t try to project himself as one. His answers to the questions asked by game masters Joey de Leon and Anjo Yllana at the start, in fact, all looked like chamba as we would say in street lingo. But in the final round, when Joey and Anjo asked for the English translation of hamog, this contestant immediately blurted out "dew," which was the correct answer. That sort of dispelled suspicions that he had been relying merely on chamba.

But then, only he can tell if he really knew the answers to questions thrown his way – or if all those were just plain lucky guesses.

What I am sure of, however, is the fact that Lady Luck was his seat mate in the bus on his way to Manila (He said that he arrived the night before).

The fact that he was able to reach the final round only meant that luck was on his side. Why, just the other day, also in Laban o Bawi, my heart bled for this old man who obviously was well-read and knew most of the answers to the questions in the game, but still lost in the face-off. Well, as the joke goes, "Some are lucky, some are don’t."

The lucky streak was even passed on to the home contestant (who joined via texting) because when the roulette was turned to determine how much the text partner was bringing home, the wheel stopped at double (a rare occurrence – the Eat, Bulaga! hosts themselves admitted). Since the studio player was playing for P1Million, the text partner was bound to get a whopping P2 million.

And when it was time for this lucky Novo Ecijano to arrange the Laban o Bawi boxes, he ignored the rest and concentrated on two and rightfully so because one of the two boxes he worked on, for some uncanny reason, really contained the crucial Number 1 digit (Could be P1 million or P10,000 – no one knew).

Feeling lucky (who wouldn’t if everything seemed to have been going well up to that point?), he said no to Anjo Yllana and Allan K’s offer to withdraw (bawi) in exchange for P100,000 (P200,000 for the text partner).

Brave boy, he held on to the very end and chose laban. Unfortunately, the game took a little bit too long and Lady Luck must have gotten worried about missing the bus and left ahead without him. (And I don’t know if the fact that it was the 13th of August yesterday had any bearing at all on this).

It turned out that he wasn’t playing for P1 million after all, but "only" for P10,000. He should have just opted for P100,000. But then, that’s how it is in this life and I don’t blame the guy for counting on his "luck" up to the very end. Who would have known that Lady Luck would desert him at the most crucial moment?

At least, he got to bring home P10,000. And P10,000 is P10,000 any way you look at it. But that didn’t seem like any consolation to our Novo Ecijano, who was practically slumped on the floor at the end of yesterday’s Eat, Bulaga! edition.

Well, you win some, you lose some. The real winner was the Eat, Bulaga! audience who had fun (although in a perverse way, don’t you think?) watching that edition of Laban o Bawi. It provided thrill and excitement to what otherwise was a dull early afternoon on local television.