The Chase’s biggest fan has revealed the heartbreaking reason more contestants than ever are selecting the cautious lower offer on the show.

The ITV quiz show, hosted by Bradley Walsh, pits members of the public against a trivia expert, with the prize fund dependent on how much of a headstart they want on the Chaser.

One enthusiast has watched more than 2,200 episodes and recorded detailed statistics on each one, right down to the prize pots racked up, every contestant and Chaser’s answering accuracy, and their speeds in the Final Chase.

It’s a stats nerd’s Shangri-La and, unsurprisingly, the die-hard viewer, 52, from Kent, has spotted a number of fascinating trends during the show’s 16-year run.

Most stark among them has been a recent preference among contestants to select the most conservative of the Chaser’s three offers in the head-to-head, giving them a greater chance of ‘escaping’ the Chaser but yielding a lower – often much lower – potential prize fund.

And the show’s superfan has explained his depressing theory behind guests’ growing aversion to risk.

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The Chase’s biggest fan has revealed some fascinating insights into the ITV show, hosted by Bradley Walsh (pictured), after years of gathering statistics

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There has been a recent preference among contestants to select the most conservative of the Chaser’s three offers in the head-to-head and our expert has explained the sad reason why

He told MailOnline: ‘One of the trends is when you look at the offers at the table, a lot fewer people now are taking the middle offer.

‘It used to be the case that about half the teams would have four players taking the middle offer but now there’s more people taking the lower offer, a few more are taking the higher offer.

‘We’ve gone through a financial crisis, and I think, partly, people are saying, “if I won £1500, that’s still going to allow me to do something in my life that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to”.

‘That might be part of the reason why more people are taking the lower offer. ITV or the production team could send out a questionnaire afterwards and ask the questions on their reasons for doing this.

‘Sitting at home you can say, “I’m going to go for the higher offer every single time”, but when you’re there under the studio lights, when you stand at the bottom of that table, and you’ve got to look up and there’s that Chaser at the top of it, that must really mess with your mind as to what you feel confident in doing.’

The superfan’s website One Question Shootout is a maze of Chase statistics, compiling numbers on each Chaser, each contestant and each question, as well as observations on ‘how to beat the chaser’ and even continuity errors on the show.

Possessing a handy background in statistics, the Chase-head explained why his fascination with the ITV game show surpasses that of any of its rivals.

‘When I was first watching it, I was interested to see that, unlike a lot of other quiz shows, there were quite a few variables that would affect the outcome at the end of the show,’ he said.

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He said: ‘We’ve gone through a financial crisis, and I think partly people are saying, “if I won £1500, that’s still going to allow me to do something in my life”‘

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It all means that less money is accrued ahead of the Final Chase as contestants give themselves the best chance of being there at the end

‘So it could be which of the Chasers you were facing, how many people were in the final, and then what target those people set. All of those have an impact on whether the Chaser wins or not.

‘Rather than some of the shows where you just have three people, then two, then one, and it’s a final and they might win some money, and it’s always the same 3-2-1.

‘It’s not like The Chase, where it could be five different people at the end and then they’re going up against one of six Chasers. That’s quite a few different combinations to look at.

‘It’s always been done for fun. It’s not a massively time-consuming project. Apart from watching all the episodes, it takes about one hour a week to process it all.’

The accumulation of statistics has not always been so seamless. Indeed, the superfan only started watching the show intently once more than 1,000 episodes had aired, prompting the mother of all binge sessions.

In recent years, fellow fans of the series have increasingly taken to social media to slam dim contestants, with clips of farcical incorrect answers regularly going viral.

And our Chase aficionado says that fewer guests are winning than ever before.

‘It looks like it has got tougher for the contestants with the Chasers becoming more formidable. Across the first 10 series, Chasers won 74.3 per cent of episodes, but for the episodes since then it has risen to 78.6 per cent.

The Chase contestant struggles and piles on ‘pass’ answers

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The superfan’s website One Question Shootout is a maze of Chase statistics, compiling numbers on each Chaser, each contestant and each question

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In recent years, fellow fans of the show have increasingly taken to social media to slam dim contestants, with clips of farcical incorrect answers regularly going viral

‘When you look at the average cash builder scores, there is a slight decline. It’s averaging £200 less per cash builder than it used to be.

‘I don’t think it would be a statistically significant decrease, but it’s just one of those things where, whatever show you’re watching, people are more likely to tweet or go on social media and moan about it. Very rarely are they going to praise something.

‘A contestant would have to be exceptional for people on The Chase hashtag to actually praise them, but as soon as one person gets what they deem an easy question wrong, 100 people are on Twitter calling them an idiot or something.

‘It’s just human behaviour, really.’

According to the stats guru, the Chasers are getting better rather than the contestants getting worse.

‘Looking at all the daytime episodes since The Chase began in 2009, Anne [Heggerty] has the best win rate of the Chasers – 79.9 per cent,’ he said.

‘Although if we just look at results from the last 5 years or so, Paul [Sinha] has the best win rate – an amazing 85.0 per cent.

‘I know, for instance, that Paul has put in a lot of work to develop his quizzing skills. Maybe four or five years ago, he was actually the British Quiz champion and there are some seriously good quizzers in Britain so that’s quite an achievement.

Hilarious interaction between Bradley Walsh and guest on The Chase

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According to the stats guru, the Chasers (pictured L-R: Shaun Wallace, Darragh Ennis, Anne Hegerty, Paul Sinha, Jenny Ryan and Mark Labbett) are getting better

‘You just need to get one of them on a bad day, really.’

The expert clearly respects the Chasers – he even sent Mark Labbett and Paul cricket scorecard-style summaries of their stats although the latter sadly did not acknowledge his – but for him one man ties the whole thing together.

‘Bradley is such an experienced professional that it probably comes to him now so naturally,’ he said.

‘When you go to the recordings, he has a longer chat with contestants. He makes the contestants feel at ease and supports them during the show.

‘One of the shows I went to was when Basil Brush was on and there were some exchanges on that which never would have made it pre-watershed. He interacts with the audience there for the celebrity ones.

‘But it’s completely his show, and he knows exactly what to do with it. And I think in the past, a couple of the Chasers have said they will keep doing the show as long as Bradley does, and they can’t see anyone else being able to do it if he doesn’t do it.

‘I can’t think who else would would do it.’

Asking the Chase’s biggest fan how he’d change it is a bit like floating the idea of three rooks to Garry Kasparov, but amazingly he has come up with a tweak to his beloved show.

He’s quick to shut down most of the wild revamps floated on social media, but he thinks that bargaining for an extra player in the Final Chase could be a worthy added variable to the already multi-faceted quiz.

Contestant on The Chase makes huge mistake on first question

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The expert clearly respects the Chasers – he even sent Mark and Paul cricket scorecard-style summaries of their stats – but for him Bradley ties the whole thing together

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What would our superfan change? He would give contestants the opportunity to sacrifice some prize money in return for an extra body in the Final Chase

‘Some people have suggested that you take home what you put in, rather than dividing it equally, or that if someone takes the higher offer, they should get a bigger share,’ he said.

‘But that goes against the idea of the show as a team game where everyone is treated equally.’

Instead, he suggested: ‘I did quite like in the Christmas Special where there were only two players who got through to the final, but they brought someone back. So I think they took £3,000 off the pot, and then they had a third player in the final.

‘If they wanted to do that in the regular show, then maybe halve the pot to bring back another player. It depends. If someone’s got through with £60,000 in the pot, halving it is quite a big chunk.

‘But they could come up with a formula or just do it on an ad hoc basis, giving the surviving players the opportunity to buy someone back.’