The research examines high-stakes strategic choices using more than 40 years of data from the American TV game show, ‘The Price Is Right’. In every episode, contestants play a simple sequential game of perfect information for which the optimal strategy can be found through backward induction. The research finds that contestants systematically deviate from the unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium and from the equilibrium of an agent quantal response model. Omission bias cannot explain the deviations from optimality. Instead, the observed behavior is well captured by a model of limited foresight, where a sizable fraction of the contestants myopically considers the next stage of the game only. In line with learning, the quality of contestants' choices improves over the course of the sample period.