Gold Coast's Recent Drawing - Basic Strategy

I wanted to use the Gold Coast's recent drawing as an exercise in developing a basic strategy. I know it's really basic but in the unlikely event I did get called, I wanted to have something besides my gut to fall back on.

Here are the basic rules:

If you're selected, you get a deck of pre-shuffled cards and are offered a cut.

A card is shown. You now have $250.

You can take the $250 or choose that the next card will be higher or lower than the card showing. Aces are always high.

If you choose correctly you have $500. Repeat to $750, $1000, $2000, and $4000.

If you choose incorrectly at any point, you leave with $250. If it's a push you leave with the prize at the current level.

I decided that a push was as good as a win in this case, so I calculated the percentages for "higher or push" and "lower or push."

Here's my spreadsheet:



I figured that my strategy would be if the percentage of the risk/reward plus the best choice for higher or lower totaled > 100% it was a good bet. The main problem decisions (besides the feelings that come with risking the higher amounts of money with any odds) would be at the 50% level with an 8 and the 33% level with a 6 or T.

I also figured that I could take the cards already shown into account. If I had already seen 2 lower cards and one higher card and I wanted to choose lower, I would need 102% for a positive play. With the same cards showing I would only need 98% to choose higher.

You risk $0 to win $250 on the first decision so that one's easy.

I realize this doesn't take into account the expected value of continuing to the higher levels, much like Multi-Strike VP. I wouldn't know how to begin to calculate that.

Am I close?

Sounds kind of like Catch a Wave.