I spend the weekend laying around the house and just being generally lazy. Last night JBG and I watched Big Money: The Press Your Luck Scandal which I found very interesting. It was about Michael Larson who, on May 19, 1984, went on Press Your Luck and won over $110,000 in a single sitting. He had spent six months prior analyzing the game and found patterns to the “random” selections on the big board. So every time the board went, he knew exactly when to hit the button so it would always stop on big money and a spin. He started with 7 spins and $2500 from the first round. He stopped at $102,000 and still had four spins left, which he passed. The girl took the four spins, and then passed three back to him. By this time he was mentally exhausted and nearly made a mistake that got him a whammy. But instead he used the three spins and got to $110,000 and passed two back to the other girl.
It was an interesting show and they showed the two episodes that he was on in their entirety. It was creepy how the guy just zoned right in and was in full concentration mode. But once they explained the patterns, and what he was looking for before he hit the button, you could follow along and do just like he did. They even showed the system to the two contestants who were with him on that fateful day, and the one guy was able to use his system to get $110,000 on the big board again (just for fun, of course; they didn’t give him the money).
The thing is, I remember as a kid thinking that I could see the patterns in the “random” big board. But hey, I was just a kid. If I were older back then, I might have done the same thing.
They called it cheating, but CBS did give him his winnings. The fact of the matter was, their show had a flaw in technical design, and all hedid was to exploit that flaw. One of the former executives even said, “He earned every nickel of that $110,000.”
It was a cool show, and if you ever get a chance to see it, do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s on Gameshow Network.
Christ, now I have to get ready and go to work. Fucking Mondays.
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