BIG BUCKS: THE PRESS YOUR LUCK SCANDAL

Press Your Luck was a game show in the 1980s that featured the "big board." The concept was that you sat and watched twenty small screens flash all kinds different prizes, and one screen at a time would momentarily become hilighted for a second or less. The idea was to smack your plunger at the moment you thought the hilighted screen was a big prize. The problem was that some screens had "whammys." If you landed on a whammy when you pressed your plunger, a little cartoon came on screen and took away all your winnings thus far.
Last week, on the Game Show Network, I was captivated by a two hour "documentary" called "Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal." In all honesty it was 2 half hour episodes of Press Your Luck, padded out with interviews and footage that had been previously edited out. That said, it was pretty fascinating. Here's the story in a nutshell:
In 1984 Michael Larson was a contestant on the show. It was his turn for the big board. A contestant plays the board as long as he wants to, without getting a Whammy, and then passes to the next player when he feels he's pressed his luck as far as he should. Michael played the board and won. And won. And won. And won. He kept playing and playing and playing. The total winning amount was climbing to $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 and up, up up. If he hit just one Whammy, he would have lost it all. The crowd was going crazy. The host was bewildered. The other contestants were bored. It got to the point where he was screaming with victory split seconds after hitting the plunger, before any normal person would know if they'd Whammied out or not. Then it was pointed out to us, the audience of this documentary, that every time he won, it was on one of two squares on the board.
Apparently there were two squares on the board that never got Whammys. But they flip by so fastt, how was one able to stop on them? Because there were 5 different patterns of lights. This guy went out and memorized all 5 patterns to the point that he always knew when a sure-thing was coming up. He won over $110,000 before doubting his strategy. Most winners were happy with $20,000. The suits at Press Your Luck figured out his scam and refused to pay him his winnings before the lawyers pointed out he did nothing illegal or against the rules. So, Michael got paid. The host asked what he was going to do with his winnings and Larson replied, "Real Estate!"
Confident with his skilll at winning, Larson put all his winnings into a real estate deal which turned out to be a scam. He lost it all. Desperate, he entered a radio contest in which contestants could win big money if they could produce a series of consecutively numbered dollar bills. Michael and his girlfriend emptied their bank accounts in 1-dollar bills and spent weeks looking through the piles. One day, they came home to find the piles of cash all gone. They'd been robbed. He lost everything.
Larson kept trying to get back on Press Your Luck, particularly after the movie Quiz Show brought the game show scandal back into vogue. But he was never invited back on and he ended up dying of cancer in 1999 after being divorced three times.

There are a ton of websites devoted to this story. Here are a few:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Larson

http://gscentral.net/larsen.htm

http://www.xanfan.com/pressyourluck/larson.htm

http://www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/Press_Your_Luck