This is a shorter version of how Michael Larson won the $110,237. From TV Land's Myths & Legends. A special program that was on for a few weeks in 2007.
In fact I think the supreme court ruled in Universal City Studios v Sony Corp, that taping a show on a VCR from an over the air broadcast, watching it later, and later reusing the tape (time shifting) was legal. Since the flash patterns were shown on the over the air broadcast in the 30 frames a second of video the method he learned them was legal. He just took the time to memorize them. Then in press your luck, the contestant (within a reasonable amount of time) gets to decide when to push the button to stop the lights. He just pressed it when it was on the square he wanted accounting for latency and the light pattern knowledge he memorized from his home. CBS was at fault to use a small number of patterns and had a board that was not random and was beatable. Larson was in fact a legit winner because he broke no other rules of the game. In reality, CBS had met their match,
The problem is that you don't actually want pure randomness for something like the Press Your Luck board. It kind of looks weird if the light stays in one corner for 6-7 bounces in a row, for instance, and I'd imagine you generally want each square to light up relatively equally - ie, you don't want the Big Bucks square to light up 5 times for one contestant and 0 for the next. You actually want a semi-random sequence, where each bounce sends the light to a different side of the board. Ideally, you'd probably want to program something that sends the light to each square once in a random order, then shuffles the positions of the 18 lights and does it again, and so forth, but the sequences they came up with achieved the same effect, so they went with it until it was broken. To their defense, after Larsen's big win, they did increase the number of sequences from 5 to something like 16 - enough that nobody that played in the 2+ seasons after Larsen was able to duplicate his feat.
You are correct. This wasn't the 1950s--even your average home computer of this era could be programmed to generate thousands of unique 18-number patterns. This was just a classic case of someone being lazy and underestimating the intelligence of their audience.
@ArmadilloAl - They reprogrammed the board with five new patterns in the immediate aftermath of Larson's win. Then after a month, they reprogrammed the board with five more patterns. Finally, after another month, they installed new software that generated 32 patterns, and that remained in place until the show was canceled in 1986.
He didn't cheat the show or the network; he simply took advantage of a flaw in the board's programming. I would have done the same thing if I'd had the opportunity. If he cheated anybody out of anything, you could argue that he cheated Ed and Janie out of the opportunity to have fun on a nationally televised game show. In Janie's case, maybe. Not with Ed, since he'd win over $11,000 on the previous show. But even then, how is it his fault that they didn't notice the patterns that the producers had used ad nauseum for nine months? I read where contestant coordinators turned away other would-be contestants who had also memorized the light patterns and were coming to break the bank. Michael Larson wasn't the only one who memorized the patterns, but he was the only one who made it on the show and used that memorization to make BIG BUCKS. In other words, as long as the producers kept using those patterns over and over, it was only a matter of time until someone exploited them to his advantage.
I remember hearing about this guy long ago. Because these stories fascinate me. He played the board, he played the producers, he played everyone. He TRULY beat the game. In EVERY sense of the word. He did NOT cheat. He found the logic in this otherwise "random" game of luck.
I really don’t consider this as cheating. All he did was watch the show a lot. And he studied the patterns, so this is not necessarily cheating. Right?
PROOF! Legit right here. All it takes is focus, concentration and skill. No need to worry about luck when you got your super-awesome memory by your side!
Nope. He was starting to wear down. His very last spin he made an error and missed the safe boxes. Fortunately for him, it wasn't a whammy. He could have lost everything right there.
$110,237 won a gameshow was something that just wasn't done in 1984! If you ever watched a single episode of the old Press Your Luck you'd know that you just don't keep avoiding Whammies for too long. So once this guy hit like 10 spins in a row without hitting a Whammy common sense kicks in immediately & you know that he's figured out a trick to beat that board. There was nothing illegal about figuring out the board. Michael Larson took the initiative to watch all those recorded episodes on his VCR & figure out safe Whammy free patterns. For that alone he deserved every single cent he won that day. It's just too bad he didn't get take better care of the money he won & his life ended so young
Michael Larson...the Press Your Luck legend. i don't think he cheated at all. life the man said he was just smarter than CBS. I hope they gave him his winnings.
Actually, only half the squares on the board have Whammies. As the lady says in this clip, the chances of hitting a Whammy are 1 in 6, which is because there are 9 Whammy slides out of a total of 54 (3 slides for each of the 18 squares.) The main reason Larson focused on #4 and #8 is because they were the only squares (in round two) where every slide offered an extra spin. If that hadn't been the case, he would've eventually run out of spins and racked up maybe around $40K at the most.
I saw that show I am amazed they called it cheating. Many episodes were complex patterns yet during this episode a patten suddenly appeared. I thought - if he noticed what I just saw and does what I saw - he will make money - and he did just that. It was easy to spot this pattern - it suddenly appeared. I was puzzled why the others did not see it. They provided the opportunity and he spotted it - then did what I saw.
Totally agree, he didn't cheat. It would have been cheating if he changed or rigged the game mechanics. In this case he used the game mechanics in his favor.
The designers of this board made a huge mistake by including squares that not only never contained whammies but always awarded free spins as well. Without this flaw Larson could not have done what he did.
Some people say they want another rematch between Ed Long, Janie Litras and Michael’s brother James in the 2019 PYL revival. While I’m not sure what Ed and Janie are up to, unfortunately that kind of rematch is no longer possible, James passed away in 2017. Michael’s third brother passed on in 2009.
This is not cheating. If you watch a game show at home every day, you're gonna learn the ins and outs and be able to develop a strategy should you ever get a chance to be on said show. More power to him.
Kelsey Grammer was 29 and John Ratzenberger was 35 when they each first appeared on Cheers. They definitely seemed to be in this category of looking older too. Ironically, though, they both seem to have aged well since then.
I wouldn’t call him a cheater at all. He himself put in the work to memorize the patterns on the board. He won the game fair and square and simply used the tool of memorization to do well.
He actually didn’t run out of spins. He hit a square that wasn’t one of the two that he was looking for. There were two spaces he went for that never had a whammy.
He was just smarter than the average contestant when he took control of the board with each and every spin. All that studying of those recordings he made payed off when playing PYL, although he would be burglarized of that prize money in the end... ...That is why he should've known better than to leave that money all over the floor of his house. The legendary Michael Larson. He won it all, then he lost most of it.
anything computerized can never be "completely" random. The only think you can do is make the sequence so large that it appears random but at some point it will repeat and there is a pattern. Nowadays computer "randomizations" are so mind numbly large that most people just assume its completely random
It's quite clear that Michael Larson studied the patterns and played Press Your Luck, very well, which is why he won over $100K, total. Think about Ken Jennings on Jeopardy and Terry Kniess on The Price is Right- these guys did their homework and played their respective games, very well. NO CHEATING, NO CONSPIRACY THEORIES!!!
He looks older than his age and looking fine though. He looks like Phillip Seymour Hoffman especially with no facial hair. Brilliant as well for doing his homework.
Alex Tomasone well, any normal player would not have kept going like Michael Larson did. No way in hell would anyone wanna press their luck for THAT LONG! haha. Clearly he was a cheater or knew something. Turns out he knew something and worked the system. But in no way should anyone just think hes that lucky bc NO ONE would risk that much and continue to spin 47 times without knowing something. Plain and simple
@@Bullwinkel But he did know something and that's why he kept going. under any other circumstance, maybe he wouldn't have. But there have been other players who've taken the risk to mass a nice haul o prizes and cash.
Have you seen Michael's brother, John, in GSN's documentary? He basically talked about him like a dog... It felt like... he never appreciated Michael. Sad.
I don't think Michael would have won over 100k but he would probably do good. The light patterns on that show flashed very fast so you would not be able to really time it correctly.
3:55 This statement, about him targeting those squares because a whammy never shows up there, isn't entirely true. Other squares don't have Whammy's (bottom-left corner, for example). He targeted the one on top for very obvious reasons but he targeted them both because all three squares guaranteed him an extra spin so he could continue to run his total up as much as he wanted.
That wasn't cheating at all, it was just a very good strategy. Too bad the guy failed in handling all the money he won, sometimes people get "crazy" with too much wealth.
He said jokingly at the end of his appearance, "I came here only wanting $20K so I could come back the next show". I felt like he should've done that, because his appearance was on the last day of a Home Player Spin event the show was doing (which aired on a Friday), so if he had stopped then, the HPS event would've been able to do a proper wrap-up and not turn into Part 1 of anything. Then he would come back 3 days later on the first regular episode after that and pull off his big $110,237 journey and the first 2 shows of that week would be Michael's 2-parter. Basically, if he had done things a little differently, the HPS would've ended truly, the viewers wouldn't have to wait the whole weekend for the legendary action to continue, and Michael would have more money, money, money!
Well, his life definitely didn't go well after this show. He later got obsessed with a local lottery which gave out $30,000 to whoever holds the dollar bill with the matching serial number. This prompted him to keep most of his fortune in cash at his home. He got robbed one day, losing $50,000 of the prize he formerly won and fighting with his wife which eventually escalated to divorce. In later years, he exhausted all the prize he won and asked the show's producer for the second appearance on the show, but was denied. He was then caught illegally selling foreign lottery tickets and ran away from FBI for the rest of his life until he developed throat cancer and died in 1999. Not sure if his later life was due to karma from cheating since I also see his trick as more of outsmarting than cheating the system.
Funny I watched his segment earlier today. Never saw the show & of course was routing for him. He did his homework and it paid off. They never said how long it took the Big Corporation to figure out what he did. Like to hear what he did with the money?
Actually if you watch Press your Luck Episode 60 you will see JEFF was the first contestant to figure out the pattern and hit Big Bucks on top like 3x in a row and then 2x in a row etc. Only difference between him and Larsen is Jeff didn't try to make it obvious
Actually he didnt have to memorize anything. If you go to wikipedia they tell you the patterns and you can see that if the 2 lights up followed by a 4 or 12, there are 3 following numbers on 2 of the patterns, the last of which is the winning 4 or 8. so all he had to do was watch for the 2 to light up, see if the next no. was the 4 or 8, then count to three at the speed the squares light up and time the press on the third count. I t works I tried it myself. Try it for yourself
If he studied the board before he was on the show, how did he cheat? He was just smarter than the CBS producers. Just because he won what he did, why is that cheating?
He didn't cheat. He outsmarted the production while technically playing by the rules. Also, this is one of the most epic moments in TV history.
Right, Chris. It's like doin your schoolwork.
Had an advantage. Try counting cards in Vegas and see if they don't throw you out lol
He didn't cheat he was just very smart and beat them at there own game.
At their own game.
Phil Smith, right. It's like doin your schoolwork.
Agreed 10000000%
In fact I think the supreme court ruled in Universal City Studios v Sony Corp, that taping a show on a VCR from an over the air broadcast, watching it later, and later reusing the tape (time shifting) was legal. Since the flash patterns were shown on the over the air broadcast in the 30 frames a second of video the method he learned them was legal. He just took the time to memorize them. Then in press your luck, the contestant (within a reasonable amount of time) gets to decide when to push the button to stop the lights. He just pressed it when it was on the square he wanted accounting for latency and the light pattern knowledge he memorized from his home. CBS was at fault to use a small number of patterns and had a board that was not random and was beatable. Larson was in fact a legit winner because he broke no other rules of the game. In reality, CBS had met their match,
Hmm it’s a game that’s supposed to be down to luck, it’s the producers fault for not creating efficient random sequences.
its not cheating this is almost exactly what football coaches do before games. they study old tapes to figure out plays and paterns and calls.
people on the price is right have done it before too
Yep. They said "I have a system" and became the only people in history to say that and actually win. :)
Right, Chance Erickson. Me father even said, it's like doin your schoolwork.
Same thing as boxing in boxing it is esential to study your opponent learn his moves and how do you counter that move
I wonder how he would’ve done on it’s predecessor SECOND CHANCE.
He wasn't cheating.
exactly its skill
Z Jones, right. It's like doin your schoolwork.
Plus those patterns were placed there by the creators of the show.
It is skills not his cheating
@@nicky191 well yeah he just legally scammed tv show LMAO
The woman doing the voiceover says he ran out of spins. Actually he passed his spins.
true
"Random patterns" that's about the worst oxymoron I've ever heard
Smith sounds like an 80’s new wave band.
true
The best game show contestant ever. He outwitted the show.
A computer was capable of more randomness than this in '83; being observant isn't cheating... no matter what the show or Vegas says.
The problem is that you don't actually want pure randomness for something like the Press Your Luck board. It kind of looks weird if the light stays in one corner for 6-7 bounces in a row, for instance, and I'd imagine you generally want each square to light up relatively equally - ie, you don't want the Big Bucks square to light up 5 times for one contestant and 0 for the next.
You actually want a semi-random sequence, where each bounce sends the light to a different side of the board. Ideally, you'd probably want to program something that sends the light to each square once in a random order, then shuffles the positions of the 18 lights and does it again, and so forth, but the sequences they came up with achieved the same effect, so they went with it until it was broken.
To their defense, after Larsen's big win, they did increase the number of sequences from 5 to something like 16 - enough that nobody that played in the 2+ seasons after Larsen was able to duplicate his feat.
Right, Daniel Nichols. It's like doin your schoolwork.
You are correct. This wasn't the 1950s--even your average home computer of this era could be programmed to generate thousands of unique 18-number patterns. This was just a classic case of someone being lazy and underestimating the intelligence of their audience.
@ArmadilloAl - They reprogrammed the board with five new patterns in the immediate aftermath of Larson's win. Then after a month, they reprogrammed the board with five more patterns. Finally, after another month, they installed new software that generated 32 patterns, and that remained in place until the show was canceled in 1986.
He didn't cheat the show or the network; he simply took advantage of a flaw in the board's programming. I would have done the same thing if I'd had the opportunity. If he cheated anybody out of anything, you could argue that he cheated Ed and Janie out of the opportunity to have fun on a nationally televised game show. In Janie's case, maybe. Not with Ed, since he'd win over $11,000 on the previous show. But even then, how is it his fault that they didn't notice the patterns that the producers had used ad nauseum for nine months? I read where contestant coordinators turned away other would-be contestants who had also memorized the light patterns and were coming to break the bank. Michael Larson wasn't the only one who memorized the patterns, but he was the only one who made it on the show and used that memorization to make BIG BUCKS. In other words, as long as the producers kept using those patterns over and over, it was only a matter of time until someone exploited them to his advantage.
Right, Lance The Scorpion. Me father said it's like doin your schoolwork.
I remember hearing about this guy long ago. Because these stories fascinate me. He played the board, he played the producers, he played everyone.
He TRULY beat the game. In EVERY sense of the word. He did NOT cheat. He found the logic in this otherwise "random" game of luck.
How is it cheating? The show messed up.
Xactamundo, Chris Rooster. 👌 Me father even said it's like doin your schoolwork.
I really don’t consider this as cheating. All he did was watch the show a lot. And he studied the patterns, so this is not necessarily cheating. Right?
PROOF! Legit right here. All it takes is focus, concentration and skill. No need to worry about luck when you got your super-awesome memory by your side!
He'll never be forgotten.
That last spin had to be nerve wracking!
Them being lazy is not his fault.
He actually could have kept going as long as forever 😂😂
Nope. He was starting to wear down. His very last spin he made an error and missed the safe boxes. Fortunately for him, it wasn't a whammy. He could have lost everything right there.
$110,237 won a gameshow was something that just wasn't done in 1984! If you ever watched a single episode of the old Press Your Luck you'd know that you just don't keep avoiding Whammies for too long. So once this guy hit like 10 spins in a row without hitting a Whammy common sense kicks in immediately & you know that he's figured out a trick to beat that board. There was nothing illegal about figuring out the board. Michael Larson took the initiative to watch all those recorded episodes on his VCR & figure out safe Whammy free patterns. For that alone he deserved every single cent he won that day. It's just too bad he didn't get take better care of the money he won & his life ended so young
Is memorizing formulas cheating on a math test?
This man didnt cheat at all.His ass was just smart enought to figured out their sequences.He was fucking brilliant
Always study and you'll be on top. That is what Larson did.
Xatctamundo, Super Crazy Disco Kangaroo 9001.
Michael Larson...the Press Your Luck legend. i don't think he cheated at all. life the man said he was just smarter than CBS. I hope they gave him his winnings.
He actually didn't run out of spins he still had 2 spins left and he passed the spins to another contestant.
Actually, only half the squares on the board have Whammies. As the lady says in this clip, the chances of hitting a Whammy are 1 in 6, which is because there are 9 Whammy slides out of a total of 54 (3 slides for each of the 18 squares.)
The main reason Larson focused on #4 and #8 is because they were the only squares (in round two) where every slide offered an extra spin. If that hadn't been the case, he would've eventually run out of spins and racked up maybe around $40K at the most.
He was very intelligent. They are butthurt that he outsmarted them. R.I.P Michael Larson
I saw that show I am amazed they called it cheating. Many episodes were complex patterns yet during this episode a patten suddenly appeared. I thought - if he noticed what I just saw and does what I saw - he will make money - and he did just that. It was easy to spot this pattern - it suddenly appeared. I was puzzled why the others did not see it. They provided the opportunity and he spotted it - then did what I saw.
Totally agree, he didn't cheat. It would have been cheating if he changed or rigged the game mechanics. In this case he used the game mechanics in his favor.
Right. Ral Crux. It's like doin your schoolwork.
99.9% of people are unemployed ice-cream truck drivers.
theres a 1 or 2 hour documentary about this incident and it's such a good watch.
The designers of this board made a huge mistake by including squares that not only never contained whammies but always awarded free spins as well. Without this flaw Larson could not have done what he did.
60,008 views! Thanks so much everyone! Keep on watching!!
Some people say they want another rematch between Ed Long, Janie Litras and Michael’s brother James in the 2019 PYL revival. While I’m not sure what Ed and Janie are up to, unfortunately that kind of rematch is no longer possible, James passed away in 2017. Michael’s third brother passed on in 2009.
Jamie Lannister: The Kingslayer
Jon Snow: The Queenslayer
Michael Larson: The Whammyslayer
I like how Teller was there (with Penn) even though he would never say anything...
Nothing is truly random. You just need to know the algorithm. Same thing applies to the music shuffle sequencing on your phone, slot machines, ect.
His legacy was that for the next couple of months, each month had it's own set of five patterns. Eventually a rotation of 32 patterns was set up.
See, he helped improve the show by teaching them the flaws in their game. Voila!
He wasn't cheating because there were no rules that said he couldn't do what he did. Everything is free game unless rules specify
This is not cheating. If you watch a game show at home every day, you're gonna learn the ins and outs and be able to develop a strategy should you ever get a chance to be on said show. More power to him.
There's at least a couple of shows that, if I ever get on them, I would have a strategy in place to win.
When you watch a game show a lot you’re going to notice a few things
He was 34 years old when he went on the show? I thought I looked old for my age.
yeah. he looked liked he was 55
he died of throat cancer, his brother is still alive
He didn't have it when he did the show though. If you meant why he looked older.
Must have been a hard 34 years.
Kelsey Grammer was 29 and John Ratzenberger was 35 when they each first appeared on Cheers. They definitely seemed to be in this category of looking older too. Ironically, though, they both seem to have aged well since then.
1:00 Michael Larson: You think this is "Completely random"??? lol.
R.I.P. Michael Larsen
Mr. Larson, you didn't cheat , not by a long shot, You just have a brilliant mind and it paid off.
Thank you for making CBS eat their hat.
This guy really is a legend. Too bad what happened to him.
I wouldn’t call him a cheater at all. He himself put in the work to memorize the patterns on the board. He won the game fair and square and simply used the tool of memorization to do well.
he wasn't cheating he was just really smart
This is the ultimate don't hate the player, hate the game.
It was nail biting to watch this because he could've slipped up and got Whammied at any moment.
#LikeABoss
The star trek quotes after the credits made this all the funnier.
"I can't change the laws of physics..."
"Illogical..."
xD
this amazing its just amazing
If Michael Larson were still around, he would be 67 years old.
He actually didn’t run out of spins. He hit a square that wasn’t one of the two that he was looking for. There were two spaces he went for that never had a whammy.
how do i find the whole episode please?
2:40
That should be "Whammy! The ALL-New Press Your Luck", not just new. Because it had a few differences from the original.
He was just smarter than the average contestant when he took control of the board with each and every spin. All that studying of those recordings he made payed off when playing PYL, although he would be burglarized of that prize money in the end...
...That is why he should've known better than to leave that money all over the floor of his house.
The legendary Michael Larson. He won it all, then he lost most of it.
What! OMG, sounds like dude was either a tad bit loopy or went that way after winning the money. i mean, who does that?
Rumors say that he still playing.
anything computerized can never be "completely" random. The only think you can do is make the sequence so large that it appears random but at some point it will repeat and there is a pattern. Nowadays computer "randomizations" are so mind numbly large that most people just assume its completely random
CBS be like : He recognized our not-random-at-all patterns and used it against us. That’s cheating!
I like that series on Tv Land Myths and Legends ... always hoped they would have made more episodes .....
It's quite clear that Michael Larson studied the patterns and played Press Your Luck, very well, which is why he won over $100K, total. Think about Ken Jennings on Jeopardy and Terry Kniess on The Price is Right- these guys did their homework and played their respective games, very well. NO CHEATING, NO CONSPIRACY THEORIES!!!
"Umma make it rain in this bitch!" -Michael Larson
He looks older than his age and looking fine though. He looks like Phillip Seymour Hoffman especially with no facial hair. Brilliant as well for doing his homework.
Thats not cheating at all. Thats just smart. I'm glad they cashed him out.
Over a minute in, the newer host hits the "red button," and it was situated on the $3000 + a spin box. Shows how Larson got his moxie.
I have the PC version of this game my highest record in one game was $1,120,250 all cash
Michael Larson didn't 'cheat' CBS, Michael Larson 'played' CBS.
That intro scared me.
Hollywood ha- *STATIC*
I could tell that James Larson is Michael Larson's Older Brother.
It's amazing that anytime someone wins huge like this at anything, they're immediately suspected of cheating
Alex Tomasone well, any normal player would not have kept going like Michael Larson did. No way in hell would anyone wanna press their luck for THAT LONG! haha. Clearly he was a cheater or knew something. Turns out he knew something and worked the system. But in no way should anyone just think hes that lucky bc NO ONE would risk that much and continue to spin 47 times without knowing something. Plain and simple
@@Bullwinkel But he did know something and that's why he kept going. under any other circumstance, maybe he wouldn't have. But there have been other players who've taken the risk to mass a nice haul o prizes and cash.
This should be a movie staring that one guy from the movie about wine.
Have you seen Michael's brother, John, in GSN's documentary? He basically talked about him like a dog... It felt like... he never appreciated Michael. Sad.
His brother's named James.
@@gameshowguy2000 Thanks. *James. 👍🏽
ABC brought back a New version of Press Your Luck just last week for the summer season only
Stop calling the man a cheater! The producers were right to be a little suspicious but there was no wrongdoing.
For years my friends told me I was lying and this didn’t happen.
1.3m dollars in todays value
Six years earlier there was a game show called SECOND CHANCE. Jim Peck was the host. I wonder how Michael would’ve done on that show?
I don't think Michael would have won over 100k but he would probably do good. The light patterns on that show flashed very fast so you would not be able to really time it correctly.
@@WyattsGamesofFun But his brother said he slowed the playback on his VCR down to learn the patterns. So he could do that for this Second chance show.
Network: Pays Michael his money. Says it wasn't cheating.
Commenters: Acting like the opposite happened.
Ikr, I'm sick of it
But hey, STOP!
By the way, that is not cheating. That's just having superior knowledge.
3:55 This statement, about him targeting those squares because a whammy never shows up there, isn't entirely true. Other squares don't have Whammy's (bottom-left corner, for example). He targeted the one on top for very obvious reasons but he targeted them both because all three squares guaranteed him an extra spin so he could continue to run his total up as much as he wanted.
Info graphics show awww man
Game show Predator. Lol I love it
This video is good example why cable TV is dead. It should be 2 minutes long, not 6 minutes for fucks sake.
Actually, you're an impatient person who only uploaded short videos.
not cheating. it's like study for exam
That wasn't cheating at all, it was just a very good strategy. Too bad the guy failed in handling all the money he won, sometimes people get "crazy" with too much wealth.
My hero
He should have went for a million!
He said jokingly at the end of his appearance, "I came here only wanting $20K so I could come back the next show". I felt like he should've done that, because his appearance was on the last day of a Home Player Spin event the show was doing (which aired on a Friday), so if he had stopped then, the HPS event would've been able to do a proper wrap-up and not turn into Part 1 of anything. Then he would come back 3 days later on the first regular episode after that and pull off his big $110,237 journey and the first 2 shows of that week would be Michael's 2-parter. Basically, if he had done things a little differently, the HPS would've ended truly, the viewers wouldn't have to wait the whole weekend for the legendary action to continue, and Michael would have more money, money, money!
He paid attention, and CBS paid him.
Well, his life definitely didn't go well after this show.
He later got obsessed with a local lottery which gave out $30,000 to whoever holds the dollar bill with the matching serial number. This prompted him to keep most of his fortune in cash at his home. He got robbed one day, losing $50,000 of the prize he formerly won and fighting with his wife which eventually escalated to divorce. In later years, he exhausted all the prize he won and asked the show's producer for the second appearance on the show, but was denied. He was then caught illegally selling foreign lottery tickets and ran away from FBI for the rest of his life until he developed throat cancer and died in 1999.
Not sure if his later life was due to karma from cheating since I also see his trick as more of outsmarting than cheating the system.
A Friendly UA-cam Commenter Someone watched the Infographics show
Funny I watched his segment earlier today. Never saw the show & of course was routing for him. He did his homework and it paid off. They never said how long it took the Big Corporation to figure out what he did. Like to hear what he did with the money?
his brother is Kyle Gass ?
That's why you hire a programmer, who can program random pattern generation.
Michael wasn't cheeting all he did was just memorize the patterns it could've happen to anyone
Actually if you watch Press your Luck Episode 60 you will see JEFF was the first contestant to figure out the pattern and hit Big Bucks on top like 3x in a row and then 2x in a row etc. Only difference between him and Larsen is Jeff didn't try to make it obvious
I doubt either of them were actually trying to make it obvious; Mike just WOUND UP making it obvious.
larson wasnt cheating he out smarted the system and there is nothing wrong with out smarting the system thank you very much
He did NOT cheat!! Won it by playing within the system rules.
Actually he didnt have to memorize anything. If you go to wikipedia they tell you the patterns and you can see that if the 2 lights up followed by a 4 or 12, there are 3 following numbers on 2 of the patterns, the last of which is the winning 4 or 8. so all he had to do was watch for the 2 to light up, see if the next no. was the 4 or 8, then count to three at the speed the squares light up and time the press on the third count.
I t works I tried it myself. Try it for yourself
How is it cheating? He figured out the game.
Who came here after infographic show ?
If he studied the board before he was on the show, how did he cheat? He was just smarter than the CBS producers. Just because he won what he did, why is that cheating?
Press your luck speedruner
Its definitely not cheating