Michael Larson
Michael Larson | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 10, 1949 |
| Died | February 16, 1999 (aged 49) |
Paul Michael Larson (May 10, 1949 – February 16, 1999) was a contestant on the American television game show Press Your Luck in June 1984. Larson's claim to fame was his winning $110,237 in cash and prizes, which he was able to do by memorizing the patterns used on the Press Your Luck game board.
Preparations
Through a careful study of the movement of the light used for the 18-square "Big Board" on the CBS game show Press Your Luck, Larson was able to determine that there were only five patterns used to determine the movements of the spinner used to award money on the show. He was able to discover this by using a VCR to pause a recorded episode of the game, and proceed frame by frame to learn the patterns. Armed with this knowledge, he found that it would be theoretically possible to go on the game show, watch the patterns carefully, and hit squares containing money consistently.
Two of the 18 squares on the game board (usually referred to as 4 and 8; Square #1 being in the upper left corner) always contained cash in round 1 (square 4 held $1,000, $1,250, and $1,500, while square 8 held $300, $450, and $550), as well as cash and an extra spin in round 2 (square 4 held $3,000 + ONE SPIN, $4,000 + ONE SPIN, and $5,000 + ONE SPIN, while square 8 held $500 + ONE SPIN, $750 + ONE SPIN, and $1,000 + ONE SPIN). They never contained the Whammy, the character in the show who takes away all cash and prizes a contestant has earned. Therefore, Larson reasoned, if he used his knowledge of the board patterns to stop on only those two squares, he could play on as long as he dared, never at risk of losing his money.
Larson arrived in Hollywood from Lebanon, Ohio for a contestant tryout on Press Your Luck, having virtually no money to his name and using most of what he had to make the trip. In his tryout interview, he described himself as unemployed, but an ice cream truck driver during the summer season, who wanted to be a contestant on the show. Press Your Luck's executive producer Bill Carruthers and contestant supervisor Bobby Edwards discussed whether to have him on the show after his tryout interview; Edwards was suspicious of Larson and his reasons for trying out—Carruthers was not. The final decision was to let Larson on the show. So Michael was booked for the show, for the fifth taping of the day, intended as a Friday episode.
While waiting, he met Ed Long, a Baptist preacher booked for the fourth taping. They struck up a conversation. When it was Ed's turn to go on, Michael said to him, "I hope we don't have to face each other on the show." But Ed won $11,516 in his game, and so Michael would have to go against him as well as a dental assistant, Janie Litras.
The game
Round one
Before the start of the game, when host Peter Tomarken was learning about each player, he referenced the idea of overdosing on ice cream (a reference to Larson's occupation) with the statement, "Let's hope you don't O.D. (overdose) on money."
As always, the game began with a question round, in which players answered questions in order to earn spins for the Big Board. Larson's memorization of the Big Board patterns could not help him here, and he seemed to struggle early on. On the second question, when asked "You've probably got President Franklin D. Roosevelt in your pocket or purse right now, because his likeness is on the head side--", Larson buzzed in early at this point, and answered "50 dollar bill". The rest of the question was "of what American coin?", and the answer was the dime. Perhaps rattled by this wild answer (and by Tomarken's comment about his early buzz), Larson did not even try to buzz in for the remaining two questions. Litras dominated this question round, and Larson finished it in last place with only three spins, behind Long's four and Litras's ten.
The game then entered the first Big Board round, where Larson could actually put his preparations to good use. On his first spin, Larson kept up a stream of verbal patter like contestants were encouraged to do; he stopped the board at a point one shuffle too early for one of the patterns he would use later, and he hit a Whammy (the cursor would go across the board next to the center of the right side). With his remaining two spins, he switched to his pattern play and began his winning streak, landing on the second highest dollar values of $1,250 each time for a total of $2,500. But he was out of spins, and Long and Litras managed to take their fourteen spins without a Whammy. Larson finished this round in last place -- normally a very disadvantageous position -- behind Ed's $4,080 and Janie's $4,608.
Round two
By the second question round, Larson seemed to have regained some of his confidence, and he gave two correct buzz-in answers, finishing this round with seven spins; Long earned only two spins, and Litras only three.
In the second and final Big Board round, Larson's demeanor and behavior changed dramatically. He was completely silent during spins, concentrating carefully, and leaving Tomarken to fill the silence with increasingly amazed chatter. He immediately celebrated after many of his spins, instead of waiting the fraction of a second that it would normally take for a player to see and respond to the space he or she had stopped on (effectively showing that he knew beforehand that he was going to get something good). All of these habits were extremely unusual for a Press Your Luck contestant.
Early on in the second round, perhaps due to nerves or inexperience, Larson's pattern play was irregular. On four of his first eleven spins, Larson stopped the board at a point not called for by his patterns; but luckily, he avoided the Whammy all four times, instead hitting a trip to Kauai (worth $1,636), $700 + ONE SPIN, PICK A CORNER (where he selected $2,250 out of THAT, $2,000, or $1,500 + ONE SPIN), and a Sailboat (worth $1,015). Then his play became deadly accurate. A player stopping the Press Your Luck board randomly would expect to hit a Whammy approximately once in each six spins. By contrast, in this second round alone, Larson took over forty spins without a Whammy. On thirty consecutive spins, his pattern play was perfect, and he consistently landed on the two "safe spots" that always awarded money and a spin. Peter Tomarken and the other contestants (who undoubtedly had no idea what hit them) were increasingly amazed as Larson pressed on and on, never coming near a Whammy, never even using up one of his spins.
Finally, Larson reached $102,851, and he passed his remaining four spins. Some edited material from the show indicates that he actually considered going on after $100,000, but thought better of it. The main reason for this is because he was beginning to tire from such strenuous concentration. On passing, Larson received a standing ovation from the studio audience. Long, who took the next spin, immediately hit a Whammy, leading Tomarken to wonder if Larson knew it was coming. Long then hit $5,000 + ONE SPIN twice, bringing him to $10,000, and briefly considered passing. Tomarken exclaimed, "What is goin' on!?" But Ed pressed on, hit the Whammy again, and lost the money and the last of his spins.
Litras, who had received the four passed spins from Larson, hit a whammy with her first spin as well. Then, in five successful spins, she built her total back to $9,385, and passed her three remaining spins back to Larson. Larson dealt with the first two spins correctly, hitting $4,000 + ONE SPIN and $750 + ONE SPIN. But he miscalculated on the last one, stopping the board a fraction of a second too early, just as the space he landed on was switching from $700 + ONE SPIN to a Bahamas Trip (worth $2,636). That same space could just as easily have switched to a Whammy. But with his total now at $110,237, and with Tomarken joking that he could now buy the Bahamas, Larson could now legally pass once again, and he quickly did so. Litras took both spins safely, but earned no spins that she could pass back to Larson. Her last desperate spin ended with her landing on a Mexican Cruise in Square #15, and no Mexican Cruise was worth more than $4,500. Thus the game was over, and Michael had won $110,237; of this $104,950 was cash.
At the end of the show, host Peter Tomarken asked Larson why he did not pass his spins (like most contestants in his situation did) after he built up such an insurmountable lead. Larson sidestepped talking about the way he really won the game by answering, "Two things: One, it felt right, and second, I had seven spins and if I passed them, someone could have done what I did."
The aftermath
While Larson was running up the score, the producers contacted Michael Brockman, head of CBS's daytime programming department. In a 1994 TV Guide interview commemorating the Larson Sweep, conducted at the time the movie Quiz Show was released, he recalled "Something was very wrong. Here was this guy from nowhere, and he was hitting the bonus box every time. It was bedlam, I can tell you. And we couldn't stop this guy. He kept going around the board and hitting that box." Brockman contacted CBS lawyers to prove that he had cheated, but they failed. Larson won the argument, saying that what he had done was no different than if he had "[broken] the books to get on Jeopardy." When he threatened a lawsuit of his own, CBS finally gave in and awarded him his money. Because he had surpassed the CBS winnings cap (at the time) of $25,000, he was not allowed to return for the next show. (CBS eliminated the winnings cap later; episodes of The Price is Right in the 2000s have had contestants win over $140,000, and the Showcase Showdown bonus spin is now worth $25,000.)
Part of his winnings went to taxes and part of his winnings were invested in real estate, with the remainder left in the bank. The real estate deal turned out to be a fraudulent ponzi scheme and Larson lost his investment entirely. Larson then learned about a get-rich-quick scheme involving matching a one dollar bill's serial number with a random number read out on a local radio game show that promised a $30,000 jackpot. Larson withdrew his remaining gameshow winnings in one dollar bills in hopes of winning the contest. He would examine each dollar carefully and upon discovering that he did not have the winning number, would place all the money back in his account, only to withdraw it again the next day and repeat the process all over again. Larson's wife at the time stated that this obsession consumed him.
Approximately USD $40,000-50,000 in the remaining cash was stolen from Larson and his common-law wife Teresa Dinwitty while the two attended a Christmas party shortly after giving up on the radio contest, according to a Game Show Network special. Larson and Dinwitty split up soon after. After losing all of his money, Larson called the producers of Press Your Luck, challenging them to put him back on the show and see if he could crack the board patterns again. The producers declined.
In 1994, Larson appeared on ABC's Good Morning America in an interview timed to the recent release of the movie Quiz Show.
In 1999, 49-year-old Larson died from head and neck cancer while on the run from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission[1].
Broadcasts of the shows
Larson's game was split into two episodes due to its exceptional running time, and these aired only once during the original run of the series, on June 8 and June 11, 1984. CBS then suppressed them for 19 years, as CBS and Bill Carruthers at that time considered the incident to be one of their worst embarrassments. When USA Network, and later Game Show Network, bought the rights to rerun Press Your Luck, CBS and Carruthers stipulated that the Larson episodes must not be aired.
On March 16, 2003, GSN was allowed to air clips from the episodes as part of a two-hour documentary, called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal. The documentary was produced by and aired on Game Show Network (in association with Lionsgate and FremantleMedia), and was hosted and narrated by Press Your Luck host Peter Tomarken. The original telecast was dedicated to the memory of Bill Carruthers, producer/creator of Press Your Luck, who had died prior to airing. He too was interviewed for the special, and it turned out to be his final TV appearance.
The show featured interviews with Press Your Luck producers, Larson's family, and the two contestants who lost to Larson that day, both of whom were allowed to try their hand at duplicating Larson's trick on a recreation of the original Big Board. The board replica used only one of the patterns that Larson had memorized, and Tomarken pointed out exactly what it was. Janie Litras-Dakan was unable to stop the board at square #4 consistently, but Ed Long managed to get the hang of it. He played for over an hour, beating Larson's total by a dollar. (However, as this game was only for the experiment, he didn't actually win any money.)
As part of the commemoration, Larson's opponents from 1984 were invited back to be contestants on Whammy! The All-New Press Your Luck playing against Larson's brother James (because Michael Larson himself had died by this time), with Peter Tomarken returning to host the question round. Despite the fact that the new board was now truly random due to advances in computer technology, and there was no way either Michael or James Larson could have pulled off the same trick, Larson's old opponents still lost. In fact, in the first round, when James Larson hit the Big Bank space, Ed Long proceeded to joke with host Todd Newton that he had seen this before. James Larson also imitated his brother during the first spin round with his "go on" gesture (hand in the air, pointing repeatedly at the board, or revolving both his arms), and his silent demeanor, only yelling "STOP!"
On June 8, 2006, exactly 22 years from their first run, clips from the Larson episodes were broadcast on CBS itself for the first time in over 20 years as part of a retrospective aired at the beginning of the Press Your Luck episode of Gameshow Marathon. The line by Peter Tomarken about Michael being "part owner of CBS" was included.
The two Larson episodes first aired on GSN in 2003 (after originally never being included in ANY syndication package due to embarrassment) and have been shown in regular rotation and on special occasions. However, the Big Bucks documentary included additional footage that had been edited out of the episodes for initial air – consequently, this additional footage is not seen when the episodes run in regular rotation.
On August 16, 2006, as part of GSN's 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time series, Press Your Luck was ranked number thirteen, and the two Larson episodes were shown back-to-back.
On January 31, 2007, TV Land broadcast TV Shows Myths and Legends, which featured the Larson episodes with commentary from his brother, the past contestants, and Penn and Teller.
On September 14, 2008, the two Larson episodes were shown back-to-back during GSN's Play It Back: '80s Game Shows marathon.
Larson's Press Your Luck appearance statistics
Cash and prizes earned
- $104,950 in cash
- 1 sailboat worth $1,015
- 1 trip to Kauai worth $1,636
- 1 trip to the Bahamas worth $2,636
Larson's spin list
| Spin | Landed On | Total | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WHAMMY (Wielding a hammer) (#17) |
$0 | Hit early. The very next sequence would have put him in the safe spot. (#8) |
| 2 | $1,250 (#4) | $1,250 | |
| 3 | $1,250 (#4) | $2,500 | |
| 4 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $6,500 | Beginning of round 2 |
| 5 | $5,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $11,500 | |
| 6 | $1,000 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $12,500 | |
| 7 | Trip to Kauai worth $1,636 (#7) | $14,136 | Larson stopped the board 1 space early, but missed the Whammy in this space |
| 8 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $18,136 | |
| 9 | $500 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $18,636 | |
| 10 | $700 + ONE SPIN (#17) | $19,336 | Larson again stopped the board 1 space early, and again missed the Whammy in this space |
| 11 | $1,000 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $20,336 | Thanks to a "Home Viewer Spin" contest, a random home viewer (Michael Landry of Jeanerette, Louisiana) won $1,000 as well |
| 12 | $750 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $21,086 | Longest spin of all 47 spins he took. |
| 13 | $5,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $26,086 | |
| 14 | PICK A CORNER ($2,250) (#6)/(#1) | $28,336 | Larson stopped the board one space late, missing square 8. He was offered a choice of $2,250, (#1) $2,000, (#10) or $1,500 + ONE SPIN, (#15) and without missing a beat took the $2,250. |
| 15 | Sailboat worth $1,015 (#7) | $29,351 | Larson again stopped the board 1 space early, and again missed the Whammy in this space |
| 16 | $3,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $32,351 | Larson's string of perfect pattern play finally began |
| 17 | $500 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $32,851 | |
| 18 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $36,851 | Part 1 of the episode ended here. |
| 19 | $750 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $37,601 | Part 2 of the episode started here. |
| 20 | $3,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $40,601 | |
| 21 | $1,000 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $41,601 | This spin was edited out for reasons unexplained; on the broadcast, Larson's score appears to jump by $1,000 |
| 22 | $1,000 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $42,601 | |
| 23 | $1,000 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $43,601 | |
| 24 | $1,000 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $44,601 | |
| 25 | $3,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $47,601 | |
| 26 | $750 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $48,351 | |
| 27 | $3,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $51,351 | |
| 28 | $500 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $51,851 | |
| 29 | $500 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $52,351 | Board starts to go out of sync. |
| 30 | $500 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $52,851 | |
| 31 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $56,851 | |
| 32 | $5,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $61,851 | |
| 33 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $65,851 | |
| 34 | $5,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $70,851 | |
| 35 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $74,851 | |
| 36 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $78,851 | |
| 37 | $500 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $79,351 | |
| 38 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $83,351 | |
| 39 | $3,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $86,351 | |
| 40 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $90,351 | |
| 41 | $500 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $90,851 | |
| 42 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $94,851 | |
| 43 | $5,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $99,851 | |
| 44 | $3,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $102,851 | The scoreboard, which could only display 6 characters, simply took the dollar sign out. Larson then passed his remaining spins |
| 45 | $4,000 + ONE SPIN (#4) | $106,851 | First of three spins passed back to Larson, which he had to take |
| 46 | $750 + ONE SPIN (#8) | $107,601 | |
| 47 | Trip to the Bahamas worth $2,636 (#17) | $110,237 | Larson finally made another mistake, stopping the board too early but luckily avoiding a Whammy; he passed his remaining spins |
The big board configuration
| #1
$1750 $2250 Whammy |
#2
$500 $1250 Prize |
#3
$500 $2000 Whammy |
#4
$3000+S $4000+S $5000+S |
#5
$750 Prize Whammy |
#6
$700+S Pick a Corner Go Back 2 |
| #18
$750+S $1000+S $1400 |
#7
$750 Prize Whammy | ||||
| #17
$700+S Prize Whammy |
#8
$500+S $750+S $1000+S | ||||
| #16
$600 $750+S $2500 |
#9
$800 Move 1 Whammy | ||||
| #15
$1000+S $1500+S Prize |
#14
$2000 Move 1 Whammy |
#13
$2000 $2500 Prize |
#12
$500 Whammy BIG BUCKS |
#11
$1500 Whammy Advance 2 |
#10
$2000 Prize Prize |
This was the round 2 board configuration in use at the time Michael Larson made his appearance. Larson attempted to stop the board in the squares marked #4 and #8.
The game board patterns
At the time Larson made his famous appearance, there were only five sequences in which the squares could be highlighted. In each sequence, each of the eighteen spaces lights up exactly once. When a given sequence completed, the mainframe running the game board would immediately pick and begin another sequence. Larson would wait until Square 2 lit up, then see which square lit up next to determine which pattern the board was following. Spaces 4 and 8 were Larson's target "safe" spaces, which never had a Whammy and which always had money and a spin in the final Big Board round. The patterns were as follows (numbering of slide squares in clockwise motion, starting with the top left hand slide square):
- 3, 16, 13, 10, 18, 8, 6, 14, 7, 5, 15, 11, 17, 2, 12, 1, 9, 4
- 5, 18, 11, 13, 3, 6, 15, 7, 1, 9, 14, 16, 10, 2, 4, 12, 17, 8
- 11, 6, 10, 12, 1, 4, 14, 16, 2, 9, 17, 8, 13, 15, 3, 7, 18, 5
- 17, 10, 15, 13, 2, 8, 18, 16, 12, 3, 5, 11, 7, 4, 1, 9, 14, 6
- 18, 16, 10, 5, 11, 9, 2, 13, 17, 7, 4, 15, 12, 8, 6, 3, 1, 14
Larson would attempt to stop the board on the "safe" space shown in bold. (Sometimes Larson would fail to react to the first board pattern during a given spin, instead waiting for a different pattern to show up.) Larson never stopped the board when the second listed pattern came up; he always waited for a different pattern.
The episode offers a good look at how the board operates when it goes out of sync, beginning with Michael's 29th spin. Half the slides change a split-second before the others, and if the situation does not correct itself, the slide projectors will work increasingly out of sync until finally half of them are changing exactly one second before the others, as was the case when Ed Long finally took his first spin of the second round.
After Larson's appearance, the board was reprogrammed with five "emergency" patterns to prevent anyone from duplicating Larson's feat. After about a month, these patterns were replaced by five new patterns. By August, a software upgrade resulted in the board having thirty-two patterns which lasted until the show's cancellation in 1986.
Incidentally, contestant coordinators noted that there were other would-be contestants who had also memorized the original patterns. Indeed, Larson's comment, "Somebody could have done what I did" was very true.
References
- ^ Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal (television). 2003-03-16.
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