Michael Larson

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Michael Larson on Press Your Luck, 1984
Michael Larson on Press Your Luck, 1984

Paul Michael Larson (May 10, 1949 – February 16, 1999) was a contestant on the United States television game show Press Your Luck. 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.

Contents

[edit] Larson's appearance on Press Your Luck

[edit] Preparations

Through a careful study of the "random" movements of 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 theoretically be 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) always contained cash in round 1 (square 4 held $1000, $1250, and $1500, while square 8 held $300, $450, and $550), as well as cash and an extra spin in round 2 (square 4 held $3000 + ONE SPIN, $4000 + ONE SPIN, and $5000 + ONE SPIN, while square 8 held $500 + ONE SPIN, $750 + ONE SPIN, and $1000 + 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. Two producers discussed whether to have him on the show after his tryout interview; one was suspicious of Larson and his reasons for trying out—the other 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 the Reverend 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."

[edit] The game

But Ed won his game, picking up over $11,000; and so Michael was matched against him and fellow newcomer Janie Litras (now Janie Litras-Dakan), a dental assistant.

[edit] Round One

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 "a 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 host Peter 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 $1250 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.

[edit] 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 only earned two spins, and Litras only three.

One game board pattern that Michael Larson memorized to win over $110,000; squares 4 and 8 would never have the Whammy
One game board pattern that Michael Larson memorized to win over $110,000; squares 4 and 8 would never have the Whammy

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. 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, $700 + ONE SPIN, PICK A CORNER (where he selected $2250), and a Sailboat. 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 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 three spins (although some edited material from the show indicates that he actually considered going on after $100,000, but thought better of it). Long, who took the next spin, immediately hit a Whammy, leading Tomarken to wonder if Larson knew it was coming. Long then hit $5000 + ONE SPIN twice, bringing him to $10,000, and briefly considered passing. Tomarken began to freak out again, screaming, "What in the world is going on here??!!" But Ed pressed on, and Whammied again, losing 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 $4000 + 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. It could just easily have switched to the Whammy, which would have wiped out Larson's fortune and forced him to build it all up again with his remaining two spins. 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 $4500. 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."

[edit] The aftermath

While Larson was running up the score, the producers frantically contacted Michael Brockman, head of CBS' daytime programming department. In a 1994 TV Guide interview commemorating the Larson Sweep, and 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 of $25,000, he was not allowed to return for the next show.

Part of his winnings went to taxes, part of his winnings were invested in real estate in his hometown and the rest was withdrawn from the bank as cash. His real estate deal turned out to be a fraudulent ponzi scheme that cost Larson the money. Larson then took his remaining cash and participated in a "get rich quick" scheme that involved 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. In a sign of eccentricity and irrationality, Larson withdrew his winnings in one dollar bills in hopes of winning the contest, and upon realizing that he did not have the winning number, would place all the money back in his account and then withdraw it again the next day with a new set of ones to repeat the process all over again. Larson's wife stated that this obsession consumed him.

Approximately USD $40,000-50,000 in the remaining cash was stolen from Larson and his then-common-law wife. Larson was divorced soon after.

In 1994, Larson appeared on ABC's Good Morning America in an interview timed to the recent release of the movie Quiz Show.

Larson died of throat cancer in 1999 in Florida while on the run from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He married three times and was survived by three children distributed throughout the marriages.

[edit] Broadcasts of the shows

Larson's game was split into two episodes due to its exceptional running time, and these only aired once during the original run of the series, on June 8 and 11, 1984. CBS then suppressed them for 19 years (As CBS and Bill Carruthers considered the episode at the time one of their worst embarrassments). When USA Network, and later Game Show Network, purchased the rights to air Press Your Luck, CBS and Carruthers stipulated that the Larson episodes must not be aired. On March 16, 2003, GSN was finally allowed to air the episodes as part of a two-hour documentary, called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal, featuring 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. Janie Litras-Dakan was unable to, but Ed Long not only got the hang of it, he actually earned more money than Larson had (beating Larson's total by only a dollar, although these were not actual winnings he could keep).

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, 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 Larson or James could have pulled off the same trick, Larson's old opponents still lost. In fact, in the first round, when James hit the Big Bank space, Ed Long proceeded to joke with host Todd Newton that he had seen this before.

Currently, the two episodes can be seen on the Game Show Network in regular rotation. However, the Big Bucks documentary included additional footage that had been edited out of the episodes for initial air - this additional footage is not seen when the episodes run in regular rotation.

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.

On January 31, 2007, TV Land broadcasted "TV Shows Myths and Legends", which featured the Larson episodes with commentary from his brother, the past contestants, and Penn and Teller.

On Game Show Network's "50 Greatest Game Shows" series, Press Your Luck was ranked 13th, and the two Larson episodes were shown back-to-back.

[edit] Larson's Press Your Luck appearance statistics

[edit] Cash and prizes earned

Michael Larson's amazing total
Michael Larson's amazing total
  • $104,950 in cash
  • 1 sailboat
  • One trip to Kauai
  • One trip to the Bahamas

[edit] Larson's spin list

Spin Landed On Total Notes
1 WHAMMY! $0 Hit early. The very next sequence would have put him in the safe spot. (#8)
2 $1250 $1250  
3 $1250 $2500  
4 $4000 + ONE SPIN $6500 Beginning of round 2
5 $5000 + ONE SPIN $11500  
6 $1000 + ONE SPIN $12500  
7 Trip to Kauai worth $1636 $14136 Larson stopped the board 1 space early, but missed the Whammy in this space
8 $4000 + ONE SPIN $18136  
9 $500 + ONE SPIN $18636  
10 $700 + ONE SPIN $19336 Larson again stopped the board 1 space early, and again missed the Whammy in this space
11 $1000 + ONE SPIN $20336 Thanks to a "Home Viewer Spin" contest, a random home viewer (Michael Landry of Jeanerette, Louisiana) won $1000 as well
12 $750 + ONE SPIN $21086  
13 $5000 + ONE SPIN $26086  
14 PICK A CORNER ($2250) $28336 Larson stopped the board well after his pattern suggested to, but landed on a safe space anyway He was offered a choice of $2250, $2000, or $1500 + ONE SPIN, and without missing a beat took the $2250.
15 Sailboat worth $1015 $29351 Larson's string of perfect pattern play finally began
16 $3000 + ONE SPIN $32351  
17 $500 + ONE SPIN $32851  
18 $4000 + ONE SPIN $36851 Part 1 of the episode ended here.
19 $750 + ONE SPIN $37601 Part 2 of the episode started here.
20 $3000 + ONE SPIN $40601  
21 $1000 + ONE SPIN $41601 This spin was edited out; on the broadcast, Larson's score appears to jump by $1000
22 $1000 + ONE SPIN $42601  
23 $1000 + ONE SPIN $43601  
24 $1000 + ONE SPIN $44601  
25 $3000 + ONE SPIN $47601  
26 $750 + ONE SPIN $48351  
27 $3000 + ONE SPIN $51351  
28 $500 + ONE SPIN $51851  
29 $500 + ONE SPIN $52351 Board starts to go out of sync
30 $500 + ONE SPIN $52851  
31 $4000 + ONE SPIN $56851  
32 $5000 + ONE SPIN $61851  
33 $4000 + ONE SPIN $65851  
34 $5000 + ONE SPIN $70851  
35 $4000 + ONE SPIN $74851  
36 $4000 + ONE SPIN $78851  
37 $500 + ONE SPIN $79351  
38 $4000 + ONE SPIN $83351  
39 $3000 + ONE SPIN $86351  
40 $4000 + ONE SPIN $90351  
41 $500 + ONE SPIN $90851  
42 $4000 + ONE SPIN $94851  
43 $5000 + ONE SPIN $99851  
44 $3000 + ONE SPIN 102851 The scoreboard, which could only display 6 characters, simply took the dollar sign out. Larson then passed his remaining spins
45 $4000 + ONE SPIN 106851 First of three spins passed back to Larson, which he had to take
46 $750 + ONE SPIN 107601  
47 Trip to the Bahamas worth $2636 110237 Larson finally made another mistake, stopping the board too early but luckily avoiding a Whammy; he passed his remaining spins

[edit] 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. [1] 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:[1]

  • 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.) Interestingly, Larson never stopped the board when the second pattern shown here came up; he always waited for a different pattern.

[edit] Trivia

This article contains a trivia section.
Content in this section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article or removed, and the trivia section removed.
  • The Michael Larson game 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.
  • Squares 5 and 7 both held $750 slides, but they rarely appeared at the same time during regular board operation. At the very end of the game, when Michael hits $110,237 and passes spins back to Janie, both squares do indeed show $750 when she subsequently stops the spinner.
  • During the show, Ed usually dedicated his spins to Toby. Toby refers to his son.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b PYL Board Configurations: PYL Light Patterns. Retrieved on 2006-08-19.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

Persondata
NAME Larson, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Press Your Luck contestant
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1999
PLACE OF DEATH
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