Shawn's Gameshow pages

The picture above is from the Peter Tomarkin era of Press Your Luck. This show is still remembered today for this history it made back in June of 1984 when Michael Larsen won $110,237. It was history making because he figured out how the big board worked and used it to his advantage. Since there were only six patterns of how the squares moved around, he slowed down several tapings of the show on his VCR and studied them carefully. The patterns repeated in the same order each time allowing him to stop the board any place he wanted. After this happened, CBS immediately decided to implement over 20 new board patterns so this wouldn't happen again. The new version of Press Your Luck called Whammy! which appears on Game Show Network uses completely random patterns generated by a computer that don't repeat. This setup would have left Michael Larsen scratching his head as it is not possible to figure out any certain pattern since every move is completely random.