When I was a kid I made an incredible discovery. There was a specific popcorn game at Chuck-E-Cheese. You had a little bucket and you had to catch as many ping pong balls as you could. If you put a dime in the machine it would activate the game. The thing is it wouldn't keep your dime. With a single dime you could play the game until it ran out of tickets. I felt like a genius. I drained that pop corn game of all it's tickets multiple times. I've never told a soul until right now. That must be how Michael Larson felt.
Oh man, that reminds me of finding a soda machine that would give you your money back **and** a soda if you timed your button presses right. Now that I know a lot of those machines are owned by individuals I feel a bit bad, but I was just a kid at the time and I didn't go infinite or anything...
I remember at work we once had a cigarette machine that started to not just give you your hardpack, but would often just dump the coin tray like a one-armed bandit. We used to call it "Ciga-Lotto". lol When the guy came to stock the machine, and take away the coins (that were not there), boy, was he pissed!!
@Geff Joldblum I had a quarter get stuck in a pinball machine. I tried to free it by jamming a plastic butter knife into the slot. I couldn't free the quarter but it started racking up credits. Turns out the quarter follows a track so you cannot do this but the track was worn causing several quarters to jam. Anyways, for almost a month we played free pinball any time we wanted. They they collected the money and fixed it.
I discovered in the mid 2000’s that underneath the ticket counting machine at chuck-e-cheese there was always a large amount of shredded tickets on the floor, presumably from when they would empty the shredder. Well, if you inserted a ticket that was only 1/4th it’s original size or bigger - it would count it as a whole ticket. I would gather all the ticket scraps I could just before cashing in my tickets and end up with 200+ extra every time.
Yes, I almost missed it. I lucked out by not looking at the length first. If I had known it was this long but didn't know it was WGC, I would have passed.
Brilliantly done, Brian. And yes, this is a tragedy. To me, it's so much the same as Actors who go from superstardom to drug use. Trying to chase that high of performing, trying to find another high to replace it once it's gone. So incredibly tragic.
Tragic?… TRAGIC!?… Fuck tragic, your perspective on humanity is fucking gross. Junkies are the most self-important people in the world, fuck junkies. You’re the problem
Loving the accompanying visuals. Very clean and efficient. Doesn't distract or otherwise take away from what's being said, but they don't feel so important that they make me feel like I'd be missing out by listening while working on something else. Big fan of the new found watchablility for this one, and WGC overall.
This is the best presentation of this story that I've watched on youtube. Even though I already knew what happened, I still couldn't stop watching. Well done!
Dude. Seriously. This is one of the best ever ever episodes on this channel (and I'm a long time sub). I host live trivia 2-3x/week in New Orleans and I have a saying I use in the warm up: "Don't try to Michael Larson me tonight because I will catch you and zero out your scores". Keep the videos coming. Love you dudes!
I never realized how much I wish you did audiobook recordings until I binged the last WGC. Now if you and Jason could team up to read Killer Candy for my visually impaired self that would be awesome!
Brian could absolutely be a world-class narrator! I've heard a lot of them in my time. Some of the best and the worst. Commercial, for NLS or RFB&D, and for stuff like LibriVox. Brian Brushwood would be one of the best!
I've finished season 2, and I loved every moment of it. Listened to it during my road trip, and I LOVE the story telling and the bge. I hope there is a season 3. Keep up the good work dudes.
Holy shit Brian, this dude was the real deal, and the way you tell it, I'm cheering for the con man. A masterful performance telling us the story of a master in his craft. I'm impressed with both of you.
Brian's voice is a little bass-y. It's probably a combination of the compression plus the recording setup but it's a little exhausting after a while. maybe a bit of a low cut (NPR-style) will give a better listening experience on full-range systems.
He made a mistake with the one-dollar bills, I would have done it by entering the numbers into a computer and then pacing them to individual packages of one hundred bills, each of the packages would then have had a number written on it. not only would that have saved him the hassle of having to look through the bills every time, but he could have kept them in a safe deposit box...
Thanks! It was a beast to reverse engineer all the audio sources that Justin Robert Young included in his mix, and I'm very grateful I had Brandt to make some kickass graphics.
I heard through all of the Episodes through Spotify and now I watch it just so that I can see the faces of these people 😂 Great Series by the way. I hope you guys will keep doing this.
@@Big.cOfficial I hope that it will be about _Frank Abagnale_ that guy was incredible and they could probably get him on the show to talk about it. Just imagine one of the best con-man that we know of talking about his work in the Podcast _Worlds Greatest Con._
@@jackwriter1908 That would be amazing to see. Who knows. I wonder how long g it takes them to get another season going. I know its recorded in advance but Im curious. Heck, even the cons I have done are not as good as these....meaning what I've followed from Brians work. 🤣🤣🤣
@@Big.cOfficial 😂 I mean are they really cons or just good hidden magic tricks? How is it using the tricks he shows? I was never confident enough or even remembered enough to go through one of these tricks.
@@jackwriter1908 I take it day by day and step by step to actually perfect it infront of friends, family, etc. Now this was a teaching moment for a store by my place that kept getting robbed. You would hear it all the time on the news and I went in and proved to them a way how they might have been getting robbed and they were dumbfounded. It's a thing of nature that if you don't think about how the trick/con is being played out, you win every time. I can take back money that someone hands me and count it out myself in front of them(it's the exact change) but I count it a way that looks like I was given less then what I should have been given. No holds. No steals. No nothing like that. The money is all there in front front of them. It's very deceitful and scary and cool all at the same time. Day by day you practice. The courage will come to you once you know you are fooled by your own works. 🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻😁😁
This is really good. Esp. the touch about having it "play" out of an old-school TV/VCR combo. Took me 7 minutes to realize I'd gone WELL past your asked for 2 minutes before pausing and giving you the requested feedback, Brian. Says volumes, considering the ADHD nature I have.
I've heard the Larson story a few times, and this is definitely my favourite telling of it so far. Brian's voice and cadence is so easy to listen to. I agree with another comment I read, it would be great if Brian decides to voice audio books in the future. Looking *Cough* Forward *Cough, cough* to the next episode. *Cough*
If Larson would have input all his dollar bills serial numbers into a spreadsheet he could have left all his money in a vault and quickly did a search everyday and save the stress of looking through $50k daily.
I thought the same thing, but I don't know what a "spreadsheet" meant to him when that was happening. Would it have just been a giant Charlie Day-esque bulletin board with yarn on his wall? Stacks of books? Was Excel a functional program already?
Great story telling of a good story, with good graphics. Dare I say these graphics are a bit Jon Bois esk.... Which is indeed praise. They also add to the story.
I got an email to watch the first two minutes. There is a problem though. I had already watched it the day it came out. I was already familiar with the story, but I enjoy how you tell stories and I did like the visuals, so I watched the whole thing. I fucking hope there are more videos like this.
Literally the only podcast I actually listen to and the additional visuals are a plus. They aren't imperative to the story so I can still kick back and listen but at the same time they provide a perfect level of engagement for when I desire so. Hope to see them continue. Inspiring work as always brian
Oh man, I've heard about this story before, but Shwood's narration and delivery just elevates this weird tale to another level! Looking forward to even more!
Brilliantly done, kudos to the whole team. I'm so glad you mentioned the gambler's fallacy in there, because I was immediately reminded of when I first turned 18, bought a lottery ticket, and came one number away from hitting the jackpot. Even though I didn't win the big one, I got a big enough prize that I was hooked. Then it became scratch off lottery tickets, hit big on one of those, and it was all downhill from there. Within six months I was broke and literally stealing food. Addictions ruin lives, no matter the type.
That's a great cautionary tale to anyone that thinks they figured out a way to game the system. It's not impossible to do, but odds are you aren't the one doing it. And the sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be.
I enjoy the visuals. It really helps me paint the story from your mind and pulls me into story further. I never head about this story but you got me hooked and wanting to find out more.
Hot *damn* I love this rendition of the story! Sure, I've watched others recount what went on, how he did it, and even replicate the setup of the gameshow and bring back the other two guests from that day's filming. But *damn* this recount was really damn engrossing and I could barely turn away from it until it was over!
Awesome...really awesome. Quick questions: -Did "who wants to be a millionare" give prizes out at 1 million dollars? - Rolling 45 times at a craps table without rolling a 7 is not a statistical impossibility. The Wizard of Odds website calculates the probability of it happening is 0.00024811. There are a small number of times this has happened before - the difference is that there are thusands of craps games happening all of the time, and this game show happened once a day.
Millionaire's designed to be a 2-day thing. This is the largest earnings where a butt hit a seat, a tv game show was played, and then the butt got up from the seat.
So it was the year 2020 and one of my subscribers decide to get in touch me and we been friends ever since and he got me into Press Your Luck and now I know something that I didn’t know about till now! And Micheal Larson was the 80’s rendition of a guy called Charles Ingram who cheated on the UK Millionaire and he won the £1 million jackpot prize but they didn’t give him the money, that was a whammy for Charles! He even made it to the Klaxon on which the game pauses for the next episode! Something illuminati is going on here!
Brian, I know you won't see this, but maybe don't do (or allow the team to do) signing your name to a newsletter email with links in it that looks REALLY like a phishing message? As an infosec guy it made me cringe even when I knew it was correct. We shouldn't train people to do this!
This show has fantastic storytelling. I came to check it out for a few minutes but ended up staying for the duration. Wonderful story! Great narrative!
Larson was in many ways smart, such as intuition or pattern recognizing, but stupid in other ways. He could've researched how companies back then organizes and tried an organization scheme for 1$ bills: Just count money once, keep track of bills via for example putting bills starting with 15 to 20 in another box than 10 to 15, And keep repeating this for next digits, together with sorting boxes in order, after every day he could've started from middle of boxes, and go up-down for each digit until he arrived at target box, and if he stacked multiple boxes/files to boxes, he must repeat this at most 15 times. No more than 10 min of control every day. This way of sorting and finding numbers-alphabets-files etc is used in our computers and is known as "Binary Search Algorihm"
I think what Michael Larson did on Press Your Luck was 100% Legal because of the following: * How did Michael find the Light Patterns and Whammy Locations? Frame by Frame Analysis of recording the show on a VCR. Time shifting of shows for non-commercial uses was ruled legal and fair use by the famous Supreme Court Case in 1984, Sony Corp of America v Universal City Studios v Universal City Studios. * The light patterns and where the whammies were on the board did not violate any confidentiality agreements. After all, they were broadcast in the 29.97 frames per second that CBS broadcast in the other episodes. * Michael Larson was an eligible contestant on the show. * Michael Larson did not violate any rules of the game. * When a player takes a spin they decide (within a reasonable length of time) at what moment to push the button and Press Their Luck. The board stops applying a certain amount of latency on the light it is on in the pattern when the button is pressed. If the contestant is lucky, they will get money or a prize. Stop on the wrong screen, the player will hit a Whammy and then lose all their money and prizes. It was up to Michael Larson to decide what moment to press the button to stop the board. * The main design faults that Michael Larson explloited were CBS's. They decided to go with only six light patterns and they ran the same patterns over and over. They also designed the board with two squares that has no whammies in them and in round 2 those were the ones that gave extra spins. This is what allowed Michael Larson to win. I fault CBS for Larson's Success.
I saw the Press Your Luck episodes when they originally aired in 1984, and I saw the GSN documentary in 2003. I was never aware of all the shady deals Michael Larson got involved in.
This video about quality tv is quality tv. Now if I were those suites having to pay this schmuck on top of the rest of the production crew I’d be pissed, luckily I’m production so my feelings are as long as the crew got paid that’s really all that matters
He was anywhere just as much an addict as Farley or Belushi was except he didn't do drugs. It was gambling after a sort. But as everyone knows, the house, figuratively speaking, always wins.
I originally did the math as the odds of crapping out 45 times in a row and oh boy, were the results different. The odds of rolling a seven 45 times in a row is a statistical impossibility (pretty sure it would take longer than any human lives to achieve such a streak, perhaps even longer than the existence of humanity). The odds of NOT crapping out 45 times in a row are far more mundane, and absolutely plausible at the cited approximately 3 in 10,000 odds (it's rounded up from 2 and a large fraction). That's actually plausible, and should be able to be done, statistically at least, in about 3,333 tries. Which, don't get me wrong, is absolutely insane, but still. Important to remember that for a casino making these odds, craps only pays when the same number is rolled twice before a 7 is rolled, changing the odds drastically (also, the prop bets are heavily skewed in the house's favor (prop bets betting like betting on rolling a hard 8 (two fours), as it pays out WAY less than the actual odds). It also assumes a pass bet rather than a don't pass bet (don't pass being the bet would pay if the shooter craps out before hitting the point). Craps is sorta complicated, but ironically, if played perfectly, has some of the best odds in Vegas (because when laying odds, the bet actually pays at true odds. The house edge comes in the initial roll)
Speaking of Chuck E. Cheese, it took me no time at all to figure out the keys were generic.. So buying a key from lets say Williams Defender, opened ALL the Defender video game cabinets and sending away for a replacement key wasn't hard, long, or expensive.. So I'd pick out some favorite games, have Williams send me a replacement key, and it was quick to pop the front door open, click the coin drop lever a half dozen times, and close the door.
So, after I watched this the first time, i looked up more info on Michael, the special that the Game Show Network did, is available on RU-vid to watch. Here's the link to the documentary: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jKNO1Gi8zNI.html You can also watch the actual episode of press you luck with Michael: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WltjaxiowW4.html
Looking through the bills for a matching serial number would be so much easier nowadays. Just enter every one of the serial numbers into a database on a computer (yeah, this first step would be awful), then simply search the database every day. If it comes up with a winning number match, look through your collection until you find the match (or better yet, just catalog each bill on sequence in a binder, from 1 to 50,000. Make sure the page number is also on the computer database, and simply flip to the relevant page if you win)
Looks like the reel to reel kicked the bucket 🪣! Nice green screen hand doing the "mans" fixing method. The modern rogue method, smack the stuff out of it! Lol. The TV is nice. But there WAS something calming and peaceful with the R2R that focused you to sort of listen a bit more to your voice than watch and listen. Not that it takes away from it. Neat change. Don't get sick or alter your voice & storytelling! THAT is where your money is here. Wait. Are you conning me by doing this? 😂
@@ModernRogue I am so excited! I think I got ahead of myself last night. Looking for it everywhere! Haha. I know everyone's dying for Frank. A. and a possible guest. I personally don't mind what you talk about. I've never found a storyteller I've personally enjoyed more, Brian. So thanks to you and the team(s) for putting it together. Don't want this ride to stop! Appreciate you and your work 💯 🙌.
aw... I'm your favorite listener 🥺 I think I have adhd, so I really can't afford to hop doctors or therapists if no one will listen... and despite there being online things, it's still not cheap. And 2 minutes? now you got me before two, as this is interesting.
One of my favorite series I've followed Brian all the way from his twit days and every incarnation since I've been opened up to so many excellent programs and people this program lives up and exceeds my expectations thank you for all you do and will do going forwards
I want him to stop, I want Micheal to just take the 50k... But I know he won't. After all the work he put in, hr's going to milk that moment for all it is worth. Glorious
Is this the same story as the first episode, just cut down and animated? Edit: Oh I'm an idiot, was thinking of the channel qxir which did a video on this topic too.
One story I might suggest you check out is the story behind the squid games cryptocurrency, they made so much money and we still don't know who they are.
Instead of looking through every dollar bill everyday everytime they read the number, it would have been better to go through them once and create a database containing every number that he had so he could see if he had the number. Then if he did he could go back through the bills and find the winning bill.
I got that feeling when i saw £2500 gaming monitors listed at £250. Not too soon after buying i was sent a refund and a kindly worded email saying it was a mistake. Someday i will get that feeling again...
i found a open game of the game stacker so i knew how the game work and made the major price easy to win. the prize door was not open just the coin mec door
I love all of the episodes. Normally I listen to these on Spotify while I am working on my projects. The videos are really cool and add another layer to the story.
Id say you conned me into watching this by sending me an email and asking me to watch the first 2 minutes, but I would have watched the whole thing anyway...
