exactly, IMHO, this is like someone at a casino who can naturally count cards & figure odds to make the best decisions in the games - to me, this is a price of doing business, that there are some people out there who are going to be able to beat it, with just their own brains (now, if there's a device involved, I do think it's cheating, & they shouldn't keep their winnings), and they should be able to keep their winnings
39:52 *"Will Michael his a whammy? Will a whammy hit Michael?"* 39:56 *"Will Michael pass his spins, or will he end up owning the network?"* 😂 Both those lines, AND how Peter delivered them, are hilarious! 😂
In the un-aired footage, you could hear and feel the panic from the crowd when Larsen crossed into six figures. I think everyone would have keeled over and died if Larsen hit a Whammy at that point... and he almost did!
The way I see it, the excitement of the audience was slowly but surely fading away, in favor of worry and concern that Michael would hit a Whammy and blow $100k. Michael hit big bucks so often everyone became dull to it, only for that excitement to be sparked again when Ed hit $5,000 and a spin twice in a row. Also, Michael was showing obvious signs of mental exhaustion to anyone watching.
no doubt the reason he tapped out the MOMENT he hit $100k.. . the only reason he had to go a few more rounds was the mandatory additional spins passed back to him.. he even says he doesn't want them, he knows it can't go on forever, he's hit his goal, he's tired, he just wants it to be over.
@@nathanhutton5304 Ed Long has said that as well. He said that by the time Michael reached $100k he was getting extremely stressed out over him possibly hitting a whammy. You can tell throughout the episode Michael feeds off the energy of the crowd. They hype him up a lot and he looks at them and gets pumped up. For 45 minutes he was a King lol
I did not know until I saw this that Ed played a game prior to the game he played against Michael Larson. I saw the Larson episodes originally back in 1984. I tried to figure out if the board had a pattern by running my VCR in slow motion, but I didn't realize that the patterns involved the position of the light and not the slides in the squares. It's good to know that Ed at least won something on the first episode and didn't walk away empty-handed because of Larson. It's just too bad that Janie Litras got on her first time with Larson.
Contestants, do you remember Michael Larson kept Pressing his luck and made $102,851, that is an equivalent of $512,905....if anybody pressing their luck and reach a goal of $500,000, that contestant on Press Your Luck 2022 will win a million dollars on ABC
In my opinion I do not think Michael Larsen cheated...I think he was a genius on how he played the game. I did watch the Press your Luck scandal special and was in awe how Michael Larsen would record and playback episodes of the show. 🍦🚌💲💲🤔
Or if Janie pulled the strategy game, and immediately passed after she whammied when she had zero dollars and six spins.. Or the very next spin after she hit 700 and a spin.
In another youtube video from "Faces from the Forgotten' is a small documentary about Michael Larson. He actually invested his winnings in some bad real estate deals and lost his money and died shortly after. I don't think he every scammed the show, I think he did his homework and studied the patterns.
He's certainly living up to the show's title...PRESS Your Luck. Very smart man, not a cheat, just concentrating on where his press will land. Anyone could do it if they really tried & he DID get a whammy. However, I did feel for the other 2 contestants who were there on the wrong night.
Dead serious, they need to put a Michael Larson square on the new PYL as homage to the greatest player to ever play the game, in the bonus round. It would have two effects: 1) It would grant the player $110,237. 2) For the rest of the bonus round, the lights would only bounce around in the exact same pattern they did in the episode in which Michael Larson won his $110,237, at the same speed, and the same squares that always had +1 spin in that episode would also have spins in the bonus round, even if they didn't before. It would then be on the player to ride that the same way he did, with the knowledge we have now, to make it to $500k and then get the bonus payout to $1m.
There are guys in southern California that put on replica game shows. They have done every game show ever aired, including Press Your Luck. They have invented new squares to put on the board, and I believe one of them was a "Michael Larson" square, but I don't remember exactly how it was played.
Notice at 54:55 he came one slide change away from losing it all. Michael hit it a beat too soon, and had a Whammy dropped in instead of the Bahamas, it would have been complete disaster.
@@mrmoose6619 He also landed on pick a corner, which I suspect was intentional. Whammies never land on that space. I've even landed on it purposely in the PYL Expert Edition simulator. I think he did it to get rid of a spin.
@@JLukeHypernova That could be... just that the Hawaii and Sailboat were Prize, Money, Whammy spots. If I remember reading it correctly he wanted only Prize or Money Spots or Pick a Corner...
That spin at 45:49 is really scary stuff. 6 whammies, and not one of them could hit Larson, who landed on a YELLOW square, and won a measly $500 and a spin compared to the cash he has already won.
yea, he was basically just maintaining spin count with those paltry numbers.. . can you imagine if $500, $600, $750 had been the whole board? it would have taken him an entire week of episodes to hit $100k.
they did make special episode of Whammy! The all new Press Your Luck for this specific episode. they brought the same 2 people back, and they brought michael's brother since he passed away at the time. and this was 2002, 2003. really that GSN reboot of press your luck was my press your luck.
him keeping on getting those free spins is like when you click on something on this site, then see something in the Recommended list you want to watch, then you see something in the Recommendeds of that video, and on and on
Just a thought, if this game was in 1983 with the 8th square with 1,500,2,000,and 2,500 without a additional spin instead of 500,750,and 1,000 and a spin. Michael would only won 43,237 in cash and prizes
Something I’ve noticed: at about 46:30, the slides start shuffling out of order. As a kid watching this, I assumed that Michael had spun for so long that the Big Board began to malfunction. However, I realized that the slides shuffling out of order was likely intentional on the part of the game operators; at this point, they were fully aware of what Michael was doing, and tracking the light visually looks way more confusing when there’s literally 3-5 squares changing every 1/3 of a second. I surmise that this contributed to Michael’s fatigue and his decision to essentially quit once he broke six figures. My theory is further supported by the board magically being “fixed” after Ed takes his first spin. This particular mechanic makes me think that the producers may have anticipated that someone could’ve figured out the board’s pattern and had the board shuffle out of order as a failsafe in case of a doomsday scenario like this one.
@930bestvideos I stated a couple of weeks ago that everything you stated was a possibility, and I suspect that Michael noticed it as well because he was going for the #4 tile more frequently when that started. Either way, it's not cheating. It's like going to a casino and counting cards. Frowned upon, yes. Cheating, no.
😂 while the humor is appreciated, this thought process would have been more likely in his mind had Janie had appeared on and won the previous episode. He genuinely liked Ed, and think a small part of him felt bad Ed was the other contestant in there. Watch 58:39. I don't think he was particularly happy Ed ended up with his final spin being a whammy but that I think Larson was relieved that he wasn't going to be put in a position where they'd be the final two. Also listen to 56:03- 56:10. He was borderline apologetic.
I like the fact that the board was out of sync after he crossed the 50k point. I wonder if that was intentional to try and get him to whammy because he countered it by stopping a little sooner than when it was in sync
@@jeffreyerekson2179 I wonder if the board was starting to overheat. I'm sure it took a decent amount of power to run that thing. The board probably wasn't designed to run for as long as it did.
36:02 He has to watch the board to get himself back on track with the pattern. He gives an awkard chuckle at 36:12 while he waits for the right time to stop the board.
While this was an absolute thrill for all of us PYL fans, it was also possibly the show's downfall because nobody ever came close to that amount after the board patterns were changed, and the ratings also took a tumble.
The show started its downfall probably when the neon slides appeared mid-August 1985, along with adjusting the board’s values (unfortunately for the worse) starting with the cheapening of Square 1 ($2,250 & $1,750 replaced with $750 & $500+One Spin) the same day we 1st saw the neon slides, then in December 1985 with Square 10 having 2 prizes replaced with cash ($1,250 & $1,400). 1986 speeded up PYL’s downfall not only with a move to an afternoon time slot, but also the board’s further decrease in values (along with hindering Pick A Corner’s choices and causing its eventual removal somewhere in July 1986) from early-mid June 1986 to the series finale in September 1986. Pre-neon slides, PYL was still in its stride post-Larson and throughout most of 1985
@@wns808 You're probably correct about the time slot changes and lesser dollar amounts, but I suspect they used regular lights, not neon. When the board is in motion, there's a very quick off/on of each square that only an incandescent bulb is capable of, so I'm more inclined to believe there was a projection system in place that used bulbs for a cleaner image. Just a guess though..
@@poppopw5305 They still used incandescent bulbs for the projectors, the newly-colored slides when we 1st saw them mid-August 1985 were shades of lime green, red-orange, aqua blue, purple, and navy blue .. they even gave $1,500+One Spin a coined background, something its original counterpart never had
They couldn’t really do anything as far as disqualifying him goes, largely because they had designed the board that way; as one of the producers said in the big bucks documentary, “He hadn’t broken any of the rules of the game, he had played fairly, he was an eligible contestant…“
I'm not saying Michael clued Ed Long in on to what was going on but... 52:24 Ed knows there's zero chance he's going to go on enough of a streak to catch Michael. Janie would have passed there. I think ANY of us would. Ed genuinely liked Michael. He wanted well for him. He had his winnings. He didn't want to be the one who passed that spin and it be the one where Larson whammied and lost it all. 52:36 look at the huge smile he has on his face. He knows. He just did his part to help his new friend whos life had been downtrodden that far hopefully have a better life. 52:39 Larson realizes what he did. That's his "thank you." Then.... 56:05 - 56:10.. Enough said. I don't think they were in cahoots but I think BOTH of the other two figured out what was going on. Janie was pissed off and went for his throat. Ed liked the guy and knew it might make his a life a better place, already would be walking away with his own winnings from the previous episode, and did what he felt was right. You also could tell Larson was REALLY starting to slip and get burned in his last three spins. I wonder how different things would have ended if she passed to him when she had 5 spins or even six. It's just sad what happened to Larson AFTER the show.
If this took place in 1983, the 8 square will have 1,500, 2,000, and 2,500 without an additional spins instead of 500, 1,000,1500 with a additional spin
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE IF THE LATE MICHEAL LARSON FOR HIM MAKING HISTORY ON PRESS YOUR LUCK WINNING $110,237--HE SHOULD HAVE WON A NEW CAR 🚗 OR 2 NEW CAR 🚗🚘 S!!
