Pressed his own luck

Tweet

While I was on the mend at my parent's home - I did a lot of sleeping and watching TV. In particular my mom and I enjoy watching the Game Shows. There was this one News-style show on the "Game Show Network" where they would talk about interesting things in the history of game shows. One such story was about a man named Michael Lawson. The year was 1984 and if you remember - at that time VCRs and tapes were just becoming a "thing". Lawson was unemployed at the time and had been known to fall for these get rich schemes. He was also a big fan of game shows. In particular this one called "Press Your Luck". He had many TVs and VCRs and he would record and watch and re-watch the show, over and over again. On "Press Your Luck" the idea was that the contestants would play a trivia game and earn "spins" around this prize board that would light up with changing squares. All sorts of prizes would light up, but there was also the chance of landing on a "whammy" which would erase all of your prizes that you'd won. Now Michael, in his obsessive watching of the show, had noticed a pattern of how the squares lit up - and which squares held the to-be-avoided "whammies". He went on to win over $100,000 The network freaked out and tried to think of ways to not pay out. In the end they decided that he hadn't cheated and paid Lawson the amount he had won. Lawson squandered the winnings on get rich quick schemes. It was a surprisingly fascinating show. Here's a link to an article about it: