No Whammy: How 18 hours of daily focus made TV game show history
- danstamm9
- Apr 9
- 4 min read
"Press Your Luck"? More like focus on the pattern and leave luck at home.
I was recently called for jury duty in Philadelphia.
Hold on—before your eyes glaze over and you stop reading, know that this isn't actually a post about the civic duty of jury service. I could write at length about the focus required to be a juror amid life's distractions, or the little things court workers do to keep you from dying of boredom while you wait to be called.
But this post is about the main distraction offered during that wait: the television. Specifically, the beloved Game Show Network.
As the jury room crier assigned numbers and courtrooms to the hundreds of people sitting in auditorium-style chairs around me, I looked up to see Alfonso Ribeiro (yes, "Carlton" from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) hosting a blackjack-inspired show called Catch 21. I found my eyes drawn away from the juror's questionnaire—which was asking about my potential biases that could impact an accused person’s future—and toward the screen. I caught myself wondering: Should the guy hit on 12 or stand pat?
As I pondered the strategy of the game, I started thinking about the sheer amount of focus required to succeed on a game show—and the literal distractions lobbed your way. Think about it:
Double Dare: Maneuvering through physical stunts and messy obstacles—I’m looking at you nose pick!
The Price Is Right: Blocking out a screaming audience during the Showcase Showdown.
Hollywood Squares: Sifting through celebrity comedy to find the actual answer.
Press Your Luck: The ultimate test of timing against the "Whammy."
For those unfamiliar, Press Your Luck was a flashy 1980s game show where contestants answered questions to earn "spins" on a big, lighted board. You wanted to hit cash or prizes; you desperately wanted to avoid the "Whammy," a cartoon character that would appear and reset your winnings to zero.
The board moved fast. It was a chaotic swirl of bright colors, cycling squares, and loud sound effects—all designed to distract the contestant while they shouted, "No Whammy!" then "Stop" as they slammed the red button in front of them.
The man focused on cracking the code
Then came Michael Larson. In 1984, this 30-something unemployed ice cream truck driver realized that the "random" array of choices on the board wasn't random at all.
As a 2016 Priceonomics story describes, Larson didn't rely on luck. He relied on an incredible amount of focus:
"While CBS executives in the control room looked on in horror and disbelief, Larson harbored a secret: he'd cracked the code of Press Your Luck. For months, he'd studied the show's game board, which lit up squares in a supposedly 'random' sequence, and found that, in actuality, it was repeating the same 5 patterns over and over again. What ensued was one of daytime television's strangest moments—one that exposed the follies of both man and technology."
How did he do it? First he deciphered that similar to Craps, there were 1 in 6 odds of hitting the Whammy. He then turned to the cutting-edge technology of the day: the VCR.
"Using his VCR, he recorded episodes," Priceonomics’ Zachary Crockett wrote in The Man Who Got No Whammies. "For 18 hours a day, he sat perched in front of the screens, analyzing every spin of the Big Board frame-by-frame, looking for patterns. Then, incredibly, he found one.
"After six months of scrupulous examination, Larson realized that the 'random' sequences... weren't random at all, but rather five looping patterns that would always jump between the same squares. He wrote down these patterns, memorized them, then honed his timing by watching re-runs and hitting 'pause' on his VCR remote when he suspected the board would land on a given square."
Larson figured out that two specific squares—Nos. 4 and 8—always contained a combo of cash and an extra spin. Because he had memorized the patterns, he knew exactly when to hit the button.
47 spins and no Whammy
Larson went on to hit 47 consecutive spins without a single Whammy, forcing CBS to pay out $110,237—a staggering amount for 1984. They thought they had an uncrackable code; Larson proved that even the flashiest distractions can't hide a pattern from someone with enough focus and the best video recording technology of the day.
The lesson here? In a pre-digital age, someone with guts, a bit of mischief, and a refusal to be distracted by the "noise" of the board changed the game forever.
As I sat there in the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center, finally looking back down at my juror's questionnaire, I was left asking myself: Is there anything in my life I could focus on enough to make a splash like that?
My daydreaming was then interrupted, it was my turn to head into court. I wound up being sent to lunch and then home—I wasn’t chosen. Some might say that I avoided the Whammy, while others think I lost out on an opportunity.
In need of a distraction and feel like going down a rabbit hole? You can watch the entire extended episode above or watch a documentary or movie that retell the true story.
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