32 years ago. Happy Press Your Luck Scandal anniversary

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In 1984, a self-described unemployed ice cream truck driver named Michael Larson made it onto the show. After watching the show at home with the use of stop-motion on a VCR, Larson discovered that the presumed random patterns of the game board were not actually random and he was able to memorize the sequences to help him stop the board where and when he wanted. On the single game in which he appeared, an initially tentative Larson spun a Whammy on his very first turn, but then played 45 consecutive spins without hitting a second one.

Larson, through meticulous watching of the show, had figured out patterns to key off of the square next to the square in the upper left-hand corner of the board (which, in that he numbered the squares from the upper-left clockwise, was numbered "2") and that, several squares later, would end up either on a spot on the right side of the screen in which all three slides would contain smaller amounts of money plus a spin (numbered "8") or the spot in the top center of the screen (numbered "4") in which the "Big Bucks" (the largest amounts of money) plus a spin always resided. Not only would he not hit a Whammy if he landed on those two squares, but he would also be guaranteed to continue gaining more spins as long as he desired.

The game ran for so long that CBS aired the episode in two parts, June 8 and 11, 1984. In the end, Larson earned a total of $110,237 in cash and prizes, a record for the most money in cash and prizes won by a contestant in a single appearance on a daytime network game show. In 2006, when Vickyann Chrobak-Sadowski won $147,517 in cash and prizes on the Season 35 premiere of The Price Is Right, it was not enough to surpass Larson's inflation-adjusted record.

Although CBS investigated Larson, they determined that figuring out the patterns was not cheating and let him keep his winnings. The board was subsequently reprogrammed with up to 32 new patterns to help prevent against another contestant from being able to memorize the board as Larson had. Later, in 1994, TV Guide magazine interviewed Larson and revealed the background of this episode including his decision to pass his remaining spins after he lost concentration and missed his target squares.

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