Happy St. Patricks day. Maybe someone could celebrate by driving the snakes out of America. The ones I'm thinking of wear suits and ties.

Last night I watched the story of Michael Larson, the guy who cracked the Press Your Luck patterns on the documentary "Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal" on the Game Show Central. It was pretty interesting viewing. The aired the entirety of the original program including bits that had to be edited out of the broadcast version because it didn't fit, even in two episodes. One of the things said in the interview segments with some of the show personel was that they knew they were at risk with the relatively small number of patterns. Larsen figured out the pattern and he also figured out there were two squares that never got whammies, and so he went. Since those two squares were heavily tilted towards large cash values and "plus a spin" he just hit them over and over, racking up over $100,000 by the time he was done. From what I gleaned from the show, he was kind of a creepy scumbag.

He managed to blow the cash in less than two years, including getting $40,000 of it stolen out of the house where he kept it in cash. Here was apparently involved in various shaky investment deals, and at the time he died was on the run from the IRS, the SEC and the FBI. He was sort of an idiot savant on this topic. He was proto-cipherpunk enough to recognize the patterns and once on that game run it at will. He didn't have much sense though. The reason that he had all the cash in the house was to try to win a radio contest where a $30,000 prize was available if you could match a dollar bill's serial number. He withdrew his entire Press Your Luck winnings in one dollar bills to try to win that contest. I'm sure this made the neighborhood thief very happy. All in all, it was fascinating viewing.