Talk:Michael Larson/Archive 1

Inconsistencies
The Press Your Luck article states that his longest run of spins was 35. It also repeatedly states that there were six patterns, where as this page said there were five (I just changed it). Which is right? JordeeBec 21:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The PYL article has since been corrected to 5 patterns, which I just corrected here as well. 66.168.83.91 01:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Tomarken freaking out
From the 4th paragraph of the Round Two section (first appearing in this edit): Tomarken began to freak out again, screaming, "What in the world is going on here??!!"

This seems kind of over-dramatic. Having finally been able to see the episode on YouTube, this doesn't appear accurate. Tomarken's remark (actually just: "What is goin' on! $10,000, still have a spin...") certainly isn't something I'd call freaking out, and he certainly didn't scream it. It's just delivered in an excited host's "wow, how about that" tone.

Mashuu 16:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right. You could have fixed it yourself, but I've gone ahead.  --Brandon Dilbeck 00:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

How did they react? Did they change the board immediately afterwards?
The article doesn't say, but you'd assume they'd have done something. For that matter, how was what he did discovered? According to the article, he didn't say at first; then, later, people somehow know. --Aquillion 20:01, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Bad taste?
"Larson was dealt the ultimate whammy when he died of throat cancer" I don't think anyone would like to read a comment like that about someone they knew who died from cancer. Anyone else think so? Laugurinn sjálfur 03:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Very bad taste. Thecorch 04:02, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I have since removed it from the article. Tony Myers 22:09, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Wasn't this a quote from Peter Tomarken? Modor (talk) 13:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)Modor

His episodes were on USA
I know this because i remember watching it on the USA channel in 1994 when i was a kid and was in total shock. I know that i cannot prove this though, but trust me when i say this, it did happen.--Dr. Pizza 20:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This is contrary to what sources have reported previously. I doubt it. Modor 11:18, 5 September 2007 (UTC)Modor


 * Yeah, but so is what happens in that documentary about this business, so I can't dismiss it. First of all, the episodes are not part of it; maybe when GSN first aired the doc., they preceded it with the two episodes, but they are not "part" of it, as this article claims (I am going to change that when I'm through with this). However, some of the included clips from the match&mdash;and only some&mdash;are labelled "previously unaired" (I think that was the term used, but in any case something to that exact effect). Furthermore, all that is said to this point is that CBS never aired them, which contradicts this article, BTW. The episodes were aired some where, some time, before the documentary premiered, perhaps as I said immediately before the doc.'s premiere, or as Dr. Pizza says on USA. I did not have access to GSN until September 2005, but caught the doc. when the channel re-aired it as a tribute to Tomarken upon his tragic death in March '06; it filled a two-hour time slot and the episodes themselves were not present on that occasion. I did recently see them as part of a GSN retrospective, decade by decade through the 70s, 80s and 90s, with two-hour single-series blocks, three blocks a day, on three consecutive Sunday afternoons this past August. The first of the two hours of PYL were the Larson episodes. The producers had, after the fact, shot and inserted links with Tomarken to put commercial breaks and the episode split into that very long final round. According to what he says there, they would have been separated by a weekend if they had aired on schedule! --Ted Watson (talk) 19:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * CBS did air the episodes. I remember watching them. And they were split by a weekend.--Gridlock Joe (talk) 20:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I did, subsequent to posting the above, notice the dates in the article which skipped two days between them, indicating a weekend (also that Larson exceeded the network's $25,000 prize limit, so that answers that question, too). But the documentary does say CBS never aired them. Wonder why? --Ted Watson (talk) 21:09, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

"Ironic"
The article mentions several of the host's "ironic" statements about how he hoped Larson would end up with a bunch of money. However, isn't that just what game show hosts say? I doubt that the host was any more wishful that day than anytime else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.182.172.229 (talk) 21:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Moreover THOSE STATEMENTS ARE NOT IRONIC!!! Why does no-one understand the meaning of irony! They were the complete opposite of ironic, they were APPROPRIATE, because he indeed DID wind up winning "big bucks" 89.100.4.15 (talk) 16:02, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

On the run
Why was Larson "on the run" when he died?--137.205.76.219 02:32, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

To my understanding, Larson was involved in some sort of illegal Ponzi scheme. Don't know much more than that, though —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blozier2006 (talk • contribs) 04:14, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Suspected blog-promoting sockpuppet
The usernames Georgehenderson1 and Johnmakers11 appear to be the same person. (Check their contrib history.) It's apparently a guy trying to promote (Redacted link) His edits to this article are here and here. Be aware that he may attempt to add mention of his blog to this article again in the future. --JHP (talk) 08:37, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * this has been dealt with;the most abusive of the edits have been deleted so only admins can see them & the page has been protected for 2 weeks, to prevent immediate recurrence. I cannot protect indefinitely, so if there are problems after that, let me know. If you want to edit in the meantime, it would be easiest to simply wait, but otherwise put the proposed edits below and let me know on my talk p. .   DGG ( talk ) 20:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Color for the board
Towards the end of the article, I've got a table showing the board configuration Larson was dealing with in Round 2. I have added in parentheses the colors of each slide. Will someone be so kind as to colorize the board accordingly?

--JoBrLa (talk) 13:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

CBS broadcasts
this is in response to inquiries about whether the episode aired in the original series run. I CAN confirm they DID air on CBS.

To my knowledge, VTR date was 05-19-1984, episode #0188. (VTR and ep# info obtained from original "slate" of episode, as seen in the GSN documentary.) Airdate of part 1 was 06-08-1984. Airdate of part 2 was 06-11-1984. (the reason for the break was that 06-08 was a Friday, 06-11 was a Monday.) You can check any PYL episode guide online to either verify or refute my claim.

To my knowledge, CBS only aired the eps on the dates listed above. Furthermore, either CBS or Carruthers Co. (possibly both) forbade USA from rerunning the eps. in their reruns.

Blozier2006 (talk) 20:10, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Automatic retirement
Did Larson automatically retire after winning more than $100,000 on Press Your Luck? Jonghyunchung 00:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Well he was unemployed, so I don't know how someone who doesn't have a job retires. Plus 100,000 is not that much money, I can't see someone living on that for the rest of there life. I'm sure after the last of his money was stolen he did something to make money. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.10.100.136 (talk) 15:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I think this poster was asking about retiring as PYL 's champion, since one normally did return and defend his/her championship, but he didn't. Did CBS have a ceiling as to how much a person could win on a game show in 1984? (They did a decade earlier, a flat $25,000 which caused some absurdities on their original run of The Joker's Wild.) Or did the network just say, in effect, "Get the hell out of here while we try to figure out how you cheated!" Since they did not air the Larson episodes, how did they explain the defending champion he beat not returning on the "next" episode? --Ted Watson (talk) 19:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

To my knowledge, the $25,000 limit on CBS, imposed in 1972 with the advent of Joker's Wild, Gambit, and The Price Is Right, was still in force in 1984, at the time of filming the Larson episode. It was bumped up to $50,000 in light of the Larson incident. ($50,000 was the "imposed retirement" point, all winnings up to $75,000 could be kept; all from $75,001 and up was forfeited.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blozier2006 (talk • contribs) 20:14, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

This American Life
This American Life on NPR talked about this for 20 minutes. They had different facts for what happened afterward. His ex common law wife said they had $100,000 in cash at home (suggesting they didn't lose any beforehand) and were sorting it for weeks looking for serial numbers (yet they never sorted it by serial number?!?) and then put $50,000 back in the bank and had $50,000 stolen. Of course, the family could be misremembering exact figures. She also said that he accused her of orchestrating the theft, staring at her while she slept, and she believe he was planning her murder when she left.

Also, they mentioned why he was on the run. He moved back to his home town, made a girlfriend, started a scam that conned 20,000 people out of $3,000,000 and fled in 1995 to Florida where he his until his death. The scam combined a pyramid scheme, fake investments and Indian lotteries. It was the first major Internet fraud the SEC investigated. --Skintigh (talk) 22:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Randomness
In the line "Despite the fact that the new board was now truly random due to advances in computer technology" I removed that and replaced it with "more random." Computers are deterministic, they cannot be random. They can be really complicated and appear random, but they are only pseudo-random. Unless, of course, someone has a reference to using some sort of truly random unstable oscillator or quantum mechanical device.

I, uh, sorta left the description section blank when I submitted the change and don't know how to change it... --Skintigh (talk) 22:46, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Changing this back.
I have read this bio of Michael Larson before, and when I came back to re-read it today I was shocked at how horrible it had become. Things like "Michael Larson lived an eventful but downtrodden life." read like opinion and not fact. Same thing with this statement- " He had little to do during the autumn of 1983 when ice cream wasn't selling well." Once again,reads like a opinion and not a fact. I have reverted the article back to what it read like before these awful changes.--99.177.248.92 (talk) 00:14, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Extremely well written!
Kudos, contributors, this is perhaps the most well-written article I've ever encountered on Wikipedia -- very engaging! The style may not exactly be "encyclopedic," but dammit, let's once in a while allow an article to rise above the typical dry content of Wikipedia. 71.219.173.1 (talk) 16:04, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Slight dispute here...
Myself and another user are in slight dispute over something minor. In the "Big Bucks" documentary, as noted in the article, Ed and Janie are shown one of the patterns Larsen used. In that part of the article, I wanted to put a reference to the "2-12-1-9-4" graphic in an earlier portion of the page, and add also a fact that I believe was not mentioned to Ed and Janie, nor brought up on this page (but anyone who saw the program could see it): that Larsen used at least two other patterns in the game -- mistiming one of them leading not only to a Whammy on his first spin, but a near-Whammy (and six-figure loss) on his last spin of the game.

It was removed by a game-show Wiki-editor (he works on a number of the pages) for being colloquial and "wrong formatted". (I don't realize that everything has to be i-dotted and t-crossed, or so it seems).

Just bringing it to the Talk page for discussion. A little quizzical on this one... --Starcade (talk) 04:10, 13 July 2011 (UTC)


 * This is the edit Starcade is referencing:

"The documentary featured interviews with the program's producers, Larson's family, and the two contestants who lost to Larson that day, both of whom were allowed to try their hand at duplicating Larson's trick on a recreation of the original Big Board. The board replica used only one of the patterns that Larson had memorized, and Tomarken pointed out exactly what it was. (See the diagram above. It's the '2-12-1-9-4' pattern. Larsen used at least two others on the show, mistiming one of them resulting in a first-round Whammy on his first spin of the game. On his final spin, with over $100,000 in his 'bank', he mistimed the very same pattern he had on the first spin, and barely avoided a Whammy on the same square which would've resulted in a six-figure loss.) Janie Litras was able to stop the board at Square #4 only twice; Ed Long's play was edited for entertainment purposes and it isn't clear how long he lasts."


 * Four sentences should not be placed in parentheses in the middle of a paragraph. Additionally, the text reads like a conversation rather than how the rest of the article is formatted both stylistically and grammatically. You speculate that he could have hit a Whammy with his final spin and what would have happened had he hit the Whammy, but that's not what happened. This type of detail belongs in the Michael Larson section since it refers to actual game play, not necessarily what this scene of the documentary is detailing.


 * A more-appropriate edit to the Michael Larson section would be:

"The documentary featured interviews with the program's producers, Larson's family, and the two contestants who lost to Larson that day, both of whom were allowed to try their hand at duplicating Larson's trick on a recreation of the original Big Board. However, for the purposes of the documentary, the board replica used only one of the patterns that Larson had memorized, whereas the board featured in the 1984 episodes contained five specific patterns. During the documentary, Janie Litras was able to stop the board at Square #4 only twice."
 * Large blocks of text written from a fan's point of view were removed from this article beginning in March 2011, as well as intricate statistics related to the exact spaces landed on throughout the game and each specific light pattern, none of which were sourced. These specific intricate details are also difficult to verify.


 * Also, please note that Michael's last name is spelled with an "-on," not "-en" as in your edits.  Sottolacqua  (talk) 12:33, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

5 patterns
Hey for all you tech nerds and M.I.T. wannabees (like myself), there is this really cool site with all the patterns used on the "Press Your Luck" gameshow including the patterns that Larson memorized. if you want to see them for yourself, just go to: web.bvunet.net/~csyoder/articles/patterns.html


 * Seems dead --Skintigh (talk) 22:38, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It's dead, but one can always access dead links via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine --Petzl (talk) 21:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Lebanese?
I presume you meant he invested in Lebanon, Ohio real estate. I don't think there is an adjective relating to Lebanon, but it certainly isn't "Lebanese". PedanticallySpeaking 19:02, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * It certainly is. Just as a person from Moscow, Idaho can be referred to as a "Muscovite." 71.219.173.1 (talk) 15:55, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I live near Lebanon, Maine and the adjective is just "Lebanon" except maybe if you're being humorous. Also the pronunciation of the town is different, with ə in the final syllabe einstead of a short "o".  — Soap — 15:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Why not random
Why did the show have the lights flash like that, and not randomly?


 * Because AI wasn't that sophisticated yet back in 1983...but they could have made the board more like Second Chance's instead - EmiOfBrie 03:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Because that would probably give the result a too random result. Randomness is good, but in a game show, the randomness needs to be controlled in a way that it does not give the contestants too much of a chance either. In this case, it was probably a good decision since they obviously did not have the biggest brain in constructing the game anyways.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.109.97.88 (talk) 03:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Or designed the board with a Whammy in *every* square! --guru 02:43, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Spin count
No need to analyze his spins like that. That's called fanwank and original research. I know the Big Bucks special did a specific analysis of some of his spins; a small amount of that analysis, sourced to direct quotes from the GSN special, is all we'd really need here. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 04:06, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * You're wrong. The article is incomplete without it. The details are what make it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.74.90.12 (talk) 03:58, 21 May 2011 (UTC)


 * There's absolutely no need for this level of detail.  Ѕōŧŧōľäċqǔä  (talk) 14:15, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this article needs some specific information about Larson's spins. This is the exact information I was looking for when I first came to this page. Instead, I had to watch his actual performance in the documentary and write down his spins. I attempted to add this information to the article, but it was undone. Is there anyway we can get at least some of this very interesting and useful information allowed into the article? FishDawg1 (talk) 21:57, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Ditto what the now renamed, and retired, Sottlacqua has said above. There is no need for all of this "useful" and trivial information in an article, especially a Good Article. If you're looking for a place to add this material, go to the Game Show Wiki. This is an encyclopedia, not a fansite. --Bentvfan54321 (talk) 02:08, 21 October 2015 (UTC)