How an Ice Cream Man Cracked Press Your Luck and Won Big
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1984, a contestant named Michael Larson, an ice cream man from Ohio, stepped onto the set of Press Your Luck and walked away with over $110,000, becoming one of the biggest winners in game show history. His run looked like pure luck, but behind the scenes, Larson had figured out how the game really worked.
Comedian and mathematician Matt Parker breaks down the famous Press Your Luck scandal, explaining how Larson memorized patterns on the board and cracked the code of one of America’s most popular game shows.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.1 | And we continue here with our American stories. |
| 0:18.3 | And now Matt Parker, a comedian and mathematician from Australia, |
| 0:22.5 | tells the story of the time Michael Larson surprisingly beat the game show Press Your Luck. |
| 0:28.6 | Here's Matt. |
| 0:31.3 | The best TV game show sit at the intersection of skill and luck. And in the 1980s there was one such game |
| 0:41.2 | show called Pressual Luck. The skill component came from asking the contestants |
| 0:46.4 | trivia questions. But then the luck came in via the big board. |
| 0:55.5 | This is how prizes were dished out after a contestant had demonstrated their skill answering |
| 1:01.3 | a trivia question. |
| 1:02.3 | It was a massive screen with 18 boxes detailing different cash amounts or physical prizes |
| 1:10.0 | and a cartoon character known as a whammy. |
| 1:14.1 | The highlight on the board would rapidly flip between the different boxes in an apparently |
| 1:19.7 | random order. The players would then win the content of whichever box was selected when they |
| 1:26.5 | hit their buzzer, but if they landed |
| 1:28.8 | on a whammy, the player would lose all the prizes they had accumulated so far. |
| 1:34.4 | Okay, I want a trip. |
| 1:37.8 | Let's go, please. |
| 1:39.0 | Vacation time. |
| 1:40.0 | Okay, stop. |
| 1:41.0 | Stop. |
... |
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