Mr. Anth Ropy left a comment on the post about “The Freeze,” the mascot who races against fans at Atlanta Braves games. My post was about finding the competitive edge, something I like to do, that some people could look askance at, characterizing it as not being in the spirit of the game.
But if it’s a game, and it has rules, as long as you work within those rules, everything is fair game.
Ropy’s comment was a link to a video about a contestant who appeared on Press Your Luck, Michael Larson, who cleaned up because he exploited a flaw in their game board. He discovered, after hours of research, that there were a finite amount of patterns, and once you knew what to look for you could always avoid the whammy.
He got on the show and racked up more money than any other person ever won on an American game show at that time.
I highly recommend this documentary-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzNMCXWCZzQ
Peter Tamarkin, the original host, was on the side of the contestant. In the documentary you can tell he thought the guy found an exploit and exploited it, and it was within the rules, and so be it.
(I’m using past tense here because Peter Tamarkin, a great humanitarian, died in a tragic plane crash with his wife en route to picking up a cancer patient to transport for treatment. It was something he did for free, volunteering for the Angels Flight West organization.)
I always liked it when people won big on game shows.
A couple of weeks ago my daughter was telling me that some boy she knew in her high school kept challenging everyone to a long distance race. So she finally took him up on it just to shut him up. She really didn’t care about winning. So she told me the race would be after school the next day from the school to our house (about a mile and a half).
I asked her what are the rules, first one to the house wins? She said yea. I told her that when she turns the corner at the bike path about 1/2 way, I will be waiting in my car and drive her the rest of the way to our house. We passed him in the car and he had no idea. When he arrived huffing and puffing, my daughter was calmly waiting for him on our front porch.
I stayed up two hours past my bedtime watching that thing. I had to find out if he got paid.
Joe, did he?
Peter… died so tragically. I had no idea. 🙁
My teenage brother and I watch the game show channel and Tamarkin is one of his favorite hosts. (Wait til I tell him. Wow.)
Dante, yup he got paid. He didn’t handle it well though.
Fascinating. To me, it’s like counting cards without using any mechanical device in a casino. Hey, if you can do it, that’s great. Mrs. Curtain usually beats me at Rummy because she remembers what cards I’m picking up, something I can never do much of.