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Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Go Jeopardy James! Spoiler!
It's already over. He'll pass a million at 14 games.
14 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
but he sure knows a lot of stuff -Damn he's good. 
I got final Jeopardy tonight - thankfully I was not one of other contestants.
Passes one million - has the top five (or is that six) one day totals now.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/28588/man-who-pressed-his-luckand-won
<snip>
In 1984, ice cream truck driver Michael Larson set a record by winning $110,237 (a combined total of cash and non-cash prizes) in one appearance on the game show Press Your Luck—and he did it by gaming the system. He had noticed that the Press Your Luck board did not rely on luck at all, but was actually running in five predictable patterns, which he memorized over the course of six weeks (with the help of a VCR). By the time the show's taping was completed, everyone from the host to the contestants were mystified by Larson's amazing ability to avoid the Whammy (the squares on the board which would end the player's turn) and consistently win prizes.
Larson's original appearance was aired as two episodes due to the length of his winning streak. Producers initially tried to avoid paying him, since his pattern-memorization might be considered cheating. Eventually, the producers relented, after determining that the official game rules did not prevent a player from reverse-engineering the game patterns. Indeed, producers later revealed in a documentary that they knew there was a weakness to the game (only having five board patterns without any randomness), but the weakness was ignored until Larson's famous performance. Furthermore, in order to get spins on the board, Larson had to answer trivia questions, which relied on his trivia skills.
<snip>
In 1984, ice cream truck driver Michael Larson set a record by winning $110,237 (a combined total of cash and non-cash prizes) in one appearance on the game show Press Your Luck—and he did it by gaming the system. He had noticed that the Press Your Luck board did not rely on luck at all, but was actually running in five predictable patterns, which he memorized over the course of six weeks (with the help of a VCR). By the time the show's taping was completed, everyone from the host to the contestants were mystified by Larson's amazing ability to avoid the Whammy (the squares on the board which would end the player's turn) and consistently win prizes.
Larson's original appearance was aired as two episodes due to the length of his winning streak. Producers initially tried to avoid paying him, since his pattern-memorization might be considered cheating. Eventually, the producers relented, after determining that the official game rules did not prevent a player from reverse-engineering the game patterns. Indeed, producers later revealed in a documentary that they knew there was a weakness to the game (only having five board patterns without any randomness), but the weakness was ignored until Larson's famous performance. Furthermore, in order to get spins on the board, Larson had to answer trivia questions, which relied on his trivia skills.
