"On one Press Your Luck episode in 1984, a self-described unemployed ice cream truck driver named Michael Larson made it onto the show. Watching the show at home, and with the use of stop-motion on a VCR, Larson discovered that the presumed random patterns of the game board were not random, and was able to memorize the sequences to help him stop the board where and when he wanted. On the single game in which he appeared, an initially tentative Larson spun a Whammy on his very first turn, but then played 45 consecutive times without hitting a second Whammy. He earned a total of $110,237 in cash and prizes, a record for a single appearance on a daytime network game show up to that time.

Although CBS investigated Larson, they determined that figuring out the patterns was not cheating, and let him keep all his winnings. The number of light patterns was increased to make it impossible for a player to ever repeat what Larson did."