REAL Jeopardy: Ken Jennings

[EddieMcD]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Well, there was the gentleman who competed on "Press Your Luck" back in the 1980s who took the show for such a ride in one game (which they had to split into two episodes, because he went on for so long) that they retired him after one show, which wasn't the policy.

(If you're wondering what happened, on the show they had this board with a light that jumped around. Players won spins, which then got them chances to hit cash and prizes, or a Whammy, which made them lose all their stuff. One or two squares had cash plus one spin. This dude memorized the sequences of the board, and used it to completely pwn the game.)

Long story short, there is precedent for a game show saying that you've just won too much money.

Gotta pipe in on this one. First, there was always a $40,000 limit on that show, even before the guy took ~$110,000. Second, CBS did not want to pay the guy his money (yeah, they were pissed). Long story short, before this guy was on, The Big Board (then a marvel in the gameshow world), ran through 6 patterns at random. When one was finished, the next one (chosen at random) would start. Well, this guy figured it out, and that there were two spaces that never came up with a Whammy (and in fact, that held true until the end of the show, and even onto it's spinoff show on the Gameshow Network). After the whole thing, they upped the number of patterns, and randomized them even more, and it never happened again. Anyhow, IMO, that is the greatest moment in gameshow history, even topping this current Jeopardy run. I mean, anyone can amass tons of knowledge, but to break the code that ran The Big Board and then use it successfully is just genius. It's essentially breaking an algorithm.

Off my rather large tangent, there was always that monetary limit (and a few people would hit it), and I don't think anyone has ever been told to stop on any game show, short of hitting some sort of established limit (usually one show, or a set amount of shows, or a set amount of money). If you ask me, one person winning draws ratings, so I highly doubt they'd ask him to leave anyway. Especially when a lot of people want to see him lose (Red Sox fans can relate him to the Yankees), and a lot of people want to see him win.