twistofreality
Northwest
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This guy from Lebanon, Ohio won over $110,000 from the popular 80s game show, "Press Your Luck". How? Basically, he cheated.
The New Shelton Wet/Dry is an awesome blog with all sorts of interesting little tidbits and snippits.
Just so you know, it's not entirely safe for work all the time. There are occasionally artsy photographs of nude/provocative people.
mellotron
Arena District
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Interesting read on the PYL story. Couple things that came to mind:
First, I figure in games of chance, the only reason the odds are in the House's favor is because they overwhelm the ability of the human mind to keep track of all the situations. If someone comes along with a technique that beats the House, as this guy did, tough luck for the House who's "randomness generator" was too simple. I think the same goes for counting cards. Don't want people counting cards? Use more decks! Never got why this was illegal...
Second, weird how some people have incredible talent/focus but can't hold down a normal job. The same guy who devoted himself to cracking the "PYL code" got tricked into a ponzi scheme, appears to have invested none of his money in traditional avenues, then had $40k in $1 bills stolen while entering another long-odds contest...
shroud
Polaris
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GSN aired a pretty decent documentary on the whole Press Your Luck "scandal". They replay it every now and then.
It's a pretty interesting story. First, it's kind of a funny sign of the times that he completely gamed their system and still only won $100,000 ... But still - like with the card counting, it's not really "cheating" - it's just figuring out the "rules" beyond a level which they'd normally like you to do.
And of course, right after he gamed the system they redid the patterns to increase the complexity by quite a bit to try and ensure it'll never happen again.
(edited to fix a broken link)
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