An out-of-work ice cream truck driver from Ohio walked onto a national game show and won a daytime television record using nothing but a VCR pause button and obsessive persistence. This deep dive reconstructs the life of Michael Larson, who figured out that the 1980s show Press Your Luck was fundamentally broken by its own creators.

We trace his lifelong compulsion for exploiting loopholes and examine how the very traits that made him a folk hero on that soundstage paved the way for his tragic downfall. It is the ultimate cautionary tale about beating the system and outsmarting yourself in the process.

• Discovering the board's five predetermined light patterns and the safe squares four and eight
• His thrift-store audition and the sob story that overruled a wary contestant coordinator
• The 44-spin run, 29 consecutive  ...