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Press Your Luck was a game show that ran from September 19, 1983, to September 26, 1986, on the American television network CBS. The main goal of the game was to collect 'spins' by answering trivia questions, and then use the 'spins' on a board with dollar amounts. The person who amassed the most in cash and prizes by the end of the game won. Press Your Luck was hosted by Peter Tomarken and announced by Rod Roddy. The show was perhaps most memorable for the Whammy, a grinning cartoon red creature wearing a cape. The Whammy's spaces on the game board would take away your money, accompanied by a silly cartoon animation popular with the viewing audience (throughout the show's run, approximately 60 different animations were used, with new ones being added constantly).
The original incarnation of Press Your Luck was the short-lived game show Second Chance, which aired on ABC in 1977 with Jim Peck hosting. The rules were virtually the same, only a "devil" took a contestant's money away instead of a Whammy.
1 How It Works
Three contestants begin every game of Press Your Luck. Every episode of the show had two rounds. A round started with a question session, each with four questions. Contestants could buzz in, and if they got the answer right on the buzz in, they earned 3 spins (none if wrong). The other two contestants could answer using multiple choice (the first contestant's answer plus two others being offered) and, if right, earn 1 spin. 20 spins maximum could be earned per question session among all three players, the maximum an individual player could earn being 12.
The second part of a round was the spinning portion. Contestants now used spins earned in the question session on the "Big Board" which consisted of 18 monitors arranged in a 6x5 rectangle. The contestants took their spins in inverse order of the number of spins they had earned answering questions (as between two contestants who had earned the same number of spins the player seated further on the left from Peter Tomarken's viewpoint would spin first). The contents of the spaces changed every few seconds (alternating among three possibilities per square), as well as the highlighted square (which bounced around at random as well). A game space might contain money, a prize (the dollar amount of which would accrue to the contestant's score), or a Whammy. Some special spaces had a money amount '+ 1 Spin' (meaning the spin being used wasn't lost), and others worked as 'go back/advance two spaces', 'move one space' (to either side, which the contestant would then choose) or 'pick a corner'. One special space, added about midway through the show's run, was known as "Add-A-One." This space - which appeared in the first spinning round only - would place a "1" in front of the contestant's pre-existing total (i.e., $0 became $10, but $1,000 became $11,000). The second round had a space marked "Double Your Money," and hitting it did just that; to solve the obvious problem created by contestants landing on this space when they had no money at all due to a recent Whammy, this was hastily altered to "Double Your Money + 1 Spin." In addition, both rounds featured a space bearing the legend "Big Bucks." When hit, it awarded the contestant the dollar amount found directly opposite it on the board; in the first round this would be either $1,000, $1,250 or $1,500, and in the second round it would be either $3,000 + 1 Spin, $4,000 + 1 Spin, or $5,000 + 1 Spin (the existence of this space resulted in most contestants chanting "Big Bucks" or some variant thereof before stopping the board on each spin). Contestants were able to pass their spins to another contestant in the hope that the other contestant would hit a Whammy and lose their money (when passed, the spins went to the opponent of the two with the higher dollar score; if both opponents had the same score the passer could choose which opponent to which the spins would be passed); however, spins passed to one player by another could not be passed again unless a Whammy had been hit, in which case this imprimatur would be waived for any passed spins that remained. Four Whammys sustained by the same player eliminated that player from the game (and often, special animation skits were pressed into service in situations where the Whammy in question was the contestant's fourth).
As mentioned earlier, there were two distinct rounds in every episode of Press Your Luck. The first round's spinning portion had far fewer spaces which provided money plus an additional spin, and money amounts ranged from $100 + 1 Spin up to $1250 ($1500 after the first few months). Indeed, the principal purpose of the first round was to determine the sequence in which the contestants would take their spins in the second round, which was in the reverse order of the money they had won in the first round (i.e., the player who emerged from the first round with the highest money score was the last to spin in the second round). The second spinning round in the show was the one watched most closely, where dollar amounts ranged from $500 to $5000 + 1 Spin - and sometimes prizes such as cars were worth even more. The winner of the game was the contestant with the most money after the last spin of the second round was taken. In some shows, a player was determined the winner by dint of both opponents having suffered four Whammys; when this scenario arose and the surviving player had any spins remaining, the winner was permitted to spin "against the house" and stop spinning at any time, at which point the game ended as there would be no other players left in the game to pass the spins to.
