Hello fellow fans of "Press Your Luck", and welcome to the page devoted to its pre-successor, "Second Chance". This was a short lived game show from 1977 on ABC that was what could be a prototype of the infamous show Press Your Luck. Hosted by Jim Peck, the show had some differences in the actual gameplay, as well as some differences in the technical aspect of the game.

The first major difference was in the question rounds. Aside from their being a total of 5 questions, it was in this round that the show got the title of "Second Chance". To start, instead of having players buzz in with their responces, the contestants wrote their answers down and put them in front of their podiums. After they were all in site, host Jim Peck would tell them that at least x of them were correct or incorrect. He would then proceed to give the players 3 multiple choice answers, and they could change their answers if they wanted to. A correct answer the first time around would give the player three spins. If you changed the answer and changed it correctly, you got one spin. There were a total of three questions, meaning that every player could have a total of nine spins, for a possible twenty-seven spins per round. (That's a lot!)

The biggest mechanical difference between Second Chance and Press Your Luck was the style in which the big board operated. In one way, the Second Chance board was better, and in another, the Press Your Luck board was. In Press Your Luck, the selector changed about 4 times per second. In Second Chance, it changed about 20 times a second. Meaning that the board ran very quickly indeed. (It also means that something like the Michael Larson sweep would have been next to impossible on Second Chance). However, for as fast as the Second Chance board was, unlike Press Your Luck, the values on the board didn't suffle on this infamous presuccessor. The values stayed the same for each round, with as much as $2500 being hit in the first round and $5000 being hit in the second. In each round, there were 3 "Devils" on the board, 6 prize spaces (indicated by a gift box), and 9 cash values.

As you probably already guessed by the last paragraph, the "Whammy" that we know so well in Press Your Luck was called a "Devil" in Second Chance. Another sadness is that the Devils were not animated characters like the Whammy was on Press. In fact, all that happened was your score was cleared and reset to zero. (But I suppose it did it's purpose afterall, correct?)

Second Chance lasted only 7 months, and to this day has not been rerun, for the reels of this show were destoyed, minus a bootlegged pilot episode.