Going for it

I've gotten used to big successful wagers by That Guy on Jeopardy. So I sometimes forget that big bets can go way wrong. Well, I never really forget that, which is why I don't bet on anything. But a recent promotion at Paramount Television reminds me once again that betting has its downside.

The guy who got promoted at Paramount is Ken Basin. In a previous life (2009, to be exact) he was a contestant on the 10th anniversary special of Millionaire. The linked video shows what happened, and it wasn't pretty. With five hundred grand in the bank, Ken went for the million dollar question and lost.

He still got $25,000 and that's not bad. A sympathetic write-up on a law site gave him lots of props for courage. (The site also linked to some not-so-sympathetic commentary elsewhere on the web.) The story has a sort of happy ending. Ken has done pretty well for himself after Millionaire, as the Paramount news indicates. And he knows all about Lyndon Johnson and his beverages.

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