When a friend dropped by Ace TV Sales and Service in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1980, Tommy Glenn Carmichael was just an unremarkable repairman who moonlighted as a pool hustler. “I woke up,” he told the History Channel, “actually got out of bed, and went and built it.” Tommy had found his answer: The Monkey Paw. Then, in the recess of sleep, the solution appeared in all its brilliant simplicity: a flexible piece of metal, wedged at the top, and some piano wire. But no matter what he tried, some riddle in the guts of the unit would thwart him. Night and day in his Vegas apartment, he toiled on a Fortune One video poker machine. He needed a new tool, something to replace the clumsy old instrument that had landed him in the penitentiary. “I’m seeing myself from behind,” he recalled, “and I have in my hand.” All through 1990, he’d been searching for a way to cheat the latest slot machines.