You ain't seen nothin' yet, ha ha.
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By the time this week started, Jason Zuffranieri was already the third-winningest contestant ever in regular games, behind Jennings and Holzhauer.
As of 24 Sep 2019, he is up to eighteen games and a half million (!) in prize money ($502,096). I really like him. He's more personable than Holzhauer, and seems more rootably mortal because he has survived more a couple more close calls. He does play sort of conservatively, but it's hard to judge whether one would make the same judgment had they never seen Holzhauer, or indeed, perhaps, if JH's episodes weren't airing in reruns simultaneously. I didn't see JH's whole run, but at the end, I was unperturbed when he lost--I like him, but the whole thing was sort of like watching a smiling-but-deadpan steamroller. I'll genuinely miss Jason when he's dethroned.
I didn’t watch but apparently Holzhauer won the tournament of champions. But the more interesting story is that he’s going to face off against Ken Jennings in January in a Greatest of All Time tournament. That should be worth checking out.
https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/4201669002
And Brad Rutter who has never lost at Jeopardy to a human. Should be very exciting as they are clearly the 3 best Jeopardy players to ever play the game.
I've been talking w/ friends and we all agreed we needed like a week of just these 3 playing... now we may even get more than just a week! (technically at least 3 nights, at most 7 nights. 6 games or 14 games).
I hope Alex is able to sustain his health long enough to host the tournament. It would seem a fitting moment for him after all these years. Maybe a moment of closure. I wouldn’t be surprised if the timing has something to do with the late stage of his fight against cancer.
Vegas says Holzhauer is the favorite, with Jennings second. Brad Rutter is actually a very distant third, even though he has never lost.
I tend to agree that James is probably going to win.
I can't imagine that Jennings is still in fighting form.
All in on James.
Will they significantly increase the difficulty of the questions for this "Greatest of All Time" event?
Otherwise, I suspect that all 3 contestants will know nearly every answer and it will probably come down to whichever player is best with the buzzer. Potential advantage to James here as he has had a lot of practice with the buzzer recently, though the stats (see below) don't suggest that James is currently any better with the buzzer than Ken was during his original run way back in 2004.
That being said, it appears to me that the questions in the Tournament of Champions were a bit more difficult than the regular show. For example, after getting 72 of 76 Daily Doubles correct during his 34 game run on the regular show, James actually missed 2 of 8 Daily Doubles in the Tournament of Champions. If the questions are even harder for the "Greatest of All Time" event, James' aggressive Daily Double betting strategy will be riskier.
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For what it is worth, here are links which provide Jeopardy stats for James, Ken, and Brad. If you look at regular games only and exclude various tournaments, which may or may not have harder questions, here are some key stats.
Regular Question Results
- James: 1186 of 1222 correct (97%)
- Ken: 2694 of 2958 correct (91%)
- Brad: 136 of 146 correct (93%)
Daily Double Results
- James: 72 of 76 correct (95%)
- Ken: 133 of 160 correct (83%)
- Brad: 8 of 8 correct (100%)
Final Jeopardy Results
- James: 32 of 33 correct (97%)
- Ken: 57 of 75 correct (68%)
- Brad: 3 of 5 correct (60%)
Buzzer Results
- James: was first to buzz in 58% of the time
- Ken: was first to buzz in 61% of the time
- Brad: can't find a link to buzzer results
James seems to have a clear edge over Ken in terms of Daily Double and, especially, Final Jeopardy success. Both players seem pretty similar in terms of buzzer speed.
Hard to draw much from Brad's time on the regular show (he played in the era when players were limited to 5 games). If you include all the various tournament he has played, he is 40 for 47 (85%) in Daily Doubles and 19 of 29 (66%) in Final Jeopardy questions. These results are more similar to Ken than James.
So... who’s watching the Jeopardy “Greatest of all Time” series next week?
Just watched the Trebek special on ABC. Well done, in my view.
I watched the Behind the Scenes special too and thought it was pretty interesting and well done.
I was completely floored by what would be an amazing Jeopardy answer, namely -- "About $60 million" With the question being, "How much money has been collected on the royalties of the silly little Jeopardy theme?"
Or it might have been $80 million, whatever it was, it was an enormous number for such a short little jingle.
At first, Merv’s son didn’t disclose. Then I believe he indicated $80m.
Not an IP atty (not an atty at all) but this suggests that the Griffin family owns the song, not the show. Doesn’t make sense to me how that $ would be generated if the show owned the rights. Might be missing something.
I can't friggin' believe that our local NBC affiliate that shows Jeopardy is in a spat with DirecTV (common thing, expiring contract, much finger pointing) and they may be off DirecTV starting today. Ouch.