Originally Posted by
gus
I'm reading a lot of people making the claim that James threw the match because of his wager.
The main arguments seem to be:
1) when he got out buzzed, he didn't appear to be trying to buzz in.
2) his final jeopardy wager was small
Both are stupid arguments.
1) Part of his buzzer skill comes from minimizing extra movement. He practiced it this way. Keeping the buzzing hand comfortable and eliminating extra movement was all done to reduce the amount of time it took to buzz in. When he successfully buzzed in, it didn't look like he was buzzing in either.
2) e.g. this is a comment on the NYT article about it:
The scores going into final jeopardy:
James - 23,400
Jay- 11,000
Emma- 26,600
James had to assume that Emma was going to bet at least 20,201 -- the amount she'd need to beat him if he doubled up. (And indeed she did bet exactly that). The only way he could win is if she got it wrong. In that case, as long as he bets between 0 and 17,000 he would win (she would have ended with 6,399, and he would have ended somewhere between 6,400 and 23,400). BUT, he had to make sure he'd beat Jay too. Jay could have gotten to 22,000 - so Jame's real upper limit is $1,399. That way, if he and Emma are both wrong and Jay is right, James wins by a $1.
So both James and Emma made their optimal bets. Only Jay bet incorrectly at 6,000. He shouldn't have bet more than 4,600, with the hope that James stupidly bet it all, and Emma bet the correct amount.
The game turned on "What is Albany" - the 1200 question in Capital "A". She was down 13,600 - 6,400. That got her to 7,600. The next clue was the DD, and she went all in, and got it right. Had James gotten it (and he said he was going to pick the same spot she did), he probably would have gone all in and gotten to 27,600 and on his way to another runaway.