As I said earlier, the two people who beat me were both very, very nice. I can’t think of anything bad to say about any of the other contestants I met that day.
Timing was my downfall. A few weeks ago, I was forced to watch the episode again, and it APPEARED to me that, on the whole, I was getting the all the difficult questions that nobody else knew… but that I was always too late or too early on the questions that more than one of us knew.
Luck wasn’t an issue. The breaks totally evened out for us. Each of us got a Daily Double and answered it correctly. All three of us knew the final answer. We were all plenty smart enough to win, and there weren’t any categories that I thought gave any one of us an edge.
Oh I can definitely commiserate, because I could have won! I just didn’t bet enough in Final Jeopardy. The category was “Business Firsts,” which can be awfully esoteric.
I had $19,000 and the champ had $19,400. I only bet $500 in final, the logic being that’s enough to put me in the lead if the champ gets it wrong and bets nothing.
Champ bet $2,600.
The answer was “On July 20, 1903 this company delivered its first product, purchased by a respected Detroiter.” The question, of course, was Ford. All three of us got it right.
Trouble was, the third place player only had $3,200 going into final. I could have bet $12,599 and still be a dollar ahead of her if she doubled her score.
Why, oh why didn’t I bet $11,000 to make it an even $30,000 if I’d won? :smack:
There was just too much adrenaline pumping through me at the time I made the wager to do complicated math!
Timing was an issue for me as well. I counted thirteen questions I knew but couldn’t buzz in on.
Okay, I watched this again and I’m not positive, but I didn’t see a cut. It looks like Alex was chuckling at the idea of the clue (mandatory drinking from a barrel of vodka at his 51st birthday and dying at 52) and the audience laughing because Alex laughed. I can’t be sure because my head was full of bees at the time.
Absolutely. I have a little bit of second guessing regarding betting more on the Daily Double. I just kinda winged it. But mainly, it’s Final Jeopardy. I feel like I panicked. If I would have slowed down, I would have stopped on Alaska instead of blowing right by it. But I had 50 states to get through in, what, 30 seconds? What if it was Iowa? If I had to miss it, I would have rather had a question I didn’t know at all…like Thursday’s:
Presidential Medal of Freedom Winners
She was called a “Trailblazer for American’s daughters” when she won in 2012, a century after founding an organization.
Juliette Gordon Lowe (founder of the Girl Scouts)
Other than that, if I had to lose, I think I would have wanted to lose in the exact way I did.
Huh. I was 99% certain of the organization, and 0% on the name. I wonder if they would have accepted “whatsername, the founder of the GSA” as an answer.
In my case, we were all close at the end. It really came down to who got that last Daily Double. The last two clues on the board were the 800 and 1000 clues in “Caves.” Whoever got the 800 answer would get that final Daily Double. I’m sure whichever of us rang in first for that 800 clue would have been right, would have gotten the Daily Double right, and would have gone into Final Jeopardy with a small lead.
Our Final category was Great Novels. I forget the exact phrasing, but when I saw the line about the heath and the moors, I knew immediately it was Wuthering Heights… but my heart sank, because I was pretty sure the other two would know it, too. I needed a super hard one that only I knew, but got only a modestly hard one we all knew.
With over 40 Jeopardy! Dopers, I got the urge to run some stats on our data. Note that we don’t have every data point for every contestant, so this is not perfectly accurate.
N=41
Average number of games won: 0.9
Number of Dopers with 0 wins: 25 (61%)
Number of Dopers with 1 win: 7 (17%)
Number of Dopers with 2 wins: 2 (5%)
Number of Dopers with 3 wins: 1 (2.5%)
Number of Dopers with 4 wins: 0
Number of Dopers with 5 wins: 3 (7%)
Number of Dopers with 6 wins: 1 (2.5%)
Number of Dopers with unknown number of wins: 2 (5%)
$33,334: average total winnings before late 2001, when prizes doubled (n=6 out of 23)
$29,715: Average total winnings, 2002 and later (n=15 out of 18)
$30,749: Average total winnings, all dates (n=21 out of 41)
It’s very interesting that the average Doper won more *before the prizes doubled *in late 2001 than those after the increase. Of course, it’s a smaller sample, and is clearly not representative. My paltry one-day win of $7,201 in 1991 was probably much closer to the average for that era than 33 grand.
It was suggested in another thread that I should check in here, since I’m about to join this elite company! I recorded my appearance on Jeopardy! in late February. June 27 is the scheduled air date. Hope everyone will be watching!
I’ll try to remember to bump this thread, or start a new one, as the air date gets closer.
This might be a bit late, but how did you count winnings before 2001? Back then the second and third place winners got prizes, not cash. I got a week in a resort 60 miles from me and $100 a day for food there. Depending on what they counted the room rate as, it could easily be more than the $2,000 I’d have gotten today. I had no transportation costs, but if I had it could have easily added another $1,000 or so for the two of us.
Congrats! Once your show has aired, bump the thread or send me a PM and I’ll update the table with your info.
You’re right, but I have no way to include the value of non-cash prizes, so all I counted was the cash prizes as reported by the contestants and listed in the table.
I hope it’s okay to bump this thread. I wanted to remind everyone that my appearance on Jeopardy! will air this Wednesday, June 27. I hope you all will be able to watch. I’ll be at the far right-hand position, wearing a red shirt and tie.
It feels official now–my picture is in the “This Week’s Contestants” section on jeopardy.com, and my “Hometown Howdy” is in the video reel. I’m getting strangely nervous, even though it was all over and done with months ago!
The lag time was actually fairly long; I was surprised at just how long. We recorded in February. I don’t recall the exact date, but I know that the Olympics were going on, because I watched some of the skiing in the hotel that evening. It’s been a challenge keeping quiet about the outcome for so long!
