Doesn’t the game being a tie mean you didn’t beat them? Since the final jeopardy question is wildly variable, sometimes ridiculously easy, sometimes maddeningly obscure, I’m not sure playing the odds is a wise choice. Maybe if you could play the opponent a few hundred times…
I’d let them tie me. For one thing, they’d be appreciative of the gesture and perhaps do the same for me the next day. For another, you know that one of your opponents is someone that you could have beaten. Also, let’s say the next Ken Jennings is 2nd in line to come on the show. If you have only 1 new player the next day, that means you get one more day of a possible win. The fewer new players come in, the less your chance of bringing in the next hotshot.
Well, with the opportunity to double your money, I would think the contestant would want to play Final Jeopardy, even if he’s got the win locked up.
And they would play the round a little differently if there was only one person left. (Haven’t seen the situation in quite a while, so I don’t know if they still do it this way.) At the end, they reveal the contestant’s wager before his answer (question). There’s no suspense about who’s going to win, so they show how much is riding on the question before revealing if he got it right.
I have $11,000. You have $5,000 going into final Jeopardy.
I think the right move is to bet $1000, not $999.
I either tie or win depending on our answers.
Why do I want to do that?
I already doubled you up today. I expect to be able to do it tomorrow. Throw a wild card in there, and my best guess is that I’m 50/50 against him. Sure, you might outscore me tomorrow, but basically you’re asking me to make a decision to play against:
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A guy I already doubled up, even though I have VERY LITTLE information about him.
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A guy who I have NO INFORMATION at all on.
Now, if Jeopardy doesn’t give me the $10,000 if we tie, that’s a different story. Did we determine in this thread their procedure?
In my one and only Jeopardy appearance back in 1994, I was going up against Amy Fine on her fifth and final appearance (back when they limited you to five regular game appearances). Going into Final Jeopardy, the third player, David, was leading by a small amount, Amy had the second highest amount, and mine was smallest.
We all got Final Jeopardy right. I bet all but $1 (as the wonderful contestant coordinator pounds into your head, “You can’t win without at least $1!”), Amy bet it all – but David, in a gesture of magnanimity that still impresses me to this day, bet only exactly enough to tie Amy for the win. So she retired a 5-time champ, he continued as the winner, and I got the 2nd place prize (a trip to Ireland).
With no limits on the number of games you can win today, David’s betting strategy would be dumb. But with the then-limits, it meant that he could afford to be generous. He only cheated himself out of like $50 cash, but he got more than that in goodwill!
Right.
That’s different than what I said earlier to Ekers.
Why? David “beat” Fine one day, but he needs to ask himself, “do I want her to come back, or do I want a random person waiting in the wings?” Gotta go with the random person.
But, the “no limits” only came into play because it was day 5. Even if he knew that she was only a 3 day Champ or a 2 day champ, he should still try to beat her and not tie her. If she’s only a 1 day champ, it’s maybe a toss-up.
No arguments, Trunk; I was only pointing out that I have personal experience with a tie, but that the situation was one which simply would not occur in today’s Jeopardy world.
According to the returning champ who made the $2K bet yesterday to bring about the tie, as she explained it on the Jeopardy forums, it was actually not a deliberate betting strategy but actually the result of nerves and freaking out with being watched over her shoulder as she was writing down her bet, coupled with only ten minutes to turn around from taping her first show to taping her second day. I can attest to the fact that you burn up so much adrenalin in your first game that I honestly don’t know how people keep going for multiple games in the same day. But she decided to bet a small amount because she was sure she wouldn’t know the answer based on the FJ category, and the tie was an accidental result.