“I’ll take Pointless Kvetching for $600, Alex.”
I don’t believe that it is true that the daily doubles are usually found lower in the columns. I believe that the Daily Doubles are randomized. Daily Doubles are most noticiable when found near the end of a round, which usually also means low in the last category- but that doesn’t mean that that is the only place they are found. Alex Trebec did comment to someone on the fact that Daily Doubles get harder the farther down the column they are located-just like the rest of the clues.
And I don’t see anything “dishonorable” in skipping around from category to category and not going down the line of values.
I’m just happy that for the first time in at least a couple of weeks there is someone who is capable of being champion for more than five minutes.
Choosing high dollar amounts first is a risky strategy. If someone else gets ahead of you, it will be a lot harder to catch up with only small dollar amounts left on the board.
Wah! He’s winning and not giving me a chance to beat him! Wah!
He’s employing a strategy that’s helping him to win. It’s within the rules (there’s no rule that one must start at the topmost lefthand corner and work your way down, then start with the next column and do the same thing) and if the others were quicker on the buzzer they could do the same.
I find it pointless for someone to bet less than the amount of the clue if it weren’t a Daily Double, but hey, that’s your choice when you land on it.
The Daily Doubles usually are on the 3rd to 5th rows, but technically they can be anywhere. When I was on the show, the contestant coordinators, who go over the rules before the first game of the day, mention some possible tactics, and hunting for the Daily Doubles is not discouraged. One former big-winning champ (can’t remember which, right now) jumped all over the board, which may have thrown off his opponents, and helped him win. This isn’t discouraged either. There’s nothing unfair about it. The tactic is available to anyone. It’s a game.
By the way, when one of the categories is a “Video” category, contestants have to go in order, from top to bottom. This is purely a technical issue.
I think he would win even without this strategy. He’s smart, no doubt about it. That said, it makes the show less fun to watch, so I don’t like it. Betting next to nothing on the Daily Doubles is boring.
I don’t think he is smug, although I see why others might think that. IMHO, he has at least a mild case of Asperger’s. Listen to his inflection. It is definitely off, as are his social interactions. You can tell that he is socially unskilled. He reminds me of the mega-nerd in American Splendor.
First off, I don’t like the guy. I don’t know why, but he just rubs me the wrong way.
But I don’t think he’s “Daily Double hunting”, I think he’s trying to throw his opponents off their game by behaving in an unorthodox manner and forcing them to react to it. Eveybody’s used to seeing the top-down approach. Staying in the same category makes it easier to get into a groove once you get the gist of the questions. But he doesn’t need a groove, so he jumps around the board.
I don’t think the Daily Doubles are usually in the middle, I think they’re randomized. I’ve seen them in the top row and I’ve seen them in the bottom row. I’ve played enough Battleship in my life to know that a systematic search is better than plugging away randomly like he’s doing.
Now his betting strategy, that pisses me off. There’s nothing wrong–indeed, there’s everything right–about not risking too much on DD if you have an insurmountable lead, but he should at least bet enough so that he still maintains his lead AND makes as much money as he can so there’s actually something riding on the question. For example, if I’ve got $20,000 and my nearest opponent has $7,000, i can risk up to $5,999 without endangering my insurmountable lead. In reality, i’d probably risk like $4,000. This guy would risk $5 in that situation. Get some stones, man.
To back up what you and Marley have written: I have absolutely seen players employ the “jumping around” strategy before, even going as far back as the late 80s. It’s not a new thing.
There seem to be other strategies that most people prefer that tend to diminish the number of folks who actually willl skip around, though. For instance, when a player feels they know a category well, there is great temptation to try to burn through it all in a row with a bunch of quick triggers.
can anyone clarify how either one of these approaches is statistically any better than the other?
I think this was Chuck Forrest. The advantage to running a category is that you can get into a rhythm with the clues, or notice a pattern that will assist you in solving it, so by jumping all over the board, you prevent others from being able to do this. Of course, it requires that you keep control of the board.
You’re free to select any answer you want on the board. Hunting for the daily doubles on the bottom rows is perfectly ok if that’s what you want to do. The drawbacks are that you’re not going to get the feel of how the answers are worded if you start with the more difficult answers. And of course your hunting only works if you keep getting to select.
Betting small on Daily Doubles makes sense if you look at it this way: On a normal answer, you’re free not to buzz in if you don’t know the question. Since you don’t have the chance to not provide the correct question for a daily double, betting small is the thing to do if you’re conservative.
Because most players start at the top of each category, by keeping Daily Doubles mostly in the bottom half of the board, it is (a little) more likely that when someone hits a DD, they will have more money to wager. A contestant that is behind might bet a lot to try to move up, or one that is way ahead could wager a lot because there is less risk. Basically, it makes the game more interesting if the DDs happen in the second half of the round.
i was referring to the context of the post i quoted - specifically finding the double, including the reference to battleship.
Sorry, I misunderstood. Strategy was never my strong suit, and statistics even less so. From a pure math point of view, I couldn’t say.
This is still slightly off-topic, but as far as randomization goes, I now seem to remember being told by the contestant coordinators that they do specifically place DDs in the bottom two rows, but only in the second round. In the first round, they can be anywhere. Don’t know why this slipped my mind until just now. I guess I didn’t pay it much mind at the time because DD hunting never appealed to me. I would rather concentrate on categories that I thought I had some chance with, when I had control of the board. If I hit a DD, all the better.
fubbleskag, to tell you the truth, I don’t know if there is statistical justification for a systematic search or not. But if the DDs are placed randomly, why would either strategy be better or worse?
I did used to win most of my Battleship games, though.
I disagree. Assuming that you’ll run through all of the big money questions eventually (which happens a large majority of the time), and assuming that your expected value on those questions is the same whether you answer them early in the round or late, it should make no difference. If anything, I would think you could mentally prepare yourself for facing the the big questions while your opponents might not be ready, giving you a slight edge.
The only difference is that you might know you’re beat earlier if you run through the expensive questions first.
With a little diligence and an understanding of arithmetic, you can work out whether an extremely risk-averse strategy is the correct one, given a particular situation and payout structure. In the example above, unless this is the last clue before Final Jeopardy, a 20-7 lead is a lot more insurmountable than a 14.001-7 lead. Given the huge advantage of coming in first (getting your total in cash, coming back tomorrow for a chance to do the same), it may make a lot of sense to play it very safe with a lead. The more confident you are in your likelihood of winning a given match, the truer this becomes.
Your confidence in your superiority will also dictate how soon you should start hunting down those DDs in order to reduce everyone’s variance.
They’re not placed randomly. They’re overwhelmingly placed in the lower three rows of the board. Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t been paying attention.
If they were placed totally randomly, then “hunting” wouldn’t make a difference beyong the fact that you know where you’re going before your competitors know where you’re going. Whether that helps to have the millisecond lead on switching your brain into “Opera” mode instead of “Sports” mode, I don’t know.
Thanks to the miracle of DVR, I watch the show every day. I pay close attention, since getting on the show is one of my life’s ambitions. DD distribution looks random to me.
But since this is the Dope, I’ll stop guessing. Starting today, I’ll keep track of the category and dollar amounts of all of the DDs for a month, then we’ll see if there’s a pattern. Fair enough?
That contradicts what h.sapiens just said above. That the first round has the DD’s placed at random and the second round has them placed in the lower two rows.
We’ll see what vibrotronica finds out.
If I ever have the good fortune to be summoned to Jeopardy! (I’ve passed the test three times but never gotten the call to L.A.) my aim will not be to play a good game but to take home as much money as I can. I have no interest in a trip to Merv Griffin’s Arkansas Casino or a crate of Rice-a-Roni, I want cash. I’ll do anything that’s in the rules to beat the other players, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be doing the same thing. (I wonder if Jeopardy! allows you to bring airhorns…)