Anybody else enjoying Julia Collins’ run on Jeopardy?
According to the only list I could find, with ten wins she’s already the fourth-best player ever in number of games won since 2003, when the five-game limit was dropped.
If she wins one more game she ties Arthur Chu for third-best ever, with eleven wins.
If she manages to win twelve games, she’ll be alone in third place, behind Dave Madden (19 wins) and KenJennings (75).
I like her. At first she struck me as being unassuming and little goofy, took a few games for me to realize how very good she is.
I have nothing against her, but my wife and stepdaughter for some reason don’t like her.
I have noticed that her competition has had less than what I’d expect for Jeopardy1 minimum levels of knowledge. But maybe that’s just because I’ve been studying my own weak areas a lot this past year.
Did anyone else wonder if Trebek made a fat joke about Julia today? His opening patter mentioned “some fans are calling Julia ‘The Giant’. We’ll see how right they are” or something like that. The show cut to a picture of Julia not looking very happy about that moniker… and really, i don’t blame her.
I hate it when contestants have low amounts of money and say “let’s make it a true daily double”. It’s not exciting. Julia said that when she had $400 and should have risked $1000 and then was giggling about it. She’s annoying and giggly.
Arthur really spoiled me I miss seeing people make bold wagers. There has been some lame wagering lately.
I didn’t get any fat joke vibes from “the Jeopardy giant”. “giant” has been applied to long-winning champions before
In general I think contestants under wager. The woman in the middle tonight (I forget her name) was in a situation late in the second round where she had $5200 and Julia had $13,000. I think the one-minute warning had already been called. The woman bet $200.
WTF!? If you don’t win you get a max of $2000. She needed to bet $5000 to even have a chance of passing Julia in Final Jeopardy. As it was, she just sealed Julia’s chances of a runaway victory in Final Jeopardy.
That being said, I will say there is something for small bets when you don’t know the category. Sure, Julia could have bet the full thousand - but I got the impression she didn’t know the category and in fact got the question wrong. Betting “a true daily double” was something she did because she hadn’t gotten to do it on the show and the stakes were low. Arthur Chu once bet “five bucks” on a daily double, because it was a category he knew nothing about (and indeed got the question wrong). Low bets on daily doubles can be a good strategy, because at least you deny them to your opponents.
I love jeopardy, but sometimes the betting on it does drive me crazy - this just wasn’t one of those times.
Arthur wasn’t in a position where he needed a high wager to have a chance in final jeopardy. Even if you don’t know the category she had to bet a lot there. If she bet small and got it right she’s still out of contention so you might as well go big
What I wondered about that comment is — if the show is recorded months in advance and kept top secret until air date, how could fans have been calling her anything at all?
ok I got a little confused and conflated some things you said in different paragraphs but I think I am agreeing with you that the girl in the middle made a poor wagering decision on the daily double late in double jeopardy
might Alex have filmed that comment separately weeks later and they edited it into tonight’s game?
And Julia’s run was interrupted by the decades tournament. Not sure how far in advance they film but maybe that disrupted the schedule enough for people to have already seen some of her games
Indeed, I don’t think they are filmed all that far apart, and even if they are, Julia had a win streak going into the lengthy tournament of the decades, for her reputation to build up. I wonder if Trebek only starts pattering about how good a contestant is when they become record breaking.
That kind of bet shows, to me at least, that the contestant didn’t want to win. I’m baffled why someone doesn’t bet enough to put them into contention for the final question.
I’m amazed how quietly she surpassed Arthur’s streak. There was this whole anti-Arthur thing going on, but I heard nothing about Julia, until this thread.
For the record, I like both contestants, and approve of Arthur’s daily-double hunting strategy.
And I’m glad this thread was spoiler free for yesterday’s episode, which I haven’t got to watch yet. Did she win again? I’m not coming back to this thread until I watch.
