[Moderating]
Yes, Tangent, that is totally shallow and irrelevant to the thread. Keep it in your pants.
Apologies if this has already been covered, but I wonder what the constraints on Jeopardy are with regard to doing something to end this streak. If they wanted to, could they at some arbitrary point say, “Enough”? As a game show, they have to follow certain rules, right? Or do they already have some limit and it just hasn’t been reached yet?
James is impressive and may be good for ratings for now (I guess?). But what if he’s still winning 6 months from now? A year from now? Surely at some point he becomes a drag on the show’s continued success.
Instead, James Holzhauer may choose to retire before that point. If he ever accumulates $10M in winnings, I think that’s more than enough to retire on, comfortably.
Either that, or he breaks the show. Or he breaks the production company, Jeopardy Productions, Inc.
Here’s an interesting idea discussing his strategy.
Today’s contestant performed fairly well but she finished a distant second to James Holzhauer. If she bet it all in Final she would have inished with $14,000. And yes she is quite attractive.
The third contestant ended in the red and could not participate in Final Jeopardy.
That 8+ minute video was pretty good, thanks davidm. Yes, James Holzhauer is changing how the game is played. I am enjoying watching him on his run.
Ratings crumbled during the 2 week teacher tournament. Judge Judy took top spot.
Holzhauer is definitely drawing in the viewers. It will get more compelling as he gets closer to ken Jennings record.
His strategy is working for him but it does have to be backed up by an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia.
The thing is, even though he’s raking in tons of cash, he’s leaving a fair amount of money on the table by being more cautious than is strictly necessary.
In Double Jeopardy, his favorite bets on Daily Doubles are $11,381 (his wife’s birthday: 11/3/1981), and $11,914 (his daughter’s). Yet most of the time he could bet more and still retain an unbeatable lead. I have to believe that his math skills are such that he could figure out the optimum amount on the fly, but I suspect that he makes these smaller bets because they humanize him by displaying devotion to family members and by not mechanically going for the absolute maximum he could wager.
I haven’t bothered to figure out exactly how much more he could have won (it would be an interesting problem to work on), but several times I’ve noticed that he could have risked 50-100% more on a DD and still been out out of reach if he had gotten it wrong.
So, as well as he’s done, and as much as he’s made, I believe he’s intentionally not winning as much as he is actually capable of, probably to reduce the resentment such an overwhelming performance might create in the viewing public.
It’s still a lot of math to do on the spot to figure out how much he can safely bet. I feel like he became more conservative once he realized he could actually beat Jennings record.
Do they allow the contestants a calculator or even pencil and paper for calculating the final jeopardy bet?
I think they get pencil and paper.
Pencil and paper, yes. A calculator, no.
Maybe, since he’s a gambler, he likes to bet “lucky” amounts, like birthdays.
Seems to be working pretty well for him, I’d say!
Nate gave Holzhauer a good fight today. He was behind for much of the game.
Nate answered final Jeopardy correctly. Didn’t bet enough.
I really thought this was it for Holzhauer. So darn close.
I haven’t seen the game, but I saw the results. Even if he bet it all, he would have been short, unless James missed the final Jeopardy question. (And it was a pretty easy one, at least for me.)
Looks like the problem was Nate’s Double Jeopardy Daily Double; had he bet more aggressively, he could have won.
The Daily Double was Nates chance to get a big enough lead.
It was just bad luck Holzhauer immediately found the other daily double. That put him back in the game.
He is beatable. His game was way off today. He still won. It’s going to take an aggressive player to beat him.
Can we not post spoilers for the days game? Not everyone sees it at the same time.