I thought this TT was a rerun?
If it isn’t, I’d better start watching.
It’s all reruns for the next few weeks. Season 36 is scheduled to begin on September 9.
Ah, that would explain it! Thanks.
So there’s a new champion making a big run. I don’t find him as appealing as James, but he’s fine.
Did anyone notice the weird wagering this past week when the guy in second place after Double Jeopardy was only slightly behind the champion and they both got final Jeopardy wrong? The second-place guy lost most of his total, and the champion survived, albeit with a small amount of winnings for the day. I don’t remember the exact “rules”, but I thought when you are 90% to 95% as big a stack as the leader, you just wager enough to beat him or her by $1 if they wager nothing. Which also makes you likely to win if you both get it wrong, because it is too risky for the leader to not bet enough to cover you in case you do bet it all.
I also noticed they are hyping a tournament of champions this season, with James back already to face 14 other champions. I wonder if this current guy will be one of them.
And how do you make 15 players produce three finalist spots, anyway?
they’ve already taped this year’s tournament of champions and the current guy isn’t in it
15 players play 5 games
the 5 winners plus the 4 non-winners with the highest total advance to the next round
those 9 then play 3 games, and the three winners of those are finalists
The name of the current champion is Jason Zuffranieri and he’s not in the Tournament of Champions (list of participants here) because, as I understand the rules, only those who ended their runs during last year’s season qualify. He started his run during last year’s season and had he lost before the last episode, he would be in the tournament, which is scheduled to air November 4-15, 2019. Instead, presumably he will be in the tournament in 2020, unless fifteen others do better than him (unlikely) or they don’t have a tournament.
This was a clue from the first week
The question is “What is Saturn”
But aren’t there 6 planets that can be seen with the naked eye? Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… and Earth?
By either way of reckoning, Saturn is not the farthest. Uranus is a sixth magnitude object; if conditions are right, you can see it with the naked eye. I know, because I’ve done it.
I’m not the kind to say “I told you so,” but…
Wait a minute. Yes I am!
I TOLD YOU SO!
The new champ, Jason Zuffranieri, has now won over $400,000 in 15 shows, and is #5 on the all-time Jeopardy! earners list. As I predicted, he has followed James H’s technique of going for the bottom two rows first, to build up a sizable pot before hitting the DDs and putting himself out of reach of the other two contestants.
Jason didn’t start using the technique in earnest until game seven, and he doesn’t have the incredible range of knowledge that James did, so he hasn’t been quite as dominant as James. He’s had a few close calls. But in 10 of his 15 games he had a lock going in to FJ.
I think this is a sign that, as I expected, the Holzhauer technique can be useful even without James’ huge knowledge base, and that it will soon become a common practice for Jeopardy! contestants.
No idea what you told us so but Jason is behind only Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer in terms of regular season winnings.
As for his standing, I got my info from a CNN story from last Friday, that stated: “That puts him at #5 on both the all-time earnings list (he’s netted $418,343 so far) and the all-time consecutive games list.” That was correct for regular season play when they reported it, but they mistakenly called it all-time earnings, and I repeated that error without checking. My apologies.
And yes, I should have highlighted my prediction, which was somewhat buried in the linked post:
I expanded on the prediction in several subsequent posts:
Emphasis mine. Jason is the first in this trend I predicted, and he could go on to hit 30 or more wins.
I don’t want to see Uranus. Now, or at any time.
'Rim’Shot
d&r
At least not with my naked… anything.
Does everyone agree with me though that Jason should already be gone, if that one challenger had used basic correct Final Jeopardy betting strategy?
I wonder if they will give up trying to advise contestants to go through the categories in order. Or maybe they will change the rules and require them to.
Makes sense, thanks. Interesting that in most of the first round matches, typically only one player will be eliminated from contention, and it’s even possible for no one to be eliminated. It’s like that first round is just to weed out the weakest champions.
I have only watched a few since Jason started. (My comments above were based on looking at his performance on the J!Archive.) Can you tell us which game you’re referring to, either by date or the name of the player?
Why in Og’s name do you think they would or should do that?
There was one game, I think last week, where everyone got Final Jeopardy wrong and he ended up winning with “only” $5,000 or so. He could easily have been eliminated.
BTW, his total just exceeded $500,000 and he is averaging about $28,000 per game.
Specifically, it was the game that aired on Sept. 17. Here is the recap on The Jeopardy! Fan website.
Jason and his nearest competitor, Colin Kennedy, were very close going into FJ. Jason had $23,000, Colin had $20,300. The third contestant, Helen Lyons, was in a distant third with $5,400.
In that situation, the smart play for Helen would be to bet $0, hoping that Jason and Colin both bet big to try to cover each other, and both get it wrong. Instead, she bet everything she had.
As it happened, all three of them got FJ wrong. Jason ended up with $5,300. Had Helen bet nothing, she would have won the game by $1,000. Instead, she ended up in third place, and Jason continued his winning streak.
Final Jeopardy betting can be so important!
I think you mean $100?
I certainly do. Thanks for the catch.
I told you math was important!