What everyone always overlooks in these wager calculations is the chance of getting the question right. Now, we don’t know what that would be, so we sort of have to leave a blank in the calculation for that, especially for the general case. But any player should at least have an idea of how strong they are in any given category, and can probably at least make an informed guess of how well the other players are likely to do, based on their mini-bios and their performance on other categories. This effect is most clearly seen in the extreme cases: If I’m ever on Jeopardy and there’s a Daily Double or Final on physics, the only rational wager for me is all of it, regardless of what the other players have: Anything less is just leaving money on the table. On the other hand, if the category is early 20th century fashion, then I’d be a fool to bet anything, because any bet I make is just throwing money away.
What everyone always overlooks in these wager calculations is the chance of getting the question right. Now, we don’t know what that would be, so we sort of have to leave a blank in the calculation for that, especially for the general case. But any player should at least have an idea of how strong they are in any given category, and can probably at least make an informed guess of how well the other players are likely to do, based on their mini-bios and their performance on other categories. This effect is most clearly seen in the extreme cases: If I’m ever on Jeopardy and there’s a Daily Double or Final on physics, the only rational wager for me is all of it, regardless of what the other players have: Anything less is just leaving money on the table. On the other hand, if the category is early 20th century fashion, then I’d be a fool to bet anything, because any bet I make is just throwing money away.
Yes, I was leaving player expertise out of the strategy, and assuming equal knowledge of the subject. If Megan felt she was really strong on “America in the 1700s,” betting more than 0 would have made sense. But in that case, she probably should have bet considerably more than the $2,200 she did bet, up to $4,999, which would have guaranteed her no worse than second place. The amount of her actual bet makes me wonder why she made it, and leads me to believe that betting strategy isn’t her strong suit. (Not that I was any better when I was on the spot, as I disclosed above. I’m a great *armchair *strategist, though.:D)
Well, don’t forget that the second- and third-place players don’t get their final totals in cash, only $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. So, for instance, if you had been third-place Jesse in this game, going into FJ with $5,400, and the category had been Physics, it would have been unwise to bet all of it, because the best getting it right would win you (assuming Megan didn’t make a stupid wager) would have been second place, and in the remote chance you were wrong, you could have ended up third. For Final Jeopardy, “leaving money on the table” only comes into play for the winner, who keeps the total in cash.
I think it more probable that the other contestants would make mistaken bets such that the amount of my bet matters, than that I would get a Jeopardy question about physics wrong.
There are sometimes cases of really dumb betting by Jeopardy players. This was not one of them. If she had bet zero, she would have to beat him on a sudden death question.
Not knowing the “sudden death” category in advance, she bet on the “known” category and felt that the probability of her getting the FJ answer correct was better than the probability of answering the Sudden Death question Faster than the other player. A very reasonable decision.
You can’t just look at results in hindsight and say “Dumb bet.”
A standard example of bad betting, that you will see very often, is when near the end of DJ someone who is trailing badly makes a middling bet on a daily double.
For example: there are only a few questions left, you get a daily double and you have $6,000 compared to the leader’s $15,000
Getting the question wrong with bet of 2,000 or 3,000 is going to scuttle any chance of winning the game… you should be it all… why not??
And in general, you should probably be betting big on daily doubles, anyway. Unlike with Final Jeopardy, the only way you get the opportunity for a daily double is if you picked the category yourself, and picked one of the higher-value clues, so if you’re in that situation, it should presumably be a relatively strong category for you (unless it’s a situation where it’s the last category left, or the like).
Okay, but outside of extreme cases (the majority of the time), your score relative to other players and the game situation is a very powerful factor. In the scenario yesterday (or was it the day before?), it was such a stark situation. The “chip leader” had already got it wrong so could not ring in again. The other two players could get to within >50% of his score if they rang in and got it right; by just staying quiet as they did, they guaranteed that the only thing either of them could contend for is a one-time difference of $1,000 between first and second, before going home and never (I assume) being able to play again. For the person lagging in third place especially, seems like you just need to ring in and take a wild guess, on the off chance you get it and then have a chance to catch the leader. (Although it also occurs to me that if you think the other player has a better chance to know it, you might actually rather they ring in, because then if they get it, all three players have a chance.)
Exciting game today!
Was I imagining this, or did Alex [spoiler]read the quote from Joseph McCarthy in a Southern accent? I suppose Wisconsin is south of Canada, but still.
I was glad to see they adjusted the one contestant’s score based on the Indiana Jones answer as I knew they had re-titled it that way. But it strikes me that just giving her the additional points is somewhat insufficient. The other guy who gave the preferred answer still gets to keep his points, and the hard-to quantify advantage he gained from controlling the board at that time.[/spoiler]
I assume it’s in all of the syndicated episodes, which they are now emblazened “NEW”. Yesterday’s episode was the first one I’ve noticed that had the date the episode was recorded (I think it was February 20, 2020). Again no audience reaction shots, but plenty of audience noise (presumably pre-recorded).
The Price Is Right must be at about the same point with their episodes. The past month their end-crawl has “recorded before the coronavirius”. They really can’t run without their in-studio audience!
[I’ve removed this portion of the post from the spoiler box because 1) it’s a day later and B) it had no bearing on the outcome of the game.]
That was very strange. I don’t know what he was trying to do. McCarthy had a surprisingly high-pitched voice, which may have been what Alex was attempting, but he certainly didn’t have a Southern accent.
They started doing this for the teacher’s tournament. I think mainly because they were doing those reruns for a while and ratings dropped so they want to make sure people know these aren’t reruns. There was an audience for the teacher’s tournament (I don’t think they ever really show audience reactions on Jeopardy to begin with).
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Today’s show was absolutely WILD.
[spoiler]Maggie really impressed me by going for a true Daily Double while leading in DJ with over $15K. She got it wrong, lost everything, then also got FJ wrong…and still finished the day with the score lead! It’s a two day final, but that’s still pretty incredible if you ask me. I suppose something like that may have happened before in all these decades of Jeopardy, but I’ve never seen it.
The FJ question was pretty tough and I was stumped just like all three contestants. But the DD she missed was easy, I thought: basically, what rate, when it drops, causes increases in wages. (Answer: unemployment) If she had gotten that right, she would have had more than $30K additional going into FJ, and she would probably be unstoppable right now. But unless those categories were just particularly favorable for her, it looks like she’s head and shoulders above the rest (on that score you guys talk about, just figuring how many questions she got right, she must have destroyed the competition, given the way she came roaring back after getting zeroed out). So unless she again flames out on DDs and FJ tomorrow, she looks to have the inside track on the championship. I’d like to see her come back for a Tournament of Champions: are teacher tourney champs eligible for those?
She’s also just a lot of fun, with a kind of joie de vivre. Love her![/spoiler]
I had the same assumption. Which to me suggests that it was a mistake to spread out the new episodes. I suppose they thought by sprinkling them out among reruns, they could kind of soften the blow of not having new episodes for months and months, maybe get people to come back for the reruns when they’ve just recently seen new ones. But I think it may well be having the opposite result. If people have started tuning out because of all the reruns, they aren’t going to even see those “NEW” labels at all. So I think they probably should have just gone with all the ones they had in the can until they were all out.
Well, except those shots you are talking about. But yeah, I wondered: was that really the audience for that tournament? Or did they actually splice in video from a different episode? Which would be bizarre, but sort of understandable.
Anyone who thinks today’s FJ was difficult can’t go to the movies much.
I didn't even have to read the entire clue. As soon as I saw "1935" and "motorcycle accident," I knew who Alex was talking about.“Chamberlain” really wasn’t a very good guess.
Especially since he was PM until 1940. :rolleyes:
Yeah, that was obviously wrong since what Chamberlain is famous for is “peace for our time” and 1935 is just too early for that.
I’ve ranked over 1500 movies on Flickchart, but I didn’t finish that one because I watched about 30 minutes’ worth and got bored of it. Good cinematography though! (I was watching on Blu-ray on a 70" 4K TV in a dark room.)
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I’ve never seen the whole movie either, but I sure know that opening scene. It’s very famous.
I also read about Lawrence of Arabia when I was in fifth grade. So a little historical knowledge helps too.
