haven't seen tonight's as i'm on the west coast.

alex has been one of the best contestants i remember.... very very fast on the buzzer. competition hasn't been that great tho. so many players are brain-dead slow like that older woman last night. he has pretty good obscure knowledge too.

i think he'd do fairly well against the best players ever. jennings, rutter etc. but they are moderately better than him.

final jeopardy is interesting and a bit of a crapshoot..... oscillates anywhere between fairly easy to very hard. i hadn't thought of this much but i think the easier the category generally the question will be harder relative to category. i've got tons of final jeopardy's correct on "tough" categories i know almost nothing about.

i think when you are in 3rd place and can still win you want to bet very little. hope everyone misses.

would love to see the math on final jeopardy but it's got to be alot of 3 corrects and zero corrects i'd think. anyone know the distribution?

i hadn't watched "price is right" in years but saw it a few times recently. shocked at how the players apply the proper strategies now. last player or last 2 players do $0 or $1 above highest price almost all the time now.

i think jeopardy players could use better strategy, like daily double bettings. sometimes someone with $12k will bet $3k very late when leader has $19K. it makes no sense. you gain very little and lose alot in EV.

google "colby burnett". also that really young east indian kid from illinois was really good last season. or that chinese guy that peeved everyone with his betting strategy? (seemed fine to me and alex is doing it right now)

generally though white men below a certain age seem to do best. aggression and knowledge?

i looked up the stats for final jeopardy... fairly small sample of season 26.

19% of the time all 3 contestants get final jeopardy.

15% of the time none of the contestants get final jeopardy....probably low as sometimes they don't even try. not sure if all funny messages (see alex the other night) are sincere attempts with no success or not. seems like not as the message takes up valuable time.

averages almost exactly one correct final jeopardy per night. so i think given the distribution between zero and three that would mean 1 is alot more common than 2 correct.

ok, i found the exact numbers for one recent season...

3 correct 18%
2 correct 33%
1 correct 35%
zero correct 15%

so if you're in last place there's 27% chance that zero correct or you are only one.

first place.... 27% chance you are only correct or none.... about 50% chance you get it correct.

Close game tonight... Alex and the woman both should have done more on daily doubles. Alex especially

They missed tons of easy ones tonight although Alex got tons I didn't. The girl mostly got ones I knew

Tonight the girl was very competitive but not sure why Alex is so much faster on easy clues in general when u have to wait to buzz in. Haven't seen someone so much faster in awhile.

So you guys actually think if you know you have a 10% chance of answering FJ correct you should wager some amount greater than zero? Really?

Can we at least agree that from a purely EV point of view on FJ that if you're <50% to answer correctly you wager $0 and if you're >50% you wager the max?

New Episode Up!

Calling her the girl is pretty demeaning and sexist , she's a very smart woman.

Alex was really tested tonight for the first time and stayed cool and determined throughout ,he was very impressive. One of his strengths is take he seldom rings in with the wrong answer , he avoids the pitfalls expertly.

That clutch final jeopardy though!

GTO

No cap, but there use to be one 15 years ago. Think it was either 5 or 10 games.

Also the dollar values use to be lower. Forgot when they doubled everything to what it is today.

goddamn, the woman was really good.

I've only watched jeopardy a handful of times, does it happen often that two competitors are close to 20k before the last game?

Worth viewing for those interested in Jeopardy.

http://gawker.com/5860275/how-a-geek...-jeopardy-code

That list is very out of date. Arthur Chu won $300k more than a year ago and he's not on there.

OK...So this (former?) poker player is good at Jeopardy.......He goes all-in on the daily doubles when he has large amounts, which is pretty bold and risky, but it has paid off big on several occasions....but why is his demeanor so blase and his attitude kind of unpleasant?.......on top of everything strange about him is that he doesn't show any happiness when he wins.........am I the only one that finds this kinda weird?