Voss that was very bone headed. Is there any data that shows ToC wildcards fare much worse than qualifying winners? The only way it's acceptable is if he decides chance of winning qualifier + chance of elimination has more ToC EV than 'guaranteed' qualification as a wild card.

I think you are confusing cause and effect here unless there is some slight seeding advantage (Not sure how they slot the semi-finals).


Can't find it right now, but I think the typical cutoff point is in the 12K range and getting over 14 or 15K is close to a like (>90%).

Wild Cards
1. Pranjal Vachaspati: $15,000+$1,401=$16,401 (Game 1)
2. Austin Rogers: $8,000+$8,000=$16,000 (Game 3)
3. Lilly Chin: $12,800-$800=$12,000 (Game 2)
4. Tim Aten: $14,000-$2,500=$11,500 (Game 2)
5. Justin Vossler: $16,000-$7,000=$9,000 (Game 5)
6. Sam Deutsch: $12,400-$4,200=8200 (Game 4)
7. Seth Wilson: $9,900-$4,501=$5,399 (Game 4)
8. Hunter Appler: $1,400+$0=$1,400 (Game 1)
9. David Clemmons: $1,400-$1,400=$0 (Game 3)
10. Jon Eisenman: $3,800-3,800=$0 (Game 5)

I assume the top 3 winners are in separate flights and it's sorted via qualifying $ amounts. If the 9 ppl are just randomized then yes, no way to make any sense of Vossler's bet.

Semis have to be (winner/wc) 2/1, 2/1, 1/2 (assume they don't allow a 3/0). So I guess that winning would give a slight edge-max of playing against 1 other winner), but no way that slight edge outweighs the 100/0 chance of making the semi's per his wager.

I'd also guess that end of DD scores probably correlate better than end of game scores since FJ is so binary and especially since FJ wagering is skewed by the wildcard factoring in. So those that have the highest scores before FJ probably correlate to semi-final success more than total scores.

The final wager does have a review showing the wildcards perform lower than predicted if all semifinalists are equal. I did a very quick skim and its about 50% below expected so if 15 are expected, then only 10 advance (44.4% of SF players, but only represent 33% of winners).

http://thefinalwager.com/2015/02/09/...ls-and-finals/

Just found the WC cutoff % to advance curve, as on the final wager:

http://thefinalwager.com/2013/11/07/...nd-wild-cards/

Average cutoff in TOC is about 10-11K. 15K is about 70% to advance (though that graph is all tournaments and think TOC may be a little tougher, so wouldn't be surprised if 15K is more like 80%).

Does look like the curve is fairly linear, so if we are sitting at say 13K, our gain of adding 2K is about the same as our loss of dropping 2K.

Cleary 16,000 the correct wager is 0.

But why would we assume all semifinalists are equal? We don't make that assumption when it comes to wild card teams in the NFL or MLB playoffs?

In theory there might be a ToC where you have 3 players who had 20+ game streaks and nobody else won more than 2 games in a row. Now those 3 guys all totally crush their ToC QF and are placed in 3 different SFs. Would we really assume the individual chance for each of them to reach the final is only 33%?

Just make the assumption to get a baseline to compare against. If they are 44% of contestants then only 30% advance we can estimate how much less equal they are in reality. (Of course n is still now huge I think he looked over 11 TOCs for 33 finalists which works out to about 15 wild cards if equal but actual was 10).

Does anyone know how much advance notice/visibility Alex has for where the Daily Doubles are?

Watching Wednesday's episode on DVR, and I can't tell if it was a coincidence or a tell. The Native American category had 200/400/800/1000 clues left. Someone picked the 800 clue, and Alex prefaced the clue with "The answer there is...." (same as he normally does for a DD). Sure enough, the DD was the 400 clue.

My thought process was that Alex thought the 800 was the DD, then just played it off after his clue intro.

Very possible I'm reading too much into this, but I'm going to take note of any time he does it in the future to see if non-DD clue intros always happen for clues adjacent to the DD.

I noticed this too. Was definitely expecting it to the be the DD.

The only stipulation for semifinal games is that you won't face anyone that you already faced during the quarterfinal games. Beyond that, the contestants know that producers have some discretion regarding who plays each other in the semis.

In practice, indeed it's usually the case that the favorites are in separate matches (e.g. Matt and AJ in the previous ToC, Ken and Brad in the BotD), but that's not always the case - see the 2011 ToC where Roger and Joon played each other in the semis (to a lot of folks' surprise, IIRC).

Could just be Trebek getting old. He makes a few non-game-changing slip-ups from time to time.

16k would have qualified for every ToC SF's. Therefore you wager 0, wagering 1000 is a wishy washy bet that accomplishes nothing.

I'm not sure if this is said in jest or not. I hope it is. Otherwise I would be sad.

These little things always annoy me.
On a Jeopardy $800 Austin answers an NHL question “Who are the Blues” Alex is silent and Austin corrects himself to “Who are the Blue JACKETS”

Later in DJ, Lily answers “What are missionaries” and right as she finishes she starts going “Ah what are...”. And Alex quickly says “Sorry no”

Austin rings in “Missions”

Austin wins... Is somehow trying even harder now to be zany/eccentric

I could be wrong but isn’t the rule that in J they have until the end of their time to correct but in DJ the first answer is taken immediately? I thought there was some sort of similar rules distinction between the two rounds.

Editing to add I found this. The rule I must have been thinking of. Same page says you can correct as long as no ruling by Alex or judge has been made.


If a contestant gives a response to a non-Daily Double clue in the Jeopardy! round that is not in the form of a question, Alex will give them a reminder. However, if a contestant forgets their phrasing in the Double Jeopardy! round, during Final Jeopardy! or for any Daily Double clue, they will be ruled incorrect.

I believe you have x seconds to answer, so if you correct yourself before the time runs out, you're OK.

We also can't take the timing we see as viewers as real time. They can edit dead air out anywhere.

I think Austin was quite fortunate on the Blue Jackets one. It wasn't the same as the normal situation where someone is given time to correct themselves. In this case, the answer that Austin gave initially is the name of another NHL team. He essentially got to guess two teams.

Was very surprised how Buzzy messed up his DD today. He's up by 2400 with two 400 clues left on board after the DD and the girl in 3rd place at 2000.

He bet 2000, leaving him 400 ahead after his wrong answer. How could he decide to wager an amount that doesn't secure the lead for him going into FJ?

Jesus there were a lot of cringe moments on today's episode. Buzzy's DD wager for sure was one of them.

Lisa's FJ wager.

Jason's FJ wager is mayyyyybe defensible (but not really, imo).

In both rounds, there was a point where you could 100% know that a clue was a DD (because the only other remaining clues were on the first row - and we're assuming that the first row never contains a DD - it's only ever happened once, and that was likely a production error). Yet multiple times no one decided to flip over the guaranteed DD. And this happened in both rounds!!!!

How does this happen among ToC contestants...

Yeah that was bad. But not nearly as bad as Lisa’s (is that her name?) FJ wager when she could have easily won a triple stumper. She was really losing her **** toward the end.

LOL she gave zero f*cks from DJeopardy on...
I think she was about to cry at one point, and threw her buzzer down at another.
She was so sad and angry, was awkward

Yea I’d love to know if it was pure frustration or if something happened we don’t know about. If frustration it would seem to be with the buzzer. She just couldn’t seem to ring in effectively. Clearly changed demeanor between J and DJ. During credits she just slumped over the podium.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because less than 1% of contestants actually understand how to play the game.

Think a DD has been found in the top row 4 times including once this year.

Ya, when they came back from break she was leaning forward and like "Blah blah for $400... Whatever, like, I'm over this crap"

Someone on Twitter said she was mouthing "Bullsh*t" somewhere as well.

Oh wow, did not know this. Cool. J-Archive says there was one this year + one in July 2016. 16 total ever since season 14 (1998). So about once per year on average.

I could never pull it off myself, but I think the smart move for Lisa would have been to totally meltdown in a way that forces them to delay taping for a couple minutes. That would have given her the chance to refocus and potentially take some medication while also disrupting the focus of the other players.

I think at one point they had to cut something out. There was an abrupt cut between an answer from Jason and his next selection.

Was she the one that said her Dad always told her to bet it all in FJ?

Sad bet by a fellow scientist. You all would be shocked at how bad many scientists and engineers are at math and math concepts, let alone wagering. It's a wonder that planes don't fall from the sky on a daily basis.

Of course my poker table stereotype of Doctors is pretty fishy so meh.