BRAD RUTTER HAS NEVER LOST TO A HUMAN ON JEOPARDY AND JAMES IS AVERAGE ON THE BUZZER

great television. super happy for ken. can all you terrible new posters leave us alone now plz?

lol

Great tournament, wish it went longer James' attitude A+

I answered most questions.

And I even got a couple right.

I wonder who they thought won? I say that because at the end of the final episode, after Ken had gone to get the trophy, just before James and Brad walked over to congratulate him, there is a brief cut to James and Brad standing behind the player podium and Brad was right behind Ken's with the $1,000,000 visible at the bottom of the screen, but names were not visible.

I wonder if the producers set this up and let the image get leaked to mess with anyone trying to scam by seeing a "spoiler."

Maybe James got a couple hundred back from Pinnacle

Haven't seen last one yet but accidentally downloaded normal Jeopardy (don't even own a tv lol) trying to get game 4.

My god, seeing regular people do it really makes me appreciate those three even more.

But in the game 1st had like 21k, 2nd 10k and 3rd 4k.

Alex stated "well nothing matters" which I think is obvious but still don't agree with. You should allow people to make mistakes. Maybe I just have too many poker habits.

Anyway, 2nd and 3rd just punted betting 0s, I guess it doesn't matter much either way but I feel like stating beforehand that none of it matters eliminates any chance for some excitement of watching someone mess up enough to lose

I'm sure there are dozens of times when first had it locked up with a 0 but still lost

There's this example of some idiot doing the math wrong but it not mattering, can't find an example of someone who actually lost with a lock other than a celebrity match where it doesn't really matter

I also get annoyed when Alex mentions that it's a runaway. He has also sometimes remarked on someone's visible reaction to the FJ category. Too much mod spew.

he never really used to comment on runaways, and now he does it all the time, but really, who cares.

i agree the reaction commentary isn't great, but he's old, it's rare, and it's unlikely to affect wagering.

We are stating that we care

Ken had a ~10k overall lead on James going into the final question, right? Ken is probably 90%+ to get the question right. Unless I’m completely missing something, betting an amount that would lock up a win should he have got it right seems like the optimal play.

Since there's the $2k/$1k price for 2nd/3rd place, 2nd really shouldn't bet anything here (or just a token bet up to $1999 if they want). No reason to light $1000 on fire for nothing. And as people have said, giving away lock games really doesn't happen like, ever.

Incorrect.

Ken: Game 1 - 65,600. Game 2 - 23,000 entering FJ.
James: Game 1 - 34,181. Game 2 - 44,000 entering FJ.

If James answered Game 2 FJ correctly, he would've won regardless of Ken's wager.

You are missing that they add up the scores of the two games but can only wager what they have available in the second game.

It was impossible for Ken to cover James doubling up his game 2 score.

You can't wager what you won in the prior game, so the math computation works differently than a normal game.

In this your max final score is 2x+y, x being 2nd game's score going into FJ and y being 1st game's score.

I forget the exact scores, but it would be something like 2*40k+30k for James (110k max) and 2*20k+60k for Ken (100k max). Ken knows James will bet at least 30k and make sure he surpasses Ken's max possible score. Which means if James loses he'll be down to 40k or less total, less than Ken's current total. So there is no need for Ken to wager anything, it's all on James.

I think the EV of the 10k person going all in and hoping the winner both went over 1k and missed was worth the gamble.

Unsure how to quantify it because we can't accurately predict how often leader will both misbid and get it wrong but...

100% chance at 2k

VS

<1% chance at an uncapped range starting at 20k
+
80% chance of 2k
+
20% chance of 1k

I intentionally chose a strong correct answer range for option B because you'd only consider this if you knew the category well

If I were a contestant yesterday, I'd have 100% jammed there hoping for a mistake. But it seems that the leader making a mistake like that is unprecedented to the point where it's really pointless to risk losing 1k

@trumptrain i didn't see it myself but you gotta factor in they have locked in scores from the earlier round and that was likely a factor

Hand played itself

80% chance of 2k? Try 50%.

as has been said there’s like a 1 in 2000 chance of winning. and the chance is probably very similar if you just stand pat (there’s been a couple of cases where the leader has gone almost all in in a runaway for no reason).

Very good point, hadn't thought about that

Really glad I found this thread recently despite that the only times I ever watched the show was when visiting grandparents growing up

The math isn’t that hard. Especially for the population of this thread. If you are going to argue, show your work so we can acknowledge your supreme wisdom or point out your error(s) in math or logic.

Variance a bit with the DD hit distribution.

James had the match on his racquet but missed. Ken legit winner. I can see a path for James to win but that’s not what happened. All hail King Ken.

Gonna suck when Alex goes. Awful big shoes to fill.

James was probably so upset when he saw that Shakespeare was the category.

I could see Ken filling in those shoes. The biggest individual money maker all time on jeopardy isn’t the contestants, it’s Alex. He makes 10M a season.

$10million seems low.

A bit. Sajak makes 15, Carrey makes 9, Harvey makes 9, so hes ahead of most of the hosts by a little bit but behind Sajak

Good is standard trivia fare, the capital of Kazakhstan or who wrote Gravity's Rainbow. Crappy questions are like the Hallmark question mentioned upthread from 1 vs. 100, or which Harry Potter book sold the 3rd most copies.


KJ sure deserved to win, he finally adapted correct strategy and simply beat the other two. Interestingly, James finally beat Ken in total Coryat in game 4.

Brad's performance was certainly disappointing, between getting outbuzzed and missing DD's, he just got lapped. And yes, he has now gotten beat by a human. Although that in no way should diminish he past accomplishments.

Pretty bad though that the various cable companies gave away how many games this would last from their future schedules. As late as last Thursday or Friday, they showed standard programming starting Wednesday. Then they fixed it showing Jeopardy airing through this Friday.

And now we get to go back to talking about librarians wagering $2k on a literature DD.