Hey now

Did anyone watch the first one of the special episodes yesterday?

IIRC, Ken is at 21200, Graham at 6800 and K.C. is at 4600 when she finds the last DD with one 1600 and one 2000 clue left to play. Alex even says something along the lines of "you know what you have to do" before she wagers 2000 which locks the game for Ken (unless he does something really stupid).

Even after years of seeing absolutely ridiculous wagers on the show, I'm still flabbergasted every time somebody who has to be pretty smart is too stupid to understand the very basics of game play.

Alex on the ice with Tie Domi!

Ya that was fantastic. Even if you're too much of a pussy to go for the win, *at least* try to lock up 2nd place. She made the nut low wager.

(Almost) nobody can be a Ken Jennings but I believe a lot of contestants have a shot at being Nancy Zerg. Why are you even occupying a podium if you don’t want to be that person?

I’ve brought this up more than once on Jboard. Standard reply is that for many contestants just being there is the goal. Something that can be crossed off their bucket list. I’ve had to step away from the keyboard when past contestants say that.

When I was on WWTBAM it seemed some of the other contestants felt this way as well. Just smiling and taking it all in. A free vacation in NYC and got to meet Regis. They returned home with no money. I will never understand this thought process.

Millionaire TR?

Ya wut. Didn't know you were on WWTBAM

And then she further compounded things by not betting 800 or so in FJ. Just the worst possible wagering in both instances

If he was, that would make two of us.

Whoa double TR Xmas present. LFG!

You were on earlier than I was. My WWTBAM was in the Meredith era. Would've been a completely different experience w/Regis.

Plus, no fastest finger. When I was on, you were guaranteed to be in the hot seat.

I found the TR for nitBO's appearance. Nice job!

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/9...l#post39815563

Intriguing he didn't gamble on the Gehrig question given the rest of the writeup. Tough to assess how correct childhood memories may be.

Fun one.

How about you Kurn? Is there a write up somewhere of your appearance?

I'll post a TR later with some observations regarding the entire experience. For now, here's the video, which is embarrassing simply because I was about 70 ib. heavier back then than now.

I've beaten myself up sufficiently for walking away on a question I should've answered correctly, that nobody here can beat me up any worse.

Enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNiOsGAeOVI&t=18s

Kurn,



Also, congratulations on the weight loss.

I hope you've remedied not having seen Talladega Nights. Thanks for the video.

I think I did one thing well on the last question. Watching as many episodes as I did prior to my appearance, I noted one mistake contests made over and over with their phone a friend - taking too long to ask the question and not leaving the friend enough time to think. I think I trimmed down the question sufficiently to give mu cousin (who has since passed away) a chance.

Now the mistakes:

To start, if I'm sitting on the couch at home, I answer Sagan immediately. I think despite the fact that walking out on stage was a somewhat out-of-body experience, I was able to stay calm and focused, but the $25k question is always problematic, since getting it wrong casts $15,000 real money.

Mistake 1: Range of knowledge. I knew that Fermi and Hawking were wrong, but was unfamiliar with Feynman (Bad Kurn!) But I figured the 50-50 was in my favor. LOL

Mistake 2: I picked the wrong friend. No offense to my cousin, but my first choice was unavailable. They come out during the first commercial break to tell you which friends are and are not available. They call all the friends at 11 AM (taping starts at noon), and then again when it's your turn in the hot seat. I was the next to last contestant in the 5th and final show taped that day, and the guy who would've been my first choice (a player in my regular home gam who's an astrophysicist now working for NASA) was unavailable. That left my retired engineer cousin and my bosses wife (I considered her my Literary/pop culture lifeline) who would be ready to Google for me. I chose my cousin thinking this would be a hard Google.(Hint: I couldn't have been more wrong).

Mistake 3: His guess of Sagan should've tipped the scales but I flinched at the thought of only making $1,000 pretax.

Mistake 4: I questioned my focus on Sagan because the day before, waiting for my wife to get dressed for the drive to NYC, I sat in the living room and watched - wait for it - an old episode of Cosmos and thought I was suffering from some bizarre form of reverse recency bias.

Not a mistake but just a random timing issue. The episode taped in late August 2006. In October, I managed to win my seat in the final 27 of the PokerStars Moneymaker Millionaire tournament. Reverse the timing of the two and a probably answer correctly, not worrying since I would've known I had another shot at $1 in January.

Thanks. We did. He was 3 then and will turn 18 this coming June

Friends being able to google is a huge cheat. Just have 1 friend lol who is good at Google.

Not against the rules, thus not cheating. Speaking of the rules, it was astounding to me that almost none of my fellow contestants that day had read the rules in detail.

None of them knew that if you won $500k or $1M, the most the show paid out (within 30 days after air date) was $250k.

For those who won $500k, the balance was paid in 10 annual installments of $25k

For $1M, the balance was paid in 20 annual installments of $37.5k

One asked incredulously "How do you know that" Me: "Uh, I read the rules on the web site."

Think he meant cheat like a cheat code not the more literal cheating, if that makes sense.

I agree with that. It's one of those things that's not against the rules because there is no way to police it effectively.

That said, it was still a mistake not to choose her as my lifeline.

"Nothing is more honorable than victory." - Old Klingon proverb.

I remember in the mid-late 90s the local sports show I used to watch did a trivia question every night. Winner got about $200 worth of prizes. Internet was still pretty young back then. I'd just google altavista the answer and call in. It was very hard to get through. I won it once. Who had the most points in the 1989 World Junior Hockey tournament?