Jeopardy GOAT

On Tuesday night (January 14) Ken Jennings won the trophy for Greatest of All Time (GOAT) Jeopardy player. He also won $1 million. He, James Holzhauer, and Brad Rutter were the contestants. The design was that the GOAT would be decided by the first to win three matches. That would require a minimum of 3 matches and a maximum of 7. Each match was two regular Jeopardy contests in length. The questions seemed a little tougher than usual. Ken's performance was impressive. He won 3 matches while James won one and Brad none.

Ken's winning the 4th match was in suspense until the Final Jeopardy responses were shown. The points after the first half were Jennings 65,600 and Holzhauer 34,181. The points immediately before the second half Final Jeopardy were Jennings 23,000 and Holzhauer 44,000. Jennings bet 0 for Final Jeopardy and answered correctly. Holzhauer bet 44,000 but answered wrongly. That made the final points Jennings 88,600 and Holzhauer 34,181.

If both had bet the maximum and answered correctly, then Ken's score would have been 2x23,000 + 65,600 = 111,600 and James' score 2x44,000 + 34,181 = 122, 181. James would have won and there would be a Game 5. But James could not answer what non-title character in a Shakespeare tragedy had the most speeches. The correct answer was Iago (in Othello).

Holzhauer won $250,000 and Rutter $250,000. Rutter remains the winner of the most money on Jeopardy. In large part that's because he won $2.1 million in the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, in which he defeated Jennings. It's merely my opinion, but I believe Brad would make a great successor to Alex Trebek as host of Jeopardy. His Wikipedia page shows him as a TV host. His Final Jeopardy response was "Who is you're the best, Alex!"

The TV ratings were great, better than some World Series games and NBA Finals games.

Details of the GOAT tournament are here. In game #6 I was very surprised when one clue stumped all three players. The clue was: 'Beware of these types of programs that track every stroke you make while typing in an effort to glean your password.' The correct response was 'keylogging programs.'