Our Latest Jeopardy Champion Is Having A Long Run, But Is He As Good The Ones So Far This Season?

 

This evening what seems to be becoming an almost ho-hum occurrence on Season 38 of Jeopardy happened. Ryan Long became the fifth player so far this season to win eleven games on Jeopardy. For those of who have been following the series at least champions could play until they were defeated, we’re trying to assess what that means for the series as a whole. When Ken Jennings drew his line in the sand at way back in 2004, it would take another eleven years for Matt Jackson to become the fifth player to reach double digits in games won. In the seven years since then, nine players have managed to reach at least eleven wins. What does it say about Jeopardy that five of them have done so in the last eight months? That is a question for another day.

What is clear from watching Ryan Long play is that while he is clearly a very good Jeopardy player, he is not nearly at the level of so many of the Jeopardy champions this season. Admittedly Matt Amadio and Amy Schneider have set the bar incredibly high for Jeopardy champions this year. But even if we were to cast a wider net compared to all the players who have won ten games so far in Jeopardy’s run, it’s pretty clear that Ryan is, sad to say, pretty close to the bottom. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. There are quiet a few players who’ve won fewer games that Ryan to this point, but have won slightly or even greater sums of money.

Ryan in his first ten games has won $183,801. Limiting our scope to the last five years, there are numerous players who have done far better than Ryan. Last season alone, two female contestants Mackenzie Jones and Jennifer Quail won more money in eight games that Ryan has in eleven (I’ve updated his score to include tonight’s victory):

 

Mackenzie Jones: $205,808

Jennifer Quail: $230,800

Ryan Long: $209,300

 

Going back further, there are players who have done even better with fewer games.   In 2010, Tom Nissley won $235,405 in eight games. That same year Roger Craig, one of the greatest players in Jeopardy history won $230,200 in six games (though to be fair, in one of those games, he broke Ken Jennings one day record with $77,000) Larissa Kelly back in 2007 won $222,597, also in six games. Even going back to the ‘dark ages’ after the five game rule had been removed, the first player to win seven games, Tom Walsh, managed to win $184,900 – which was more than Ryan won in ten.

Now, to be clear, I don’t mean to diminish Ryan’s performance in any way: anyone who manages to win eleven games on Jeopardy is a great player. But based on his performance over the last two weeks, it seems that compared to so many of the great Jeopardy champions we’ve seen this year alone, Ryan Long has also been extraordinary lucky.

To state the obvious, he hasn’t been nearly as dominant as Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider or Mattea Roach have been this season. This started with his first victory where he came from behind to become champion. His next two victories were ones where he was pursued vigorous by one of his challengers and as a result he had sizable paydays: $24,000 on Game 2, $27,000 on Game 3.  Since then, however, the wins have gotten simultaneously a bit easier, but the payouts, paradoxically, have gotten smaller. On Wednesday and Thursday, he had runaway games. but in both he got final Jeopardy wrong and in both cases, the payoff was small ($12,900, the former case; $10,000 the latter.) On Monday, it wasn’t a runaway game and nobody got Final Jeopardy right. On that day, his payout was about $11,000. He managed to cross the $100,000 threshold on his fifth game. It took him until his eleventh win to cross the $200,000 threshold, which is by far the poorest record of all the players who managed to make as far as eleven wins. (Jonathan Fisher, right now the ‘forgotten’ super-champion got that far in his ninth win.)

Is Ryan a great Jeopardy player or just a very lucky one? No one makes it as far as eleven wins without having a good amount of the latter: there are always categories that go your way, Daily Doubles that work for you or against your opponent; Final Jeopardys you answer correctly and that your opponents gets wrong (as would be the case in today’s come from behind victory for Ryan.) What is clear is that compared to all of the big winners this season, and indeed almost every player whose won at least eleven games, Ryan is, sad to say, bringing up the rear. At this point, he’s averaging about $19,000 a win. That’s a good number and a very respectable one: I have no doubt there are countless competitors on Jeopardy who would be fine winning $19,000 in one appearance, much less eleven. What this figure does show is that compared to all of these players Ryan is simply not nearly as dominant as any of them, certainly not Amy Schneider or Matt Amodio.

I have to tell you that there’s a certain admirable quality to this compared to some of the super-champions we’ve had this season. Unlike so many of the greats, including Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer, Ryan has to work for his wins in a way that most of them just haven’t had to. He’s gone into Double Jeopardy with small leads or in second or third place, and he has to try a lot harder than most of his opponents. This adds a certain level of suspense to much of his matches, and while I’m certain that Ryan himself would be far happier to go into Final Jeopardy with ten or twelve times his nearest opponent, you have to admit that it makes the games far more interesting to watch. Earlier this year I noted a letter writer in TV Guide who complained that watching players like Matt and Amy play made the game uninteresting because the winner was clear often by the end of the Jeopardy round. One certainly can’t say the same for Ryan’s matches, he’s had to battle for every single win and he knows that on at least a couple of occasion so far, pure luck is the only thing that has kept him on the show to fight another day.

So yes, it’s going to be a lot harder for Ryan Long to end up winning the same kind of money that even the super-champions of this extraordinary season have managed to accumulate. (That assumes, of course, that he wins again on Monday which with Ryan is not a sure thing.) But in a larger sense Ryan has managed to do something that none of those previous super-champions have managed to do: really make you wonder if he will win every day. I’m sure he’d wish it were otherwise but this is a unique position for so many of the great champions to have, and if nothing else, it makes his Jeopardy matches  a lot more interesting and entertaining.