As Jeopardy Takes A Breath, Let's Take A Look at How Cris Panullo is Doing

 

 

            For the rest of October and well into November,  Jeopardy will be on pause from its regular play for two related tournaments. For the next two weeks, the first ever Second Chance Tournament (which I wrote about extensively earlier this week) will be taking place. Immediately following that will be the 2022 Tournament of Champions, arguably the most anticipated one in the show’s history as Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach wait for eighteen quarterfinalists (among them the two winners of the Second Chance Tournaments) to battle it out until they must face off against one of them in each of the three semi-final matches. Will this give them an unfair advantage? Or will ‘lesser’ winners like Ryan Long with ‘merely’ sixteen wins and Jonathan Fisher with ‘only’ eleven end up with a major upset? History gives us no indication either way. The finalists will battle it out for $250,000 or as Matt and Amy would say, chump change.

            But as we take this pause, a new super-champion is rising. Yesterday Cris Panullo won his tenth game, joining an elite group of Jeopardy players. (Perhaps it’s less elite considering how much the membership expanded just last season, but I digress.) Cris is already demonstrating that he may well be following in the footsteps of Amodio and Roach. In his ten wins he has demonstrating a similar dominance. Eight of his ten victories so far have been runaways, and seven of them were not even close. He has already managed some fairly impressive totals in his first ten wins, winning just under $60,000 Monday and more than $53,000 Tuesday. All told, he has won $333,723, putting him just outside the top ten in money won in a person’s original. He’s already won more money in ten games than Ryan Long did in sixteen and Jonathan in eleven, so he has the potential to break it very quickly. Indeed at this point in his career, he’s won more than $100,000 more than Mattea did after ten games.

            Considering that Jeopardy is about to take a breath, and so is Cris, it’s actually worth considering how he ranks in comparison to the biggest winners in this time. He doesn’t quite match up to the big four at this point in their runs, though in all but one case it’s not  by as much as you’d think:

Ken Jennings: $341,158

James Holzhauer: $697, 787

Matt Amodio: $362, 400

Amy Schneider: $380,200

Cris Panullo: $333,723

            Holzhauer, of course, makes Ken Jennings look like a piker. But the further down the list you go when it comes to games won, the more impressive Cris looks by comparison

Mattea Roach: $210, 802

Julia Collins: $220, 610

David Madden: $239,100

Jason Zuffranieri: $273, 843

Indeed, the only other player who has won ten games or money and had more money than him at this same point was Austin Rogers, who had $365,400. So no matter when Cris’ streak ends, he’s already in storied company.  Indeed, right now he is tapping on the rarified air of the top ten players in money won in their original runs.

            While he has not won nearly as much money as Holzhauer, Panullo has the most in common with him, including their occupations. Holzhauer was a professional gambler; Panullo a professional poker player. Panullo’s approach is similar to Holzhauer  - though by this point many of the super-winners have been searching for the bottom of the board for the Daily Double. He is not quite as gutty when it comes to his predecessor on Daily Doubles: he will go all in on the Jeopardy round, but be slightly more conservative in Double Jeopardy, betting between $5000 and $6000, depending on his margin. Where he shares a similar level of success with Holzhauer – and almost every other player on this list – is getting them right. To this point, he has missed only three of thirty he has found.

            It may be too early to call Cris the next super-champion along the lines of Amodio or Schneider. It is crystal clear that by this point, he is one of the greatest Jeopardy champions in the show’s history. When you win this much money in ten games, you’ve already hit elite status.

Update: Tonight Cris despite not getting Final Jeopardy correct still ran away with his eleventh consecutive match with a total of just over $356,000. Now however he faces a challenge that few Jeopardy champions can overcome: a hiatus before his next appearance, this time more than a month.

            This is the challenge that, as you might suspect, wasn’t much of a struggle for most of the players I’ve mentioned in this article. With the exception of Mattea  all of them had intervals during their runs, whether it was special tournaments or a hiatus between seasons. All of them were able to resume their streaks well after the interval.

            (I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the controversial Arthur Chu, known for reasons other than his eleven victories on Jeopardy, had perhaps the most frequently interrupted run of anybody in the show’s history. He won his first four games in February of 2014, had to wait three weeks as  The Battle of the Decades: 1980s and then the 2014 College Championship took place, won every game the week play resumed, had to wait another week while the 1990s round of The Battle of the Decades took place, before returning and winning two games before finally being defeated. Say what you will about Arthur, it took a lot of endurance to win under those circumstances.)

            But there were many winners of four games or less over the years and decades past who have been unable to qualify for the Tournament of Champions because of intervals interrupting their play. While that can not happen to Cris at this point, it remains to be seen if he can manage to continue his streak when play resumes after a month. The best usually can, and Cris has already demonstrated that he is one of the best. As to how long this gambler’s winning streak can run, we’ll have to wait a month to find out.