Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Not Quite As Super, But Still A Super-Champion: Assessing Ray LaLonde's Place Among Jeopardy's Super Champions

 

 

Yesterday after thirteen wins and  $386,400, Ray Lalonde’s time on Jeopardy came to an end. To be clear, he did not go quietly or easily and had he not gotten the last clue in Double Jeopardy wrong, his streak would probably still be going on. (I’ll get to that in a bit.) But in one of the closest games of Season 39 so far, which ended with first and third place separating by just under $1300, Ray LaLonde was defeated by Lloyd Sy who saluted him as he emerged victorious.

Ray’s streak is impressive but, by the standards of the last year and a half, almost a shrug. It is the sixth longest streak any player has had at this point. It’s not the best record any Jeopardy champion has had so far this year (Cris Panullo departed just a month ago) nor even the best record by a player from Toronto in the past year and a half (Mattea Roach has Ray beaten by a considerable margin on this front.) And at least superficially, compared to the three players who are now third, fourth and fifth on the all time money won board, Ray’s record in comparison with them at that point is slightly lacking:

 

Ray Lalonde: $386.400

Matt Amodio: $430,400

Amy Schneider: $536,400

Cris Panullo: $416,602

 

Looking under a microscope, this is not apparently impressive. Taken under the wider scope of Jeopardy, Ray’s totals start to look better. For one thing, this is more money than Ryan Long managed to win in sixteen games and over $100,000 more than Mattea Roach managed after thirteen wins. And once we broaden our scope to look at many of the winners at this point in their runs, Ray’s stats start to look far better.

 

Jason Zuffranieri: $361, 943

David Madden: $305, 101

Julia Collins: $261,140

Ray LaLonde: $386,400

 

Ray is significantly ahead of three of the greatest players of all time at that point in their runs, which is impressive. He also compares favorably with Matt Jackson, who won as many games as Ray but slightly more money $411,612 and about even with Austin Rogers who won twelve games and just over $411,000. He’s also nearly $120,000 ahead of Seth Wilson who also won 12 games. (It’s not worth the time and energy to compare him to Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer; they make everybody look bad by comparison.

So how did Ray do this? Interestingly, it’s because he wasn’t as dominant a player as almost all of the ones listed above. He only managed to run away with four games and in one of them, his payday was diminished when he got Final Jeopardy wrong.  Indeed, Ray is unique among almost all the super-winners of the past two or three years in particular because not only were most of his games not easy, but he also finished many of them with very small leads and in several cases, with all three players very much in contention at the end of Double Jeopardy. There was one critical thing he did have in common with all of these super-champions: in all but one of his victories, he was in the lead at the end of Double Jeopardy. And like almost all of his super champions, he had a spectacular track record when it came to Final Jeopardy. Of the thirteen finals he participated in, he only got two wrong. And on the two occasions he got it wrong, on one case he did have a runaway and in the other, his opponents got Final Jeopardy wrong as well. (I should mention on that occasion Ray realized what the correct answer was after he written down the wrong one.) And because of the narrowness of his leads going into Final Jeopardy (on Monday’s game, he only led by $100), Ray had to bet big in order to guarantee a win.

As a result, perhaps more than any of the big-winners who came before him: Ray had to make his money the old fashioned way: he had to earn it. And he was more than capable of doing so. In many of his games, he was trailing at the end of the Jeopardy round and had to make impressive recoveries, something he was more than capable of doing. Often the Daily Doubles helped him; sometimes (particularly in the last two matches) they worked against him. Even if the latter happened, he was more than able to overcome these obstacles.

All of this, I should add, does not include two obstacles that might have overcome lesser players. First as I mentioned, Ray is from Canada. This can sometimes be an obstacle for a game show that is primarily based on American clues and Americana. Ray had more than his share of trouble dealing with clues pertaining to such things throughout his run, including a couple of clues that had to do with patriotic songs of America. (When it came to American geography and history, he was just fine. The question that may have ended his streak last night had to deal with Country Music, something that I’m not entirely sure a Canadian would be well-vested in.)

The other factor is that Ray is significantly older than many of the recent super-champions: in his early fifties.  Considering that in the beginning of the show’s run, a player like Ray would have been within his rights to ask to participate in a Seniors Tournament, it is clear how much of an obstacle age can be. But as we all learned from the performance of the sixty-two year old Sam Buttrey in the most recent Tournament of Champions, age might be a factor in your performance but it is doesn’t necessarily shape your destiny. And as someone who in his teenage years watched players such as Dan Melia and Tom Nosek, both of whom were around Ray’s age at the time of their triumphs and subsequent victories in the Tournament of Champions (and well beyond in both cases), Ray has demonstrated, as if there was still doubt that Jeopardy is as much a game for the seasoned player as those filled with youth and quicker reflexes.

I should also add that on a purely personal level, I enjoyed watching Ray perform more than quite a few of the super-winners in this past year. Cris Panullo’s aggressiveness impressed me but turned me off, and Matt Amodio, until halfway through his run, struck me as somewhat bland. But, like his fellow Canadian Mattea Roach, Ray charmed me all the way through his run. He was gracious about his performance (in what would be his ninth victory, he thanked everybody who worked for the show), he was funny through many of his selections, and he was self-effacing about his achievements, thanking his mother for watching the show with him when he was a child and inspiring his love of learning.

Around the end of 2021, one writer to TV Guide complained about how frustrating it could be to watch Jeopardy if the same players just kept winning every day. I didn’t entirely agree with their opinion, but I do acknowledge that at a point, it can become something of a grind watching the same player win day in and day out. I never got this feeling watching Ray play, in part because his games were generally so exciting to watch and in part because he was such an apparently nice person that he didn’t wear on you the way some Jeopardy champions can after long enough. In that sense, the comparison between Austin Rogers – one of the most entertaining super-champions as well as one of the best – probably is the most fitting. I look forward to seeing Ray on the Alex Trebek Stage for the next Tournament of Champions and beyond.

 

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