First
a correction. In my previous articles I wrote that the pay-off for the winner
of this tournament was a million dollars when actually the winner of the grand
prize will receive half a million dollars. As a further correction, that’s
small change for four of the six contenders.
I
will be going through a lot of analysis during the first ever Masters
Tournament on Jeopardy which, to my delight, will be taking longer than I
thought. It will eventually involve 10 hour long matches and twenty games,
which will eventually result in one half a million dollar winner.
I
won’t pretend that the biggest ‘change’ – the revelation of where the Daily
Doubles are to the home viewer before the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds
are – isn’t annoying to purists. The fact that the people in watching the event
take place live and the contestants don’t know where it is may be a minor
detail. That said, given how both James Holzhauer and Matt Amodio found one on
the first clue of the round in the first games they played, you could argue they’re
clued in. That also said: you have met these guys before? This is how they
search for clues on a normal day and I’ve seen it happen quite a few times in a
lot of these tournaments. Of course, you could just do what I did at home and
close your eyes when Ken Jennings tells us.
I
always like as a rule when these kinds of tournaments take place: they are like
hanging out with old friends in a sense. As a fan of Tournament of Champions
and super tournament, its like receiving visits from old friends. It is always
wonderful watching them play each other, banter back and forth with each other,
and try to psych each other out. They can also be hysterical self-deprecating
at times and we’ve already gotten quite a bit of that just in the first game.
James
Holzhauer has really leaned it to being the heavy in this tournament: in his
introduction to the tournament, he called himself ‘a self-described game show
villain.’ I imagine quite a few fans of
the show thought as much during his original run and rather than back away, he
has decided to lean in to it whole heartedly. This is clear particularly with
his back and forth with Ken Jennings, who is just as willing to play the game.
In
the introduction for their first match, Ken mentioned that the last time the
two of us were on this stage it was on the Greatest of All Time in which I
defeated you. James’ response: “I have no memory of that” which got big laughs.
He then went through a back and forth with Ken in regards to The Chase, saying
that ‘he loved crushing people dreams” and that the locker room has gotten much
easier in the last year…when Ken left to host Jeopardy.
When
James managed to win his first match (it was tougher than usual until, of
course, he found the Daily Doubles) he had a runaway. So he decided to really
lean in to being a bastard. Rather than even to write a Final Jeopardy response
he wrote down: “Stop ducking a rematch, Ken.” Furthermore when it Ken read it,
he said: “That was auto-corrected by the way.” Both responses as you can
imagine elicited huge laughs and applause. And for the record I know Ken has retired
but come on…we all want to see that rematch.
While
none of the other five players have developed quite such a fierce personality,
many of them are being alternately self-deprecated and very fierce. I was reminded
of that when Amy Schneider went through her first interview segment. After
announcing that the city of Oakland had given her an official day, she asked
Ken: “By the way, how did you feel when you won your fortieth game? I’d ask
these people, but you know…” She trailed off to huge laughs.
Ken
played it perfectly. “I don’t think it was any different than my fiftieth or my
sixtieth. You know what that was.. oh that’s right, you don’t.” Even bigger
laughs. (Again, I really want to see them face off.)
The
other four players have shown a similar level of self-deprecation, often
related to how they have played in their first game. Matt Amodio casually
mentioned that he had not met Ken Jennings until the Tournament of Champions and
reminded Ken that he had yet to win a single game while Ken was on the stage. “I
don’t hold it against you,” he told Ken. “Yet.” Mattea Roach took a similar self-deprecating
approach when it came to dealing with how her amount of winnings had allowed
her to the independence to not necessarily go to law school which she was considering
when she had made her first appearance. “Jeopardy’s worked out well for me,”
she said. Then, noting she was in last place added “not today, necessarily.”
Andrew He who managed to narrowly defeat Amy in their first match of yesterday’s
game said that in the publicity photos for the Masters Tournament, his friends
had told him he looked like the protagonist of a show about evil librarians.
Ken jested that he totally watch that show.
But
as always the most charming player of the group is still Sam Buttrey, by far
the senior member of this tournament. It has been a very long time since a player
in his sixties has done this well in a Jeopardy Tournament and he made it clear
of that in his interview segment when he mentioned that he had a link to winner
of a Tournament of Champions back in the day when Art Fleming hosted the show.
As he put it: “It was nice to see that there is a link to old players like
Brock Johnson and the young players of today like me.”
Sam
demonstrated yesterday that he still has it. In the Jeopardy round of his match
against Mattea and James he was actually back and forth with James for the lead
most of the round, with James moving ahead on the very last clue. He was also
the only player to come up with a correct Final Jeopardy response, which I have
to say embarrassed me as a native New Yorker. The category was USA: “Opened in
1909 and less famous than an older neighbor, it connects Brooklyn and
Chinatown.” I’m not sure I’d even heard of the Manhattan Bridge and I’ve lived
here more than thirty years. (I wrote down the Holland Tunnel.) And its worth
noting that in the first game for all six players, Sam is third in correct responses
given to Andrew and James who each won their match. Sam is ahead of all three
of the biggest winners in last year’s Tournament of Champions and not that far
behind James. It is very clear that against the younger super winners Sam can ‘bring
it.”
Correct
responses given in First Game in Masters
Andrew
27
James
22
Sam
19
Amy
16
Mattea
13
Matt
12
I
will do a more in depth analysis of the tournament as it continues, going into
more detail at the end of the week. For now, however, I have no complaints. The
Jeopardy Masters has everything I look forward to in a Jeopardy tournament and
some things I didn’t even know I was missing. I hope this is a success and I hope
this becomes an annual event. And seriously, Ken, please don’t duck that
rematch.
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