Jeopardy Masters Tournament Part 2: And Then There Were Four

 

The first phase of the inaugural Jeopardy Masters Tournament has come to an end with the last set of quarterfinal matches yesterday evening.         For those of us who love Jeopardy, the tournament has already provided more than its share of thrilling moments over fourteen matches.

James Holzhauer, the self-described game show villain who has during this tournament begun to win over those viewers who found him obnoxious the first time through (I may have been one of them)  demonstrated why he may very well have picked up the mantle of Greatest Jeopardy Player of all time from Ken Jennings. (Those of us who watched this noticed that he spent much of Final Jeopardy ‘goading’ Ken but… we’ll get there.) In six of the seven matches he played he completely managed to run away with the game, always dominating the Daily Doubles (he has yet to miss a single Daily Double) and managing to rout some of the greatest players in history even when he does not find them (as was the case in the Double Jeopardy round of Game 6 when Amy Schneider and Matt Amodio each found one). Only once did he play cautiously and risk but 5 points, but at that point he already well in the lead.

He has not really taken Final Jeopardy seriously and has frequently written down response either mocking Ken (as he did in the first game) and in the fifth game just being a mocking fool (In his fifth win he wrote down: “Is there no one else?” which was Brad Pitt’s battle-cry in Troy. He then shouted it out loud.)

It’s worth noting that James is clearly engaged in the wrestler’s part of being a heel. Many of the anecdotes he has told have actually been profoundly moving, as when he mentioned to Ken how he had promised his grandmother he would one day be on Jeopardy and that though she didn’t live to see it, he hoped she was proud of him.  James has been the fairly dominant player in this tournament with eighteen match points to date.

Of the eight remaining games. Matt, after getting off to a wretched start in his first appearance, has been one of the most successful players. In addition to being the sole player (so far) to defeat James, he managed to win two other games, including an absolute rout in last appearance. He engaged in a similar attitude to James in his last final Jeopardy: “Unlike James, I will not write down a joke response.”

Mattea Roach has more than redeemed themselves after being trounced in the Tournament of Champions last fall: to date Mattea has won two games, in one of them coming all the way back from -400 at the end of the Jeopardy round to moving into the lead with 19,800 points at the end of Double Jeopardy to defeat both Andrew He and Matt Amodio. In her last second place finish, they clinched a place in the semi-finals.

But demonstrating that he truly deserves to be considered among the greats is Andrew He. He has won three of the seven games he has competed in, avenging his Tournament of Champions loss to Amy Schneider by defeating her twice, the second time in an out and out rout. His third victory over Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach was more impressive because he gambled everything on both Daily Doubles in the Jeopardy round and in both cases lost everything he had. But he still managed to build up a big enough lead to win his third game in. He managed to finish second to James in total match points with thirteen.

By last night’s quarter-final match, it was pretty obvious who was going to be leaving us. Sam Buttrey had played formidably throughout the quarterfinals and his mere 3 match points does not do justice to his overall performance.  As I mentioned, he was ahead at the end of his second quarterfinal appearance but would get Final Jeopardy wrong. In a blow-out between James, Sam and Andrew, he was tied with Andrew for second place at the end of Double Jeopardy but an incorrect response in Final Jeopardy cost him another match point. And he had a fairly decent record with Final Jeopardy overall, being the only player to get Final Jeopardy correct in two of the games he played.  And it is fairly clear from his performance in this tournament that he will retain his title as one of the most beloved Jeopardy champions in recent years, from his nicknames to Ken Jennings, his variations on ‘bring it’ over the games, and how he went out of his way to thank the writers on his last appearance. Matt Amodio gave Sam a hug on his last appearance and I think we all would like do the same. He more than deserved the $50,000 he took home and I think we will be seeing him again.

For Amy  Schneider, this tournament must have been a harder blow for her coming after her victory in the Tournament of Champions. She played superbly in this tournament but had far less luck: she finished second in five of her seven appearances. Her most galling defeat but have come in her fifth match against, this time against Mattea Roach and Matt Amodio. She finished Double Jeopardy in a respectable third place with 9600 points to Mattea’s 16,400 and Matt’s 24,800.

The Final Jeopardy category was THE U.S. GOVERNMENT: “Not a department head but of Cabinet rank, the person in this post has had an official residence in a  42^nd floor Park Avenue penthouse.” Amy was the only player to come up with a correct response: “What is UN Ambassador?” She bet 6801. Mattea lost 2801. Matt lost 8001.  Had Amy wagered a bit more she would have won the game and moved back into contention. Instead she finished in second, Matt ended up winning and she never was in a position to win another match. Amy departed with another $75,000 but I have little doubt she will be back again sooner than we think.

This tournament has already featured everything one hopes for in a Jeopardy game: thrilling excitement, huge wagers, superb categories and a clear amount of fun among the contestants. In addition, it has added a new level that we’ve never seen on the series to this point: some of the categories actually mock the contestants. There has already been an ALL IN category and, as I suspected, there was a category mocking Sam Buttrey called “BRING WHAT?  (I’m pretty sure both were arranged so that neither player would be around to select the category.) And in a wrinkle I hadn’t expected, there was actually a category mocking Jennings’ himself. Sam Buttrey reacted to it by saying: “I’ve never heard of Ken Jennings” and Jennings took it perfectly well, amused when the players were stumped by one of the clues about him.  Even one of the Final Jeopardys took on the air of the writer’s humor last night with THE LAKE SHOW. And was it a coincidence that after all James grousing about French clues, the last Final Jeopardy he participated in was 20^TH CENTURY FRENCH AUTHORS? Probably, but it’s nice to dream. (He actually took that one seriously, for some reason.)

Who will be eliminated in the semi-final match that will lead to three finalists? Who will win this first Masters Tournament? Will James Holzhauer actually take a Final Jeopardy seriously? Tune in next week when we learn the answer to these questions and so much more. I know I will.