It
was initially my plan to explain the significance of this weeks Jeopardy Masters
Tournaments by going into a brief description of why this tournament was the
most significant in the show’s nearly four decades on the air. But as those of
you who read the first two articles in this series quickly realized, that
article quickly spiraled to the point where the Tournament would have been long
over by the time I got to the original explanation.
So
I shall continue with the personal history of the show’s Super Tournaments for
another day, and instead bring us back to this week.
As
by now you are aware the prime time Tournament which starts tomorrow is the
first one in the post Alex-Trebek era. Six of Jeopardy’s greatest
players will be competing for a one million dollar grand prize and the man
hosted the tournament will be a seventh.
Some
have questioned why this inaugural tournament seems to be more focused in the
very recent past of Jeopardy rather than further back. This is a valid
critique considering that five of the six competitors just faced off in this
season’s Tournament of Champions and the sixth player had his original run just
four years ago. That said, when you consider who four of those six players are,
it would be very hard to argue why the first Masters Tournament didn’t have
some of these players.
Because
as anyone who spent much of last season is fully aware, three of those players
are among the greatest in Jeopardy history: Matt Amodio, who had a 38
game winning streak that ended up netting him over $1.5 million, Amy Schneider,
who won forty games and just under $1.4 million and Mattea Roach who won 23
games and over $560,000 during the course of them. Schneider, Amodio and Roach
are second, third and fifth respectively in consecutive games won; Amodio and
Schneider are third and fourth on the all-time money list and Roach was fifth at
the end of her run. (She has since been surpassed by Cris Panullo who managed
to win just under three-quarters of a million dollars. If this tournament
becomes a regular event, I expect to see him in an upcoming one.) Few would
dare question that these three players are among the greatest of all time, and
Schneider more or less cemented that position when she won this season’s
Tournament of Champions.
Some
might question the presence of Andrew He and Sam Buttrey among the masters by comparison.
Buttrey ‘only’ won the Professors Tournament and He ‘only’ won five games and ‘merely’
$157,365. Their presence has more to do with their both making the finals of
the Tournament of Champions, as if being able to make it that far against the
level of competition they were facing, much less being able to battle Amy
fiercely over six games before she triumph, did not prove their mettle. That’s
not giving them nearly enough credit.
Andrew
He, lest we forget, was defeated by Amy Schneider in her first original
appearance on Jeopardy and the fact that he played against her so well would
seem to show his merit. But it actually goes further than that. In his
quarterfinal match, he managed to defeat Jonathan Fisher, a formidable super-champion
in his own right. Fisher won eleven games and nearly a quarter of a million dollars
in his original appearance. Andrew then proceeded to flatten Mattea Roach in
his semi-final match in a complete and utter rout. Combined with how Andrew had
the advantage over Amy in the first three games of the finals, its hard to argue
that Andrew isn’t already a great player.
Sam’s
track record isn’t quite as impressive as Andrew’s but its still very good. In
his quarterfinal appearance he managed a rout of his own, in a way more
impressive than Andrew’s semi-final appearance. In his semi-final match he
engaged against Matt Amodio and John Focht in the hardest fought battle of the
semi-finals and perhaps the entire first two rounds. And even though Sam only
won a one of the eventual six matches of the final, he played masterfully in
all six games and never once was out of contention. When you throw in the fact
that he was the senior member of the entire tournament and very quickly became
a fan favorite then it is logical that Sam would be invited back. There have
been few Jeopardy champions that have been become as beloved as Sam had in so
short a time and I have no problem with his presence, even though I will admit
I might have wanted to see Ryan Long instead.
Then
of course, there’s the other participant who no one would questioned belonged
her. I’m actually rather intrigued to see what the back and forth between Ken
Jennings and James Holzhauer will be when Holzhauer makes his first appearance.
The last time the two of them were on stage together they were facing off in
the Jeopardy Greatest of All Time Tournament three years ago. A tournament in which
Jennings pretty much destroyed the competition – sort of.
With
Jennings now behind the podium, Holzhauer has the unofficial title of the winningest
Jeopardy player of all time when it comes to money won. As we all remember vividly,
over 33 games during 2019, James Holzhauer obliterated the competition. On just
his fourth appearance Holzhauer obliterated Roger Craig’s one day record of
$77,000 by nearly a $34,000 margin; just six days later he broke it by another
$20,000. It took him just fourteen days to break the $1 million mark; it took
Ken Jennings thirty days. It took him 27 days to pass $2 million; Jennings
needed 59. When Emma Boettcher managed to end his streak, Holzhauer had already
won $2,462,216, just $60,000 less Jennings’ all-time record. Ken must have
breathed a sigh of relief when that happened because it didn’t seem that
anybody had any chance of stopping Holzhauer. Holzhauer also managed to do
something that Jennings never did win a Tournament of Champions and add another
$250,000 to the pot. (That’s not to say it was easy for him; in the last game
of the Tournament it looked like he might lose…to Emma Boettcher.)
In
this tournament between Jennings, Holzhauer and Brad Rutter, Jennings won one
match in a rout, Holzhauer managed to win once, Jennings edged Holzhauer in
another, and Holzhauer was winning what would be the last match before Jennings
came from behind. Jennings won the title and another million dollars and chose
that as his moment to retire from active play. I don’t entirely blame him for
that; in that tournament he had managed to do something he had not been able to
do in more than fifteen years of competing against him; defeat Brad Rutter. Not
just defeat him but utterly destroy him;
Brad who had been superb in every tournament over a twenty year period, was
utterly and totally humiliated by both Jennings and Holzhauer. Not once was he
in contention during all eight of the games played; he did not get a single
Daily Double correct and he performed the worst of the three of them in Final
Jeopardy. (Those fans of game shows know that Brad has gotten past it by now;
the three of them were the original stars of The Chase: he and Holzhauer
are still on it.)
James
Holzhauer has always had something of a touch of arrogance to him on the show,
but as Dizzy Dean once said, it ain’t bragging if you can do it. Holzhauer
certainly can. When you’re averaging nearly $80,000 a victory, no one
would argue that you deserve all the praise you can get. Some said at the time
that he ‘broke’ Jeopardy; in the last few years, it’s pretty clear he’s
set up a winning strategy. Matt Amodio followed his model when it came to
starting on the bottom of the board searching for Daily Doubles and Matt and
Andrew followed his pattern when it came to betting everything on them. (Sam
has too, but he’s more charming about it than James is; few would forget his
saying: “I’d like to wager the maximum amount required by law.”) And I think
James has gained a certain level of modesty over the last few years; in the promos
he has been remarkably self-effacing, saying: “Look it’s the pictures of the
greatest players of all time with a supervillain.”
This
tournament will be interesting because there is no clear idea who will be the
winner. One could be inclined to favor Holzhauer, Schneider and Amodio
outright, but Amodio didn’t even make it to the finals of the Tournament of
Champions and Schneider needed to do a lot of fighting against most of the
players in this tournament. In the exhibition game that served as a warm-up in
the Tournament of Champions Mattea actually managed to prevail in a rout over Amy
and Matt and was the only one to come up with a Final Jeopardy response. And we
all know how good Sam and Andrew are under pressure and against the greatest. James
has perfected a strategy that worked gangbusters for him in his original run,
but in the Greatest of All Time, Jennings followed it and it worked for him
better than it did anyone else. By the time of the most recent Tournament of
Champions, it had been become the de facto strategy for every player in the
tournament, some with more success than others.
Whatever
ends up happening I am certain this will be an exciting and utterly must-see
TV. I expect my brain will ache when it is over and I will remember just how
extraordinary these players are. And I hope like hell it’s a success because there
are a lot of other players who need to come back. Brad Rutter, who has still
won more money than any player in Jeopardy history, wasn’t asked back the first
time. He’s my first choice for the next one.
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