We have now finished the
semi-finals of the Tournament of Champions, which had fewer surprises than the
quarterfinals but made it very clear that the writers are determined – as if
there was any doubt – to make the questions more grueling than possible. At
this point only one of the nine champions was able to correctly answer Final
Jeopardy correctly. (Full disclosure: I was similarly stumped by all three.)
The game play has been rougher than usual with two intense matches and one runaway
game that could have gone the other way but for a Daily Double.
So let’s jump in.
Semi-Final #1
Ike Barinholtz
Ben Chan
Jared Watson
Going in, Ben had won his game
in a runaway while both Ike and Jared had managed impressive upset victories
over two super-champions: Jared had trounced Cris Panullo, Ike had managed to
overpower Ray Lalonde.
In the Jeopardy round Ben
and Jared spent it going back and forth for the lead. Ike spent a lot of it in
the red and was in a distant third by the time the Jeopardy round was over.
Jared had a slight advantage with $7400 to Ben’s $6800 while Ike trailed with
$1600.\
Ben got to the first Daily
Double on the third clue of Double Jeopardy. He had just taken the lead back
from Ben when he found it in BOY GENIUS. He bet $4000: “Losing his brother Giulio in 1915, he buried his grief in math $
physics & soon wowed the admissions panel at collage in Pisa.” Ben figured
out it was Fermi and jumped into the lead with $12,600/
Not one clue later Ben
found the other Daily in ENDS IN DOUBLE LETTERS. He gambled and bet the $8600
he had: “Originally a stick or spindle used in spinning, it also came to mean
women’s work or the female side of the family.” Jared stumbled and could not
come up with distaff. He dropped to zero and more or less ceased to be a threat.
This was a tough Double
Jeopardy board and it is worth noting that Ike, though not as good as before,
played superbly giving thirteen correct responses and only missing one clue –
that in Final Jeopardy. Perhaps his finest moment came on a $2000 clue in BOY
GENIUS:
“This French prodigy wrote
his masterpiece ‘The Drunken Boat’ at 16 and was called an infant Shakespeare.”
Ben thought it was Beaudelaire and Ike knew it was Rimbaud.
Ben finished Double Jeopardy
in the lead with $15,200 to Ike’s $10,400 and Jared’s $3600. It came down yet
again to Final Jeopardy.
The category was ANCIENT
DRAMA. The clue was very tough: “From the 470s B.C., Aeschylus’ earliest surviving
work has this title; he’d thought them repeatedly in the previous years.” Ike did
take it seriously; he guessed Who were The Spartans?” It was wrong, however,
and he lost everything he had. But Ben did not know it either: his guess was the
Censors. It was actually The Persians. It cost Ben $5601, but it left him with more
than enough to become a finalist.
While I was rooting for
Ben, who at this point in the tournament was the winningest player in both
money and games, I remain impressed by the play of Ike. His decorum and play
had dignity throughout, he continued to display an impressive array of
knowledge that did stump quite a few of his fellow challengers and he showed a
wide array of knowledge on clues I was unable to get. He’s has more than proven
me wrong that it was not a mistake to include the winner of Celebrity Jeopardy
in this tournament and he has left a fairly high standard to meet going
forward.
Semi-Final #2
Emily Sands
Yogesh Raut
David Sibley
Here’s the thing. I don’t
like Yogesh Raut because of how he’s treated the show I love with scorn. I’m
actively rooting against him. But the way he plays Jeopardy makes it
impossible for you to not respect his skill as a player. Because the thing is,
he plays the game brilliantly. He was trailing early in the Jeopardy round when
he got to the Daily Double in TRAIL (and in true Jeopardy tradition that
category was right next to PAPER.) He bet the $1800 he had:
“Surname of settler John
who blazed a trail to Montana and left his name on a city there.” He figured
out it was Bozeman and doubled his score to take the lead. He didn’t hold it
for long but by the end of the round he had surged ahead to $7400 to Emily’s
$5600 and David’s $600.
Early in Double Jeopardy
Yogesh got off to an early lead but Emily got to the first Daily Double ahead
of him in SHADES OF BLUE. She bet the $7600 she had: “In his ‘Great Waves’
print Hokusai used this imported blue pigment first made in Germany.” Too
quickly Emily said: “What is cobalt?” when it was actually Prussian. She
dropped to zero. After that she got a $2000 clue incorrect in 13-LETTER WORDS
wrong which Yogesh got correct and she
never have a chance to recover.
Yogesh ran away with the
game with 23 correct responses and only a single error late in Double Jeopardy.
He finished with $21,400 to Emily’s $6800 and David’s $6200. But even had Emily
gotten the Daily Double correct, it would not have made a difference because of
how Final Jeopardy went.
The category was LITERATURE
& RELIGION. “This city now in Turkey is the addressee of one of the New
Testament epistles & the setting for The Comedy of Errors.” This had
a certain level of irony to David, because of his function and unfortunately he
got it wrong: “What is Corinth?”
Ken: “I don’t think your
pulpit’s at risk but we are going to have to take away some money.”
Yogesh knew the correct
response: “What is Ephesus?” The letter was to the Ephesians. (I knew the play
but couldn’t remember the city; I wrote down Syracuse. Yogesh wagered nothing
but he moved on to the finals.
I’m not actively rooting
for Yogesh but it’s becoming harder to dislike him considering how well he’s
playing. He’s at least making an effort to be charming and supportive. I’m
still hoping he doesn’t win the Tournament.
Semi-Final #3
Brian Henegar
Troy Meyer
Luigi De Guzman
This was by far the most
thrilling and well played semi-final game by all three players. I should also
mention that yet again Jeopardy champions demonstrated that they were my kind of
folks when they knew almost none of the clues in the category DEALING WITH TV
REALITY. Back to the game.
Luigi got off to a very fast
start in the Jeopardy round. He already had $2600 when he found the Daily
Double in DOWN IN THE VALLEY. He bet everything: “You’ll find this Scots word
for a valley before ‘Eagles’, ‘Mor’ & ‘Coe’, among many others. He knew it
was Glen and jumped to $5200. He had $8800 at the break and $11,200 by the end
of the round. Troy was next with $2400 and Brian was trailing with $1000. As
always Ken said that anything could happen in Double Jeopardy. He didn’t know
how right he’d be.
The Double Jeopardy round
was literally perfect. Every single clue was answered correctly by one contestant
during the course of it. This doesn’t happen that often and Ken pointed it out.
Troy had managed to get up
to $6800 by the time he found the first Daily Double in THE CIVIL WAR. He had
more than half Luigi’s total and he didn’t have much of a choice when he bet
everything:
“When the war started, this
future general was helping drill a volunteer company in Galena, Illinois.” Troy
knew it was Grant and took the lead away from Luigi for the first time in the
game.
For the rest of the round
Troy and Luigi battled for the lead. Troy finally managed to put up enough
distance in the category ITS CURTAINS when he got three consecutive clues right
for $4800. By the time he found the other Daily Double in ‘AI’ he had $25,600
to Luigi’s $18,200. He was cautious and bet just $2000:
“A contemporary of Buddha,
Mahavira is revered as a leader & organizer of this religion.” Troy knew it
was Jainism and went up to $27,600. He finished the round with a more than
impressive $28,400. But Luigi was at $18,600 and Brian was still alive with
$6200.
The Final Jeopardy category
was WORD ORIGINS. Like the previous two Final Jeopardys, it was incredibly
tough. “A radical in an 1833 failed uprising in Germany, Ludwig von Rochau
coined this term for acts taken for practical reasons not ethics.” Brian did
not take the clue seriously (he told his family he loved him. But Luigi and
Troy didn’t have that luxury. Both wrote down the same response I did at home: “What
is pragmatism?” (Technically Troy wrote down pragmatic, but it’s the same
variation.) We were all wrong. The correct response was Realpolitik. It
came down to wagering and while Troy lost $8801, he had more than enough to win
the game and advance to the finals.
SUMMARY
Troy gave nineteen correct
responses and did not make a single error in the game. All three finalists have
been impressive in their matches; all three have had at least one runaway
victory and all have had some very dominant matches in each of their wins. It’s
hard to truly know who will have an advantage going into what will another
match point game with the first player who gets to three wins winning the
$250,000 grand prize. At this point all three men are playing basically at the
same excellent level.
This the first Tournament
of Champions since 2017 where all three finalists are male, though if you are a
student of Jeopardy you know all too well that these kinds of finals have been
the rule in Jeopardy rather than the exception. Considering that there were 20
men in this tournament, the law of averages dictating it would be difficult for
a female contestant to break through. (Only Emily made it as far as the semi-finals.)
Ben Chan is the fourth
player of Asian-American descent to make the finals of the Tournament of
Champions in the past ten years; while that may not seem like a huge deal, in
the thirty before there was only one other who made it that far: Vik Vaz, who
won three games and finished second to Michael Falk in the 2006 Tournament of
Champions.
Ben joins the impressive
company of Arthur Chu, who was the first player to reach 11 wins since David
Madden and who finished a close second in the 2014 Tournament of Champions;
Alan Lin, who won six games, finished a close second to Buzzy Cohen in the 2017
Tournament of Champions, and was one of the Jeopardy All-Stars in 2019, and of
course Andrew He who we will be seeing again very soon in the upcoming Jeopardy
invitationals.
The stakes are higher than
before as the winner of three games will not only win $250,000 but a spot in
the upcoming Jeopardy Masters Tournament set to begin later this year. I will
be back with the results of the finals whenever they come to an end. As we’ve
already seen in this tournament anything has happened already and no
doubt will continue too.
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