Twenty years ago this past
June, Ken Jennings competed on Jeopardy for the first time. And both the
show and game shows have never been the same since.
After the five game limit
was removed at the start of Season 20 the rules of fans had known Jeopardy
worked for the previous nineteen seasons would change forever with the coming
of Ken Jennings. Even though he retired still behind Brad Rutter for most money
won all-time and James Holzhauer has taken the title of greatest Jeopardy
champions since he retired in 2020, Jennings is still the gold standard for all
Jeopardy champions. And deservedly so, even though several of his individual
records have fallen, no one has come remotely close to winning 74 games since
his streak ended in December of 2004.
The players who have come
closest to Jennings’ mark over the next fifteen years all seemed, fittingly
enough, to grace the Jeopardy stage not long after Jennings would make a
return. A little more than a month after Brad Rutter defeated Ken in the Ultimate
Tournament of Champions, David Madden began a 19 games streak that would stand
as the second place total for the next eight seasons. His $430,400 would stand
as the second place mark in money won in a contestants original run for even
longer.
For the next eight and a
half seasons, no one came close to approaching David Madden’s 19 game total.
Indeed only two players, Dan Pawson in Season 24 and Jason Keller in Season 28,
were able to win as many nine games.
During Season 30 all of
Jeopardy waited for the Battle of the Decades and the return of some of the
greatest players in Jeopardy history. Fittingly, while the preliminary rounds
were being played another form of Jeopardy history would be made when Arthur
Chu won eleven games and $297,200.
Two weeks prior to the
Battle of the Decades final round, Julia Collins began to make history when she
won ten games, more than any female contestant in the show’s history to that
point. After Ken lost to Brad Rutter in the finals, Julia would win another 10
games to bring her total to 20, the new second place total and managed to win
$428,100.
Five years later Jennings
returned to Jeopardy along with such talents as Julia and David to compete in
the Jeopardy All-Star Games. Among the competitors in the All-Star Games were
three other champions, each of whom had managed to win at least twelve games or
more: Matt Jackson, who’d won 13 games and $411,612 in 2015, Seth Wilson who’d
won 12 games and $265,000 in 2016 and the legendary Austin Rogers, who’d also
won 12 games and $411,000.
The Jeopardy
super-champion, which had been largely dormant in the decade after Ken’s
initial run was beginning to emerge – and less than a month after the All-Star
Games ended, James Holzhauer absolutely redefined it. If there was a sign that
the goalposts were beginning to be shifted, it was confirmed when at the end of
the season Jason Zuffranieri would begin a nineteen game winning streak that
netted him $532,496.
In the last two years the
Jeopardy super-champion has become almost a common occurrence on the show. But
with the endless postseason that took up the majority of Season 40, many
wondered how long it would be before the next Jeopardy super-champion would
rise. And almost twenty years to the day Ken made his debut as a Jeopardy
champion, the next one has.
Adriana Harmeyer is an
archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana and yesterday she entered hollowed
ground as she became the sixteenth player in Jeopardy history to win eleven
games. She did so with her biggest win to date, winning $33,000 in the third
straight close game she’s won, but it put her total in winnings at $258,700.
Adriana has not had the
same level of dominance that so many super-champions in recent years have when
it comes to big paydays. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been as dominant to
win: five of her matches were runaway games. Adriana has had a certain amount
of luck in her wins: in many of her matches her opponents will find the Daily
Double before she does, wager big and inevitably get it wrong. There has been
more luck in her victories then those of Amy Schneider or Cris Panullo.
But take nothing away from
her as a player. In her first eleven appearance on Jeopardy, Adriana has gotten
Final Jeopardy right on nine occasions. On the tenth, no one could so it didn’t
cost her and on the eleventh, she already had a runaway victory. And every time
she needs to get Final Jeopardy right to win, she does it. In all six of the
matches where she was in a close game, she got it right.
To date Ariana has never
trailed going into Final Jeopardy. That’s not odd, most superchampions are
usually ahead and ahead by a sizable margin at the end of Double Jeopardy.
That’s how they get to be super-champions in the first place. And its clear
that her knowledge as an archivist has given her a distinct advantage in so
many Jeopardy categories so far. If you
study history for a living, that will be an edge on Jeopardy perhaps
nearly as much as being a teacher or student will.
Adriana’s totals in her
wins have not been awe-inspiring the way that so many other recent
super-champions have been. That is in part because Adriana has mostly been
conservative in her wagering on Daily Doubles usually betting just enough to
make sure her lead is either insurmountable at the end of Double Jeopardy or,
taking the reverse note, making sure she doesn’t lose the lead if she gets the
Daily Double wrong. This may not be as much fun as watching James Holzhauer go
all in on every Daily Double, but it is often just as critical to a long run.
(David Madden and Julia Collins made this method work for them throughout their
original runs.) Perhaps most interestingly Adriana is the first successful
super-champion – indeed the first successful champion of any kind – who doesn’t
hunt for the Daily Double the way that so many other Jeopardy winners have been
doing since Holzhauer made this his plan of attack in 2019. Her plan of attack
is more traditional, starting at the top of categories in the Jeopardy round
and every so often going to the second clue in a category first.
Adriana’s approach
represents a sea change since the era of Holzhauer. For the last five years,
Jeopardy champions and tournament participants have started rounds hunting the
Daily Double down, taking a slingshot approach around the board, usually at the
bottom of the category first. When they find the Daily Double they bet big and
frequently everything, hoping for an insurmountable lead early. This method,
which one might classify as search and destroy,
predates Holzhauer by a good margin. It was first done by Roger Craig
and other Jeopardy greats such as Alex Jacob used it to great success over
their runs before Holzhauer used it to such success that everyone’s done it for
the last five years. Adriana is the first super-champion to have immense
success with this method in the post-Trebek era and it represents an
interesting change – and a welcome one to those purists who wondered if the
method caused whiplash for the average fan. (We’ll see if she keeps doing
whenever she gets to the Tournament of Champions.)
Obviously this approach
doesn’t put Adriana at the same level of the super-champions we’ve gotten used
to over the past couple of years. However when you take away the most recent
group of Jeopardy Masters as well as Jennings, she compares rather favorably
after eleven games:
David Madden: $269,101
Arthur Chu: $297,200
Julia Collins: $231,310
Matt Jackson: $339,411
Seth Wilson: $245,002
Austin Rogers: $394,700
Jason Zuffranieri: $332,
243
Jonathan Fisher: $246,100
Ryan Long: $209,300
Ray LaLonde: $311,500
Adriana Harmeyer: $258,700
I didn’t compare her to the
five biggest winners in money won in their original run because it’s not
remotely fair. That said, Adriana is running quite a bit ahead of Mattea
Roach, who after eleven wins ‘only’ had $244,882.
As it is, it’s clear that,
even if Adriana’s streak were to end tomorrow, she would still rank favorably
with many of the ‘second wave’ of Jeopardy super-champions. She’s already ahead
of Jonathan Fisher (whose streak ended the next day) and Seth Wilson,
significantly ahead of both Julia Collins and Ryan Long, each of whom won
considerably more games and basically even with David Madden. That’s impressive
company to be among by any Jeopardy fan’s standards. In addition with her win
on Wednesday she now ranks third all-time for most money won by a female contestant in their original run,
behind only Julia Collins and Amy Schneider. That’s even headier company.
On a personal level Adriana
is extremely modest and likable – which doesn’t make her that different from
the vast majority of all Jeopardy champions, past and present. What I have
found enjoyable is how Adriana has no difficulty letting her nerd flag fly proudly.
This isn’t remarkable; all Jeopardy players have a bit of the nerd by definition.
But it is the rare Jeopardy champion is
so willing to admit how deep that runs. Earlier this week Adriana proudly
admitted how much she loved reading the World Book Encyclopedia as a child, perhaps
a factor into her taking a career as an archivist. She was, however, very clear
that she didn’t use as her first resource when studying for the show – the edition
she had growing up was from the 1970s which can only take you so far. (I wonder
if her edition is one that lists Jimmy Hoffa’s birth and death as 1913-1975?)
At this point in Season 40
Adriana is one of four female contestants who have qualified for the next Tournament
of Champions, along with Alison Betts, Amy Hummel and Celebrity Jeopardy Winner
Lisa Ann Walter. Just prior to Adriana’s run starting Jeopardy had two four
game winners appearing right after the other: Grant DeYoung, who won $81,203
and Amar Kakirde who won $55,899. (Abby Mann, the contestant who defeated him,
then lost to Adriana and Chris D’Amico, who defeated Grant, immediately lost to
Amar. Both players might qualify for the next Second Chance Tournament if there
is one, which has yet to be determined.) We have also had, to date, three
3-Game winners who might have an easier time being admitted: Weckiai Rannilla,
who won $35,200, Allison Gross who won $44,598 and Will Stewart who won $70,501
before Grant defeated him. Considering that Will won more money in his three
games than Amar did in four, he would have the best argument of that group to
being invited back to the Tournament of Champions.
Regardless of that fact it
is promising that, even in what will be the truncated regular play of Season 40
that the four locked in participants for the Tournament of Champions are all
women and that two more might very well end up being invited as well based on
the same qualifications that were in play for this year’s. As I mentioned in my
article summarizing Amy Hummel’s run last month, I find it extremely promising
for a show that has spent much of its history struggling to find a balance of
female representation in most of its tournaments has in the last two months managed
to have more women qualify than all of Season 39. It’s a promising stretch for Jeopardy
as it enters the final stretch of Season 40.
As for Adriana, I don’t
know how much longer her streak will go. It might end tonight; it might go on
another couple of weeks. What I do know is that after so much controversy
throughout Season 40 and all of the shadows that seem to have lingered over even
the joyous moments of it, Adriana has once again demonstrated what really
matters to all Jeopardy fans – the game play and the great champions. Adriana
is the super-champion Jeopardy needs right now and I look forward to seeing her
keep coming back on the Alex Trebek stage for years to come, even after her run
ends. Twenty years after Ken Jennings first appeared on Jeopardy, players
like Adriana remind us that the show still has the potential to surprise,
delight and reward us,
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