This is Jeopardy - Failures of the SuperChampions Part 1

 

 

Like every other Jeopardy watcher in history I was as shocked as anybody when Cris Panullo was absolutely flattened in his Tournament of Champions this past March. Cris, as any fan of Jeopardy learned during the late fall of 2022, had been one of the most extraordinary players in Jeopardy history, winning 21 games and just under $750,000 during that period. He currently ranks sixth on the all-time list in games won and is in third place in money won in regular play, behind only Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider and James Holzhauer.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was beaten ; it was how horribly he was defeated by Jared Watson by three-game winner Jared Watson. Jared played masterfully that day, no question; but to that point Cris seemed invincible in his original run. In this game he very mortal and considering that he was the alternate for the first Jeopardy Masters it seemed odd that he was eliminated so quickly.

In retrospect I shouldn’t have been that surprised having been a long time Jeopardy viewer and having seen upsets in the Tournament of Champions essentially being the norm. And as we approach the 2025 Tournament of Champions I think it might be worth reviewing the past performance of super-champions, particularly during the Trebek era. While we don’t have the same level of super-champions we did last year, those who are anticipating an Adriana Havemeyer-Isaac Hirsch face off should be well aware that there is an excellent neither will get as far as the finals. I’m sure we were all expected a Cris Panullo-Ray Lalonde face-off last year and both Jared and Ike Barinholtz made sure that didn’t happen.

I’ve been watching the Tournament of Champions for the better part of thirty years and have seen probably that many TOC’s over the years. As those of us who are long-time viewers know, for the first twenty seasons of the show’s existence, the most games a player could win before leaving was capped at five. It’s also worth remembering that, until 2022, the Tournament of Champions had a different format.

Fifteen players were invited to play five quarterfinal matches. This would produce 5 winners and there would be four wild card spots for high scores among non-winners. Then after three semi-final matches there would be a two-game total point affair where the highest score after two games won the grand-prize ($100,000 until 2001; $250,000 afterwards.)

There’s an old cliché in sports: “anything can happen in a short series” and that’s true of a Tournament of Champions. That being said, the first decade I watched the show it was a lot more difficult to try and handicap it going forward than it would be after 2004. Essentially every player who qualified for the Tournament of Champions had more or less won the same number of games: four or five. This was true of winners of the special tournaments, which included the Teen Tournament, the College Championship and until 1996 the Seniors Tournament. (I will refer to that one in a different series). All of those tournaments followed the same format, and in that scenario you need to essentially win four games to win the Tournament.

So for all intents and purposes until 2022, all Tournament of Champions players were starting with a clean slate. That being said, it’s a lot easier to think that way when every participant has essentially won the same number of games going in. While it might seem counterintuitive that the winner of the College Championship could defeat not one but two players who’d won over $82,000 in their original appearances (I saw that happen in 1994) or that a player who had was ranked in winnings roughly dead last among the participants could win the Tournament of Champions that year (believe it or not, that was where Brad Rutter ranked going into the 2001 Tournament of Champions), considering that they were essentially all equal going in, it wasn’t really that big of a surprise.

Obviously this changed when the five game limit was removed starting in Season 20 and that became clear in what was the first Tournament of Champions where a super-champion appeared. (Ken Jennings didn’t appear in any traditional Tournament of Champions; his first post-season appearance was in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005.)

At the end of Season 21 and stretching to the start of Season 22 I like most Jeopardy fans was captivated by the performance of David Madden. Less than a year after Ken Jennings was defeated by Nancy Zerg, we saw a player who won nineteen games and $430,400. He was eventually defeated by a player named Victoria Groce, who won $22,801 and was defeated the following day. (Jeopardy fans would not hear of her again until this March when she managed to win first this year’s Jeopardy Invitational and then the second Jeopardy Masters.)

Like most fans I assumed that the winner of the next Tournament of Champions was all but spoken for after David was defeated. It wasn’t as though the roster of the 2006 was incredibly distinguished. There was an eight game winner Tom Kavanaugh and a six game winner Kevin Marshall. And there were an enormous number of three game winners: six in total, the highest until the 2023 Tournament of Champions. The fact that David was starting at the same level as all of his fellow participants didn’t register in my head.

David appeared in the fourth quarterfinal match against Bob Mesko, who won five games and Michael Falk, who’d won three. Things did not get off to a great start for David. Michael got off to an early lead and by the end of the Jeopardy round was still in a narrow first place. David recovered in Double Jeopardy, found both Daily Doubles and had a significant lead (though not a runaway) going into Double Jeopardy. He prevailed in Final Jeopardy and became an automatic semi-finalist though Bob and Michael would end up having high enough scores to earn wild card berths.

David then appeared in the second semi-final game against Kevin Marshall and Bill MacDonald, who’d won four games and just over $75,000. Bill took control of the game halfway through the Jeopardy round. And David had what was probably his worst game to that point in his Jeopardy career, giving 6 incorrect answers and finishing a distant third with $4600 to Bill’s $22,200. By that point Bill had runaway with the game. David was a good sport about it – his final Jeopardy response was: ”Congrats Bill good luck in the Final!” but that didn’t make it any less shocking to me. For the record Bill finished in third place in the TOC – losing to Michael Falk, who became the first three game winner of a Tournament of Champions.

In all my years of watching Jeopardy to that point David’s defeat in the 2006 Tournament of Champions was the most shocking loss I’d experienced. How could a player that great in regular play be so horrible in the Tournament of Champions? Perhaps it didn’t compute because I had no past experience with it.

 I would push this to the backburner for the next eight years that were to follow, a span which cover six more Tournament of Champions. The reason for this was simple: in that long span there was not a single Jeopardy champion who managed to reach double digits in wins. The two players who came the closest were Dan Pawson and Jason Keller, each of whom won nine games. Dan did so in Season 24; Jason in Season 28.

This led me to believe that the super-champions such as Jennings and Madden were outliers and the feat would likely never be repeated. I wasn’t surprised or unhappy by this, mainly because as someone who’d watched the show before the rule was lifted, I knew first-hand how difficult it was to win only five games. There may have been a few players before the five-game rule was lifted who could have been as good as, say, Matt Amodio or Mattea Roach but honestly, I can only think of seven, maybe eight in that period who were at that level and even that may be stretching it. That’s a sign of how special these kinds of players are; if every player was the caliber of a Cris Panullo Jeopardy would probably be a lot less entertaining.

Concurrently, the next six Tournaments were thrilling because there were no clear favorites because there is not the same difference between, say, a six game winner and a nine game winner as there is between someone who wins nineteen and someone who wins four. Dan Pawson seemed evenly matched when he faced off against Larissa Kelly in the 2009 Tournament of Champions, who had won six games but won considerably more money than him. And when Jason Keller was defeated in the semi-finals of the 2013 Tournament of Champions by Keith Whitener, it seemed less weird because Keith had won seven games. I thought, with one crucial exception, that all of the Tournament of Champions competitors between 2007 and 2013 were excellent players but not super.

The exception is one known to every Jeopardy viewer of the last twenty years. Despite the fact that he ‘only’ won six games before being defeated I doubt the long-time Jeopardy fan would disagree if I said Roger Craig was the most dominant player between Ken Jennings departure and the rise of super-champion. This would be true of every single player who won more games than him including David Madden. By the end of six games Alex Trebek was speaking of him in terms of Ken Jennings and even though he lost that day, I don’t think anyone who saw him at the time would dispute that analogy.

Because during a mere six games Roger Craig won $230,200 the third highest amount in Jeopardy history to that point in regular season play. By contrast at that point in his original run David Madden had only won $155,500; he needed ten games to win more than Roger did in six. Furthermore in only his second appearance Roger did something that I’m sure every Jeopardy fan to that point thought unthinkable: broke Ken Jennings’ one day record of $75,000. He won $77,000 and his mark lasted nearly nine years until James Holzhauer came along.

Roger was a prototype of the super-champion that Holzhauer and his successors would illustrate. He would frequently start at the bottom of every category (usually in Double Jeopardy) and bet very big in Daily Doubles and almost always get them right. He could be as dominant as this group, averaging thirty correct responses in each of his six wins. He averaged just $39,000 per win and was one of the most dominant players of all time. Until the arrival of James Holzhauer, it would be fair to state he might have been the third best Jeopardy player in the show’s entire history behind just Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

So going into the 2011 Tournament of Champions I was absolutely certain Roger would waltz to victory. By that point, I should mention he wasn’t the winningest player in that Tournament in terms of games won or money won. Tom Nissley, just a few months after Roger was defeated, had won eight games and $235,405. (That total would be the third place total in money won until 2014.) And in October of 2011 Joon Pahk was a very impressive seven games and $199,000 even. I don’t know if I was aware of this at the time (in 2011 I was not following Jeopardy tournaments at the same level I would be in the next five years) but I’m sure even if I had, it would not have one difference in my thinking: Roger Craig was the best player in the 2011 Tournament of Champions and he was going to romp to the grand prize.

And in my defense that’s exactly what Roger did. He absolutely crushed his opponents Kara Spak and Brian Meacham in the quarterfinals, with $39,800 at the end of Double Jeopardy. He faced off against Joon Pahk in his semi-final match and while it was close for a while, he ended up with a slightly narrower runaway victory. And while one of his opponents in the final was none other than Tom Nissley, for all intents and purposes the Tournament was decided by the end of Game 1. He’d amassed $43,200 by the end of Double Jeopardy. I had never seen any player have that high a total at the end of Double Jeopardy to that point in a Tournament of Champions game; not even James Holzhauer managed to get that high in any of his. He responded correctly and had an even $50,000 at the end of Game 1 to his nearest opponent (Tom) $18,800. I think even Alex knew it was all over sans the shouting. In Game 2 Roger had what for him was an off day, getting 25 correct response but making eight mistakes. It didn’t matter. Neither of his opponents were nearly good enough to in the game to do anything and Roger ended up easily winning the Tournament of Champions.

I’ve seen dominant performances by many players in the Tournaments of Champions while it was in that format,  some of whom did better than Roger when it came to games won. No one – not even James Holzhauer – was that brilliant in every game they played. For that reason, despite his relatively minor win total and money won, Roger Craig has to be ranked as one of the greatest Jeopardy players of all time. With the possible exception of Brad Rutter, he is my odds on pick to be invited back to next year’s Jeopardy Masters. I think everyone – including Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer himself – want to see him go head to head with James.

Roger, I should mention, was always modest and self-effacing throughout his original run and beyond: the complete opposite of Holzhauer. Watching him Roger had the appearance of Bruce Banner. You never thought he was the Hulk until he found a Daily Double. Even when he played against him Ken Jennings couldn’t help but think of him in terms of being little better than a  fanboy. I’d love to see what he thinks now that he’s safely on the other side of the lectern.

In the conclusion of this article I’ll discuss the performances of the remainder of the super-champions during the era of Alex Trebek in their respective Tournament of Champions and how as easy as it was in their original appearance winning the grand prize was often far more difficult…if not impossible.