By the time Season 35
began in 2018 the idea of trying to rank who the greatest players in Jeopardy
history were was becoming a more concrete idea in my mind. I suspected - and I
would be proven correct – that because the show was entering its 35th
year, there would be a special tournament in recognition of this anniversary.
As any fan of the show
is aware that turned out to be correct as in October the show’s producers
announced the Jeopardy All-Star Challenge. Quickly I had issues with it, not
just because it involved for the first time in the show’s history a team
format, but also because the show only chose to invite eighteen players back to
play again as opposed to the forty-five they had brought back in the Battle of
the Decades to celebrate their thirtieth year on the air.
My frustration at the
time was that none of the players invited back had played prior to 2000, only
two (Brad Rutter and Pam Mueller) dated prior to before Ken Jennings arrival in
2004 and the majority were from the past ten years. And at the time three of
them hardly seemed to be stretching the definition of All-Star past its
breaking point. For all the skills that Leonard Cooper and Monica Thieu
(winners of the 2013 Teen and College Tournaments, respectively) would
demonstrate in the All-Stars I thought their selection seemed arbitrary at best
and did a disservice to many of the other great champions during that same
period at worst.
But in hindsight the
producers seemed to have had a better grasp on what the fans of the show wanted
to see in those selections. And in many ways by watching that Tournament I
began to appreciate how difficult it would be trying to figure out how ranking
Jeopardy champions would be, even after the sudden appearance of so many
super-champions. That fact was clear in regard to how the all-time money
winners had changed – or more accurately, hadn’t as of the All-Star Games.
By the end of the 2017
TOC Jeopardy had witness the rise of five players who had won eleven or more
games. But because they had all come up short in the Tournament of Champions by
the end of the 2017-2018 season, the all-time money winners had not altered
much. Roger Craig was still in third place all time with $530,200.
For the record this is
how all five super-champions ranked at the end of the 2017-2018 season when it
came to money won:
Matt Jackson: $511,612
Julia Collins: $478.100
Austin Rogers: $461,000
Arthur Chu: $397,200
Seth Wilson: $272,000
The reason Roger was
still in third place was because he had won the 2011 Tournament of Champions.
Even without the benefit of his third place finish in the Battle of the
Decades, he would have only dropped to fourth place all time in money won.
If nothing else, the
All-Star Challenge may have driven home to me just how significant winning the
Tournament of Champions is when it comes to determined how great a Jeopardy
champion is in a way that all of my previous – and, it must be said, future –
calculations of what it means to be a great Jeopardy champion truly means.
That might have been
something that was a subtext to my watching the show for most of my life but
previous ‘special tournaments’ such as the Million Dollar Masters in 2002 and
the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005 had done much to obscure that fact.
When many previous winners of Tournaments of Champions were among those who
were among the earliest eliminated in both previous tournaments part of me had
begun to ponder whether winning this tournament may have been more of a
testament to luck than skill. While that may well have been true in the first
twenty years of Jeopardy in all the years since Jennings’s arrival that becomes
clearer with each passing year and in many ways the All-Star Games helped
illustrate that point to me when I was looking at how well so many of the
participants had done on the show in regard to money won.
I have alluded to this
throughout the series but it’s worth looking at the track record of many of
them here because all of them would be invited back to the All-Star Games.
When the All-Star Games
took place it was announced in the opening sequence – in something that would
remind Alex Trebek of how the Mercury 7 were introduced to him as a child –
they were referred to as ‘eighteen of the most celebrated Jeopardy players have
been invited back to play again!” Aside from the hyperbole it wasn’t that much
of an exaggeration.
The six captains were,
by any logical standard, some of the greatest players of all time. No one
doubted the significance of Brad and Ken’s accomplishments, Julia and Austin’s
have been related in previous articles, Buzzy Cohen’s choice was fitting because
he was the last Tournament of Champions winner and Colby Burnett had won both
the 2012 Teachers Tournament and the 2013 Tournament of Champions.
As I said I had doubts
about three of the players who had been invited back at the time: Monica Thieu,
Leonard Cooper and Jennifer Giles the winner of the 2015 Teachers Tournament.
(I remain baffled as to the rationale for the last selection compared to some
of the other winners I’ve discussed in the articles above.) As to the other
nine, well, the only difficulty I had was the era they represented: I couldn’t
exactly fault them on their records.
Matt Jackson and Seth
Wilson were invited back among them as well as David Madden, who for reason
that are not worth going into had decided not to participate in the Battle of
the Decades five years earlier. He was, as Alex Trebek himself mentioned, sorely
missed.
As to the other six
anyone who had watched the show would deny their merit of inclusion. Roger
Craig was, naturally, one of them (I wondered later why he wasn’t made a
captain instead of Colby) Pam Mueller, whose track record in Jeopardy
Tournaments has been well documented in other articles was invited as was Alan
Lin who perhaps deliberately would not be drafted by either Buzzy or Austin.
The other three were Larissa Kelly, Ben Ingram and Alex Jacob.
So of the eighteen
players invited back a third of them had won a Tournament of Champions. Brad,
of course, had won considerably more Tournament then that and Colby had been a
semi-finalist in the Battle of the Decades before he was ultimately beaten by Roger
Craig.
So let’s have a look at
the cash-winnings of the six players invited back who weren’t super-champions
in the way that some of the others were. I’ll list them chronologically:
Larissa Kelly: $327,597
Colby Burnett: $375,000
Ben Ingram: $426, 534
Alex Jacob: $399,802
Buzzy Cohen: $414, 603
Alan Lin: $223,600
Aside from Colby, all
of them won at least six games in their original appearance and indeed Roger
had won that many in his original run.
To win the Tournament
of Champions does much to move any contestant up on the leaderboard. At the
time of the All-Star Games the five contestants listed above were all among the
greatest money winners in Jeopardy history along with the super-champions above
and, of course, Brad, Ken and Roger.
In addition Larissa had been in fourth place
in money won in a regular appearance until 2014 when Arthur Chu started putting
her down the leaderboard. It’s a measure of how great a player Larissa was that
it took Arthur eight days to get past that total (and he had to win
$58,200 to do so) and Julia needed eleven. Obviously Buzzy never came
close to doing that in his original run but Austin was better at it then her.
(Roger Craig is the only player invited to the All-Stars who played at a
comparable level to her in his six wins.)
One would have been
hard-pressed to argue that the producers didn’t make the right selections among
this group overall but one does still wonder why the three players I listed
above were chosen if the purpose was to bring back memorable players. Even if you
were to limit the selection from the past decade then there will still clearly
several choices who would have had more reason to be chosen and who might have
led to an even better competition.
Those three choices
probably should have been the three players who at the time were similar ranked
on the leaderboard. Arthur Chu is the most obvious exclusion and the only
explanation I have was his reputation among fans as being something of a
‘Jeopardy villain’ at the time. However there were two other champions who’d
had records that were nearly as impressive as most of all the other major
invitees. I referred to them in passing in the first article in this series but
it is worth going over it now because for that reason I considered them among
the all-time greats later on.
Dan Pawson first
appeared on Jeopardy on December 27, 2007 little more than a month after that
year’s Tournament of Champions. It wasn’t a remarkable game – he only won $9700
but from that inauspicious beginning he managed to win nine consecutive games,
the most that any Jeopardy Champion had won since David Madden’s 19. There were
big wins and small wins – on his seventh win he prevailed with $200; on his eighth,
he won $25,000 – but at the end of his run he’d managed to win $170,902. It was
an impressive figure in 2007 but by the end of the season Larissa Kelly had
managed to win $222,597 in six.
The two ended up facing
off in the 2009 Tournament of Champions (which was filmed in Las Vegas) and though such things rarely happened in my
experience both of them managed to make it all the way to the Finals. They
faced off against Aaron Schroeder who’d won an impressive five games and
$127,902 on his own. He was more than up to the challenge actually going into
Game 1 with a narrow lead over both players but Larissa and Dan would respond
correctly on that games Final Jeopardy and bet almost everything they had. Aaron
was wrong and while his wager was not significant, it put him at a disadvantage
he would be unable to overcome.
Game 2 was a back and forth
battle for Larissa and Dan for supremacy with Larissa going into Final Jeopardy
with a very narrow lead. However this time she was the only player who didn’t
know the correct response in Final Jeopardy and as a result Dan won $250,000.
At the end of the
Tournament of Champions Dan had winnings totaling $420,902, only slightly behind David Madden
then in fourth place on the leaderboard. Larrisa’s $100,000 put her at $322,597.
Both returned to the Battle of the Decades five years later, based on their
impressive merits during the 2009 season.
Larissa competed in the
third game and basically led from beginning to end. However a Daily Double on
the penultimate clue of Double Jeopardy and a correct response by Russ
Schumacher stopped her from having a runaway going into Final Jeopardy. Like so
many of the Final Jeopardy clues in that tournament no one gave a correct
response and it came down to wagering. Because Russ bet nothing and Larissa
played to win, Russ would end up advancing while Larissa went home with $5000.
Dan had better luck against
Maria Wenglinsky and Keith Whitener in what would be the last game of Round 1.
He had a big lead throughout the Jeopardy round and much of Double Jeopardy.
However in the final stretch Maria made a huge comeback and went into Final
Jeopardy with a narrow lead over Dan. Once again everybody got Final Jeopardy
wrong and what worked for Russ in his match ended up working for Dan in his
game – he wagered the least of the three players and that allowed him to
advance.
Unfortunately Dan’s
luck only went so far: in his quarterfinal match he ran into Brad Rutter and
like so many before and after him, he
was runover. He didn’t qualify for a wild-card and he left with $10,000.
Considering their
respective track records you would have thought if Larissa was invited back Dan
should have been as well. That said, Larissa was second on the all-time list
for money won by a female contestant and considering that Julia Collins had
broken that record in her original appearance (which began not long after
Larissa’s defeat in the Battle of The Decades) the logic was understandable.
The other choice was
harder to comprehend, but ultimately understandably given the circumstances of
his original appearance. Tom Nissley had first appeared on Jeopardy on December
14th 2010 and won $24,801 in his first game. On his fourth win he
won a very impressive $43,800 and while he never hit that high a figure when he
departed the show on Christmas Eve, he’d won eight games and $235,405. At that
point that total was the third most any Jeopardy champion had won in their
original appearance – and no one would win more than that until Arthur Chu in
2014.
But I don’t remember
ever thinking of Tom Nissley when I was anticipating the Tournament of Champions
the following November. Like all Jeopardy fans we were waiting for the return
of Roger Craig who’d won nearly as much as Tom in six games. The fact that Tom
had won more games and more money was likely viewed as a technicality for most Jeopardy
viewers at the time; there was no question which one of these men was the
superior player.
And even though Tom was
good in his quarterfinal win and his semi-final win Roger Craig was, well,
Roger Craig. When Tom went into the Double Jeopardy round of Game 1 of the Finals
with a narrow lead over Tom, I know I was thinking: “Roger will come to life in
Double Jeopardy. Which he did: he found both Daily Doubles back to back and quadrupled
his total. From that point on, the TOC was an exercise and by the end of
Game 1, it was all over sans the shouting. Tom was lucky to finish in second place
and get the $100,000.
That being said, it did
strike me as odd in retrospect that when the time for the Battle of The Decades
came around Tom was not among the fourteen players granted an invitation initially.
Having won $335,405 altogether he was still very high on the Jeopardy leader
board of winning, ahead not only of several Tournament of Champions winners
from that decade but basically everyone else who got an invitation – with the
exception of Roger Craig, Dan Pawson and Colby Burnett.
To be fair when the
time came for voting on fan favorites for the 2010s (the fans were allowed to
vote between five choices for the fifteenth spot) Tom was invited back. That
being said when you consider who the other four nominees were it makes Tom look
horrible by comparison:
Kara Spak had won five
games immediately following Roger’s appearance and just over $83,401. She was a
semifinalist in the 2011 Tournament of Champions, qualified for a wild card
spot (she lost to Roger Craig) and lost in the semifinals to Buddy Wright who
finished third to Roger and Tom.
Ryan Chaffee had won
four games in 2009 and $91,900. He was thrashed in his quarter-final.
Erin McLean (2010
College Champion) In the 2011 College Championship she lost to Buddy Wright and
was runover in the semi-finals – by Tom Nissley in his win.
Joey Beachum (2008
College Champion). Joey competed in the
2010 Tournament of Champions. (He was unavailable to play in the 2009
Tournament. He was thrashed in his quarter-final match.
Now a personal disclosure.
In 2013 when the Battle of the Decades was announced while I was very familiar
with Jeopardy I was not entirely the scholar I am today for reasons not worth
discussing. That said I was familiar, due to my past experience as well as
previous tournaments with the overwhelming majority of the players extended
invitations to each of the three decades represented and would have been able
to defend in a public forum the selection of the vast majority of those invited.
And though because of my issues with technology in 2013 I didn’t get to vote in
the fan favorites I could have made a case for every one of the five players considered
a fan favorite for the 1980s and all but one in the 1990s.
I have no memory of
what I thought of about the five players chosen for the 2000s but based on the
records here, this is a clear case of ‘one of these things is not like the
other.” It seemed unfair that Tom Nissley given his record on the show had been
reduced to being picked this way.
And apparently the fans
themselves felt that same way as Tom was in fact the one who received the most
votes. Tom appeared in the first game of Round 1 against none other than Colby
Burnett and the winner of the 2007 Tournament of Champions Celeste DiNucci.
Tom played well in the
Jeopardy round up to a pint and then began to struggle. He was at $2600 and in
second place at the end of the round. Then in Double Jeopardy Celeste and Colby
caught fire and Tom wasn’t able to ring in until the eighteenth clue of the
round and was only able to give four correct responses. He was still in
contention going into Final Jeopardy with $7400 to Celeste’s $16,200 and Colby’s
$16,400 which had to make how Final Jeopardy played out all the more
excruciating for him.
The category was OPERA
& LITERATURE: “An aria in this Shakespeare-based opera says: “Di scozia a
te promettono le profetesse il trono…Che tardi?” Tom wrote down his response
very quickly and it was the correct response: “What is Macbeth?” Alex
translated: “The witches promise you the Scottish throne…what are you waiting
for?” Tom added $6000 to his total.
Celeste’s response was:
“What is Falstaff?’ (Right composer, wrong opera.” However she waged
$1399, leaving her with $14,801. She was clearly playing to beat Tom by $1 if
she was incorrect and he was right and bet everything. But Colby was even
smarter: he wrote an incorrect response but wagered only $199. When it was over
he dropped his head to the podium in relief. Tom had to go home with $5000.
Just for fun let’s see
where Dan and Tom were compared with all of the biggest money winners (aside
from the Big Three at the time) who were invited back to the All-Star Challenge
at that time:
Matt Jackson: $511,612
Julia Collins: $478.100
Austin Rogers: $461,000
David Madden: $440, 400
Dan Pawson: $430,902
Ben Ingram: $426,534
Buzzy Cohen: 414,603
Colby Burnett: $375,000
Alex Jacob: $399,802
Tom Nissley: $340,405
Larissa Kelly: $327,597
Obviously Tom and Dan are
still among the greatest Jeopardy players in the show’s history and considering
their past interactions with many of the players who were invited back to the All-Star
Challenge there would have been the kind of shared history that so many of those
who were invited already. Alan Lin went into the All-Star Games with a (only
half-joking) single minded mission to ‘absolutely crush Buzzy Cohen’ and you
could imagine Tom feeling a similar desire towards a couple of players who were
invited back. Dan might have been more sanguine but Brad did humiliate him in
the Battle of the Decades (though to be fair, he did that everybody)
A month after the
All-Star Games ended Jeopardy would be changed forever by two different events:
Alex Trebek announced his diagnosis with the pancreatic cancer that would kill
him. And on April 4th James Holzhauer made his first appearance. Jeopardy
would never be the same afterwards.
In the penultimate
article in this series I will tell the saga of Jason Zuffranieri, the greatest
Jeopardy player you’ve probably never heard of.
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