Laura Faddah Just Joined Two Groups of Jeopardy Champions - And One Is Actually Worth Being Proud of

 

I suspect that Laura Faddah, the most recent player  to  qualify for the 2026 Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, is going to get a fair amount of tongue-wagging on the internet for a little while because of something that many scholars of the game would have cause to criticize her for. I won’t lie, up until recently, I would have been one of them.

However, there is always a good mixed with the bad so let’s deal with that first. After losing in tonight’s match Laura Faddah has become one of a select group of Jeopardy champions. She is only the eighth female contestant since the lifting of the 5 game rule in Season to win eight games and it is a fairly impressive rosters.

It includes Amy Schneider, the champion with 40 wins, 20 game winner Julia Collins, 15 game winner Adriana Havemeyer, Hannah Wilson who recently returned in this most recent Jeopardy Invitational Tournament and three female contestants from Alex Trebek’s final full season: Jennifer Quail, Mackenzie Jones and Karen Farrell. This is impressive company to be among.

Unfortunately one must now get to the dubious part of this list: in 8 games Laura won ‘only’ $92,599. Obviously that is by far the least amount won by any of the women I just mentioned before (the next lowest was Karen who won $159,603.) And sadly it’s even worse than that. She has now set a mark of the most games won by any player since the five game rule was eliminated who didn’t crack the $100,000 threshold. Megan Wachspress, who I’ve referred to quite a few times over the last two years, you’re off the hook.

If you’ve read some of my previous columns about some ‘lesser’ Jeopardy champions over the past couple of years you know that I have been frequently, often ridiculously harsh on their performances. I have tried to do so from the position of being scholarly but sometimes even through the lens of objectivity, it still comes across as cold. But there are extenuating circumstances, particularly this season, and I want to be fair to Laura. So I’ll try to deal with the good and the bad.

First eight wins for any Jeopardy player is nothing to sneeze at, even in the age of the super-champion. We have been spoiled by having eight different players make it into double digits from the summer of 2021 until May of 2024 so more recent fans may have expected more.

But it’s a hard number to reach. After David Madden won 19 games  during Season 20 and 21 it took nine years for the next player to reach double digits: Arthur Chu with 11. During that nearly nine year period, only four players won 8 games or more: Tom Kavanaugh during Season 22,  Dan Pawson who won 9 games in Season 24, Tom Nissley who won 8 games in season 26 and Jason Keller who won 9 games in Season 28. It’s more games then Roger Craig, Alex Jacob or Sam Kavanaugh won and they all went on to win the Tournament of Champions. Eight games is hardly nothing.

And as I wrote in an article not long before the end of last year, the questions in Final Jeopardy and indeed much of Season 41 have been ridiculously difficult. It has been tough under those circumstances for so many superb players to win more than five. Indeed Laura is the first player so far in Season 41 to win more than five games. That’s impressive given the circumstances.

Laura had four runaway victories during her run and managed to come from behind on three separate occasions. In her fourth game she was in a distant third going into Final Jeopardy of her fourth appearance and only because she got Final Jeopardy correct did she manage to win when her opponents blundered. She was great when she needed to be.

But that being said she’s also been incredibly lucky. In her third appearance one of her opponents gave six incorrect responses in Double Jeopardy to finish at negative 2000 before time ran out. In what was her fifth win, one of her opponents was at -$1200 at the end of Double Jeopardy and had to climb out of a deep hole. In her seventh game she gave 18 correct responses and five incorrect ones and each of her opponents did even worse. Hell, in Friday’s game one of her challengers was at -$6000 halfway through Double Jeopardy and somehow managed to climb out of that hole to be on at $800 when the end of round buzzer rang. And Laura’s track record on Final Jeopardy has been pretty weak, she only managed to get three correct responses in the nine games she played. In her eight wins her opponents combined for a grand total of three and two of them were in the same game she got a correct one. All Jeopardy champions need a certain amount of luck to do well but Laura’s needed more than a lot in a very long time.

In the grand scheme of things Laura’s fortune during her run is meaningless, particularly when it comes down to the Tournament of Champions next year. And it is very early in the process: last year’s postseason has just ended. We’ll just have to see how it holds up.

For those of you who will need to keep track at this point Laura is just the second player who has been guaranteed a spot in the Tournament of Champions. The first is Ashley Chan who won $67,400 in four games. And we also have one potential three game winner: Bill McKinney, who managed to win $46,800 before Ashley Chan unseated him. It’s a low bar for a three game winner but not that low: Neilesh Vinjamuri managed to win $53,099 and we all saw how well that worked out for him.

When the next qualifier for the Tournament of Champions arrives you’ll hear from me again. Just remember Laura has won more games than any player so far in Season 41 and the third most amount of money next to Greg Jolin and Mark Fitzpatrick. She may be a lesser Jeopardy great but she’s still the best this season in most of the ways that count.