On Jeopardy history does
repeat itself but rarely with more synchronicity than Scott Riccardi.
Last year on July 3 Isaac Hirsch
won his first game on Jeopardy. He then won 8 more. But on July 16 with just
one more victory needed to reach double digits and cement his status as a
super-champion he lost to Jay Fisher and left with 'only' 9 victories and
$215,390. Things worked out pretty well for Isaac in the year to follow: he
finished second in this year's Tournament of Champions and made it to the
semifinals of this year's Masters, defeating such Jeopardy legends as Roger
Craig and Matt Amodio before he was eliminated with another $100,000. In less
than a year, he's racked up under $400,000 in earnings.
One year later to the day Scott
Riccardi made his debut on the Jeopardy stage. On Tuesday he won his ninth game
the most won by any player this season. Then on Wednesday he accomplished what
Isaac Hirsch couldn't exactly one year ago and won his tenth victory. But
despite officially moving on to the Jeopardy leaderboard and number 17 in money
won on what was his tenth victory, as any real Jeopardy fan knows, a
super-champion has to win eleven games.
In one of the oddest statistics
in the history of Jeopardy since the five game limit was lifted in 2003, no
player has won exactly ten games. Several have won 9 games and many more
have won more than eleven but none have ever won exactly ten, at least
so far. And yesterday Scott made sure that trend continued when he won his
eleventh game with what his third runaway victory in the last four games.
He had what was his most
impressive performance to this point: 39 correct responses and only two
incorrect responses. He finished with $40,000 at the end of Double Jeopardy and
only one remaining opponent, Marisa Cohen, who was lucky to have $4800. For the
second time this week he had a chance for a truly impressive payday – and for
the second time this week, he got stuck with an incredibly difficult Finaly
Jeopardy.
The category was AMERICAN NOVELS.
"A critic described this novel as 'A man down South sitting in a manhole
up north…& signifying about he got there." Scott could not even hazard
a guess. It was Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. It cost Scott half his
total, leaving him with 'only' $20,000 as he notched his eleventh consecutive
victory.
This marks the tenth consecutive
season that Jeopardy will have seen at least one player who has won
eleven games. Scott is now the nineteenth player since Ken Jennings run in 2004
to notch at least that many wins, the ninth since the passing of Alex Trebek.
His current total in winnings of $282,101 is now fifteenth on the leaderboard
for all time winnings in regular play; yesterday's win has put him ahead of
Seth Wilson – who won $265.002 in twelve games.
The question is how far will
Scott go. The end of the season is a week from tomorrow. Should he still be
undefeated at that point he will have won 17 games, putting him ahead of such
masters as Matt Jackson, Austin Rogers, Ryan Long and Adriana Harmeyer. That
is, of course, a big if because the lion's share of Scott's win to this point
have been anything but easy. In two of his victories both his competitors had
more than $10,000 in front of them at the end of Final Jeopardy and he needed a
correct response in order to win. In last Thursday's game, two incorrect Daily
Doubles had him in second going into Final Jeopardy and only a tough final and
savvy wagering let him win his sixth game. And his track record in Final
Jeopardy has been hit or miss: he's given incorrect responses on three Final
Jeopardys so far in his run – two of them this week.
And Scott is not a super champion
in the mold of Holzhauer, Amodio or Schneider. He's only run away with four of
his first eleven games. In two of them, his margin of his opponents was not
that big and to be safe he had to wager nothing. Scott is very, very good but
he's also been lucky. And as every Jeopardy player knows, even for the
super-champion your luck is going to run out. (There are already a lot of
potential Second Chance invitees from Scott's run at this point.)
So now that we know what kind of
super-champion Scott Riccardi isn't, how great a champion is he? I
hinted at it in Monday's article but now that he's officially reached
super-champ status, it's time to see how he measures up to his peers. We'll
start by comparing him to all of the players in the post-Trebek era who've won
eleven or more games, excluding Jonathan Fisher who he's already surpassed
going in reverse chronological order:
Scott Riccardi: $282,101
Adriana Harmeyer: $258,700
Ray Lalonde: $311,500
Cris Panullo: $356,702
Ryan Long: $209,300
Mattea Roach: $244,882
Amy Schneider: $421,200
Matt Amodio: $368,800
Not a huge shock he was doing
better than Ryan Long and only slightly more surprising that he ranks ahead of
Mattea Roach and Adriana Harmeyer. All three players had their share of runaway
victories and all three didn't have much room to wager in them. The most favorable
comparison is to Ray Lalonde because to that point those are the kinds of games
he's had: competitive ones where he had to bet big in order to win in Final
Jeopardy.
Now let's go into the multi-game
winners in the Alex Trebek era. I'll exclude James Holzhauer because, you know,
that's just unfair and Seth Wilson because he's already past him. I'll compare
him with everyone else, including Jennings. Again I'll work backwards.
Jason Zuffranieri: $332, 243
Austin Rogers: $394,700
Matt Jackson: $339, 411
Julia Collins: $231,310
Arthur Chu: $297, 200
David Madden: $269, 101
Ken Jennings: $376, 158
Scott Riccardi: $282,101
Again he's more comparable to
Arthur Chu at this point then any of the other players on this list. He's running
considerably ahead of Julia at this point in her run and slightly ahead of
David Madden but again most of them had more runaway victories and frequently
had smaller margins. All of the other players on this list were far more
dominant than Scott is.
Scott has also not had a lot of
big paydays to this point in run. His highest total to this point was on July 4th
when he won $50,400, the highest amount any player has won in Season 41. In Monday
and Thursday's games he was extraordinarily dominant but lost nearly half his
total in Final Jeopardy. Make no mistake he's had some impressive paydays in
his run so far: he's won over $30,000 in three other games to this point but
he's not at the level of either Amy Schneider or Cris Panullo in the
post-Trebek era or Matt Jackson or Jason Zuffranieri in the decade prior.
Of course that hasn't made his
game any less exciting to watch: Scott's had to earn the majority of his wins over
his run. In a way that makes him games more thrilling then watching so many of
the other players I've mentioned. In the majority of games you knew pretty much
by the end of the Jeopardy round that they had locked it up. So far with Scott,
we're never quite as sure and that's part of the fun.
One way or another my final article
about Scott will come next Friday when I'll do a final assessment of Season 41
and the lineup for the 2026 Tournament of Champions. We know Scott will be in
it; the question is will he still be playing at the start of Season 42?
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