Scott Riccardi's Final Ranking Among Jeopardy's Super-champions

 

Those of you who have read my columns on Jeopardy over the last few years – and according to this site, there are a lot of you – know that ever since Ryan Long completed his 16 game winning streak in the summer of 2022, I have a tradition of comparing those ranked by the show as 'super-champions' in their place on the annals of previous Jeopardy greats.

You also know that I wrote two separate columns about Scott Riccardi in the final weeks of this season about how he compared to those great players on Jeopardy, the latter after he won his eleventh game. I had every intention of doing the same when Scott's streak finally ended. But because it ended on the final day of the season and because I wanted to give credit not just to Scott but to all the other Jeopardy champions of Season 42 I didn't really give him the respect he deserved. And since we're now in the hiatus between seasons, now's as good a time as any to do so.

As Ken Jennings himself mentioned in the final days of his run, Scott's is now officially in the top ten of both standards for super-champions: total games won and money won in one's original run. In the former he is tied with Ryan Long in tenth with sixteen wins, trailing only David Madden, Jason Zuffranieri, Julia Collins, Cris Panullo, Mattea Roach, James Holzhauer, Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider and Jennings himself. In the latter, he ranks in eighth place with $455,000. There he trails Mattea, Jason, Cris, Matt, Amy, James and Ken.

Now in both cases he's actually quite a bit better than some of the people he's ranked below in many ways, particularly when you consider money won. Here's how he compares to all of the players who are ahead of him or tied with in games won after they won  their first 16 games (I'll exclude Holzhauer for reasons that should be obvious by now)

Ken Jennings: $512,959

David Madden: $378,700

Julia Collins: $337, 700

Jason Zuffranieri: $472,000

Matt Amodio: $505,200

Amy Schneider: $631,400

Mattea Roach: $368,991

Ryan Long: $299,400

Cris Panullo: $566, 344

Scott Riccardi: $455,000

As Ken pointed out David and Julia never got as high as Scott even though they won more games than him and Mattea needed 19 wins to get as much money as Scott won in sixteen. This shouldn't come as a shock to many players.

But of course Scott wasn't quite the same type of player as many of the players on this list. In their original runs Mattea, Ryan and Julia tended to start at the top of the category and work their way down. Amy favored the same approach and so did Ken himself. Matt, James and Cris tended to start at the bottom of each category and go from left to right hunting for the Daily Double. David did the same thing but he usually started at the $800 clue.

Scott's approach to the board was more similar to Jason: he tended to start in  the middle of the category and work his way down, usually in the $600 clue. His approach to Daily Doubles in the Jeopardy round was closer to the biggest money winners: bet everything you have.

The difference between Scott and so many of the other champions on this list was that he had many issues getting to where he did. Let's look at how many games Scott ran away with during his original run and compare it to the other names on this list after 16 games (and this time I will include James Holzhauer):

Ken Jennings: 13

David Madden: 10

Julia Collins: 9

James Holzhauer: 15

Jason Zuffranieri: 11

Matt Amodio: 13

Amy Schneider: 13

Mattea Roach: 10

Ryan Long: 7

Cris Panullo: 14

Scott Riccardi: 10

This shouldn't come as a shock to those of us who remember just how much work Scott had to do just to win five games. He had to come from behind to win his first, barely eked out a victory in his second, trailing badly in the Double Jeopardy round of his fourth and was  behind in his sixth win. That particular one must have been a cautionary tale: he found all three Daily Doubles and got them all wrong and it was only because he wagered conservatively in Final Jeopardy that he managed to keep going. He was lucky to survive his seventh win as well and again could have just as easily lost his ninth game.

So when he started to find Daily Doubles during the second half of his run he bet cautiously even when he was ahead by a comfortable margin. Once you've been bitten as badly as Scott had been you have to be careful and in four of his runaways he didn't have a lot of room to work with going into Final Jeopardy. He also had more than his share of bad luck in two of them: in the penultimate week of the season he would be one of just two players in Final Jeopardy and the possibility for a huge payday. In both cases he bet very big and it both cases the finals were stumpers that cost him just as big.

That's one of the scarier things about Scott's final total: it could have been significantly higher then it was. Had he gotten either or both Final Jeopardy's correctly he could have crossed the half-million mark by the time of his sixteenth win. As it was he managed to win $50,400 twice in his run: once in a runaway victory and once in his second game where he definitely had to earn it.

Scott's overall average per win for his original appearance was just over $29,000, which is obviously impressive. The reason his average is so high is, paradoxically, less because of the games where he was so dominant but the ones he wasn't even close to being. That's also why even though Scott looks very good against some players who won more games then him compared to some further down, he doesn't look quite as good. Let's compare him to three men who managed to win 12 games and him at that exact same point:

 

Austin Rogers: $411,000

Matt Jackson: $390,411

Ray Lalonde: $354,300

Scott Riccardi: $312, 501

In the case of Matt and Austin, the two of them were among the most dominant players in the last decade: Matt one $50,000 or more four different times during his run and Austin won over $60,000 twice. In Ray's case he was in a similar position to Scott, he played in more competitive games and therefore his total payouts over his run were much higher.

Make no mistake, though: Scott was as dominant as those players among the super-champions when he needed to be. When you give 39 correct answers in one game and give thirty more in three others, you are clearly one of the all time greats. And this was matched by a great ability to give as few wrong answers as possible. In his last appearance he gave 29 correct responses and not a single incorrect one. Jonathan Hugendubler knew how lucky he had been to get past him on the season finale.

Like so many of the players I mentioned on this list I expect Scott will be a familiar face on Jeopardy in the years to come. It remains to be seen if he will have the record that gets him far in the Tournament of Champions this year, but there's no question that he's already a Jeopardy Master.