If there is a drawback to the
post-Trebek era on Jeopardy it's that the relative frequency of the
super-champions makes it trickier to appreciate the kinds of winners who would
be considered the best of the best just six years ago.
Don’t get me wrong: I love
watching the Matt Amodios and the Adriana Havemeyer's as much as anybody. But
the fact is that there have been more Jeopardy champions who have reached
double-digits in games won in the last four years then there were in entire
sixteen since the five game limit was lifted. And so its understandable that it
becomes more difficult for Jeopardy fans to get that most of the typical great
Jeopardy champions are not the Scott Riccardis or Cris Pannullo's.
Indeed in the first two weeks of Season 42 we have been blessed with a Jeopardy
player that from 2003 until the end of 2021 would have been considered by the
average viewer one of the greatest of that era.
Paolo Pasco made his Jeopardy
debut on September 10th when, for reasons I don't think I need to
explain, I needed a distraction. Paolo has been more than willing to provide it
for anyone who loves Jeopardy. He managed to narrowly defeat Ian Harrison to
win $20,001 by far the lowest one day total he had.
For the next week he managed to
win seven games (four of them in runaway victories) and an incredible $195,717
in earnings. He did so with a kind of bashful self-effacement and charm that we
rarely get to see in even the greatest Jeopardy champions in their runs. On
last night's win before gameplay began Paolo said that at the start of his run
all he wanted to do was show enough charm and charisma 'to get invited back for
the Second Chance Tournament'. No one can be more grateful then the viewer to
see how spectacularly he failed in that regard.
Paolo was introduced as a 'puzzle
writer' and has in fact designed many crossword puzzles that have occasionally
appeared in the New York Times. I can't help but thing that this skill set
might have prepared him even more for Jeopardy then those who are usually among
the greatest players: teachers, students and lawyers. It's not just that in
order to create a crossword you need the kind of knowledge at your fingertips
that will mostly end of as a Jeopardy clue but considering how rare it is for a
single Jeopardy game to go by without at least one category having to do with
some form of wordplay this had to give Paolo an edge.
Indeed his penultimate game he
found a Daily Double in WORLD CAPITALS that fit into this. "They're the
world capital and its country whose names both end with the Spanish word for
water." Paolo needed just a moment to come up with: "What are
Nicaragua and Managua?" This gave him $5100 and a lead in Double Jeopardy
he never relinquished. This worked out in many categories for Paolo, ANAGRAMS,
WORDS IN FRIENDLINESS, 12-LETTER WORDS and so on.
And Paolo, like so many great
Jeopardy players, didn't make a lot of mistakes when he was playing. He had one
game where he gave 27 correct responses and made no errors and in his seventh
game he gave 28 correct responses and also made no errors. In his best game,
his second win, he gave 32 correct responses and made no mistakes.
That's incredible play.
But as with every Jeopardy champion his luck had to run out
sometime and that time turned out to be yesterday when we was playing against
Steven Olson and Hebah Uddin. He led throughout the Jeopardy round but it was a
closer game than usual. He had $5000 to Steven's $4600 and Hebah's $2200. In
Paolo's run Double Jeopardy was usually when he kicked into high. This time
that didn't happen.
Steven managed to get three of the
first five clues correct and find the first Daily Double before Paolo could
even ring in once. By that time Steven was at $11,800 to Paolo's $6200. And
Steven was simply to fast on the buzzer for Paolo to make up ground. He gave 26
correct answers to Paolo's 16 and by the end of Double Jeopardy he had $17,400
to Paolo's $9800. Still Paolo had been in this position at the start of the
week and had come back to win, so it wasn't impossible.
The Final Jeopardy category was
SLOGANS. "After adopting 'Very nice' in tourism ads, an official of this
country said, its people, "jokes to the contrary are some of the
nicest."
Hebah had $4600. She wrote down:
"What is Canada?" Hard to argue with her logic but it was incorrect.
She lost $2000.
Next came Paolo. He wrote down:
"What is Kazakhstan?" That was correct; as Ken told us it was a
reference to Borat. (Paolo added to the joke by writing "I liiiike!"
another famous reference.) Paolo gained $7601, putting him at $17,401
It came down to Steven. He also wrote
down Kazakhstan. And he bet more than a dollar, wagering $2202 giving him
$19,602 and making him a deserving new champion.
Now some personal history to let
you know that, even though he's not a super-champion, he's incredibly good.
Let's compare Paolo to say everyone in the last five years who's won about
seven games or so. (Don't worry, it's not that long a list.
Paolo Pasco: $195,717.
Drew Basile: $129,601
Stephen Webb: $184,881 (in eight games)
Courtney Shah: $118,558
Brian Chang: $163,904
Karen Farrell: $159,603 (also eight games)
In addition Paolo won more money
in 7 games then Dan Pawson did in 9 ($170,902) Ben Ingram did in 8 ($176,534)
and Buzzy Cohen did in 9 ($164,603). All three of these men, as any Jeopardy
fan worth his salt knows, went on to win the Tournament of Champions and each
have had a long and successful career in the Jeopardy postseason before they were
a thing.
When asked how Paolo felt when he
qualified for the Tournament of Champions after his victory on Tuesday Paolo
was honest: "Terrified." That is a valid statement. To be sure Paolo
has won more money in that field than anyone other than Scott Riccardi and more
games than anyone other than Scott and Laura Faddah. Of course Paolo did win
more than $100,000 then Laura but we all that counts very little in any
tournament.
But when Ken said that he didn't blame
him he wasn't blowing smoke. Even at this point the field for the 2026
Tournament of Champions is far more formidable then the one for 2025. For one
thing the 2025 field only had three players who won more than five games: Adriana
Havermeyer, Drew Basile and Isaac Hirsch. Paolo has now become the sixth player
to win more than five games (I won't give a complete list until they fill the
field out in November) and there's no reason to think that we might get one or
two more before the eligibility field closes out.
What's more seven of the ten official
qualifiers for the Tournament have won over $100,000, which I usually consider
the benchmark for a very good Jeopardy winner. Last year we had seven in the
entire field of 19 people who qualified in their original runs (excluding
the winners of the Second Chance and Champions Wild Card Tournament) And even
if we don't see any super-champions we could still get one or two who cross
that threshold regardless: Mark Fitzpatrick and Greg Jolin managed to do that
in the first months of last season.
Since we're bringing up the Second
Chance Tournament (or Paolo did) there
are at least two players who I'm relatively confident will qualify from Paolo's run. Ryan Sharpe,
who led every from beginning to end on Monday's game, and who Paolo only
defeated with a correct response in Final Jeopardy and Laura Mixter who gave
Paolo his closest fight in a match on Wednesday's game. She was ahead for a
good bit of Double Jeopardy and only a late surge by Paolo moved him into the
lead. Considering all three players got Final Jeopardy correct that counted for
a lot.
One last note before I leave you:
unlike last season when Final Jeopardy clues were so difficult they led to
small paydays throughout much of the year, so far in Season 42 this has not
been the case. Indeed the season opener began with Jonathan Hugendubler (who
will likely show up in Champions Wild Card this year) earning a $40,000 payday,
a mark that took pretty much until the end of last season for anyone to get
that high. Paolo managed two paydays of over $30,000 apiece in his original
run. In fact Steven's win is actually the lowest payday for a Jeopardy
champion so far this season. That's a good sign for the show and for us.
I will be back when the next
player qualifies for the Tournament of Champions. I honestly didn't think I'd
be writing about one this quickly.
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