The 2026 Jeopardy Champions Wild Card Roster Is Locked

 

I realize that in the post-Trebek era I've spent a lot of time raging against the Jeopardy Second Chance Tournament before reaching a reluctant if not full-throated acceptance of it. By comparison I've said very little about the Champions Wild Card Tournament. Indeed I don't even think I went into detail about the lineup going into the previous postseason.

In theory Champions Wild Card was on a sounder principle than Second Chance when it was introduced in 2022. I suspect my major difficulty with it came due to circumstances basically beyond Jeopardy's control: the 2023 strikes in Hollywood which in turn gave us the postseason that ate Season 40. It didn't help matters that when all of the Champions Wild Card was said and done three of the winners Josh Saak, Emily Sands  Yungsheng Wang were three game winners and by the time the 2024 Tournament of Champions finally got started no less than six of the participants had won three games, including the eventual winner Yogesh Raut.  It really did seem like we'd run twice as fast to end up in the same place.

While not all of this could be laid at the feet of the producers to their credit they chose to evolve Champions Wild Card the next time around. Last January it took the format of what had been the old Jeopardy format of extending invitations to only fifteen players, two of whom had prevailed in the just completed Second Chance Tournament. They had already extended invitations to the majority of the three-game winners in Season 40, so the only three game winner who was invited was Jay Fisher who by far had won the least of them. With one exception who had won a single game, the remainder had all won two games. It was hard not to see this as a successful format.

And in the rare case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', the producers have kept the format intact going into this postseason with the sole exception of this time there will be three winners of the Second Chance Tournament going in against 12 competitors. Going in I made some educated guesses as to who some of the likely participants would be. Most of my choices were well-informed guesses so I don't deserve too much credit.

 

Bill McKinney 3 Wins $46,800

Geoff Barnes, 3 wins $44,601

 

It didn't take a genius to predict these two: they were on the low end of the three game winners that were left and that's how things worked out for Jay Fisher last year. So let's move on to the two game winners:

James Corson, $70,800

Jonathan Hugendubler, $63,601

Dave Bond, $51,400

Jason Singer, $48,801

Dargan Ware, $47,801

James and Jonathan's scores were incredibly high and considering Jonathan had dethroned Scott Riccardi, it made double sense. Jason famous lost to Scott and broke an unprecedented streak of one-day winners by winning back-to-back games. Dargan had lost to Tom Devlin who has already qualified. Dave Bond's selections make sense since Bill McKinney is here.

Now there were seven other winners of two games over Season 41 who theoretically could have been invited. The one who I thought had the best chance was Mitch Loflin who won $35,700 before Brendan Liaw defeated him en route to securing a spot in this year's Tournament of Champion. But it would have been a borderline call at best and I can see why the producers might have decided to pass over him.

The remaining players invited back are all 1-game winners and I made cases for many of them. The one who was picked by the producers was Vickie Tavola who not only won an impressive $26,407 in her original appearance but defeated four game winner Steven Olson in doing so. None of the others I theorized about made it and the majority won less then Vickie did. That said I can understand the logic with the remaining four invitees:

 

Stella Trout, $28,800

Stella defeated Geoff Barnes and she had the highest one game total of any player who only won one game. (Say that three times fast. )

 

Cameron Berry, $24,600

Cameron dethroned Alex DeFrank only to be defeated by Josh Weikert the following day.  This was the standard for quite a few of the one day players invited to the initial Champions Wild Card.

 

Harvey Silkowitz, $23,600

First of all he utterly trounced 8-game winner Laura Faddah and he actually had a higher total going into Final Jeopardy then he finished with: $36,800. If its good enough for Victoria Groce, can I quibble?

 

Ian Morrison, $22,009

Managed a remarkable come from behind victory when he defeated Jonathan Huguendubler. Then he went head-to-head with Paolo Pasco and actually came close to beating him before the game came to an end. By the metrics of Wild Card there's logic to this.

Now theoretically I could take this opportunity to pat myself on the back for accurately predicting eight of the twelve participants in Champions Wild Card this year.  And while I do deserve some credit a lot of this is just plain arithmetic. And while I didn't look at any of the sites such as Jeopardy Fan which track these kinds of thing when I made my predictions I was aware of them, so that was a factor. (Though they no doubt were using the same standards I was.)

We'll have to wait to see who wins the Second Chance Tournament to know the remaining three slots but I will admit quite a few of these are players I have a certain investment in. Jonathan looked like he was going to be unbeatable until Ian beat him (I'd like to see if that match up plays out) and his reaction when he defeated Scott Riccardi is one of the great moments in Jeopardy I've seen since the Trebek era came to an end.  Dargan looked like he was a force of nature until Tom Devlin beat him so I'll be interested to see how he does. Jason Singer has a fanbase in large part because of his wife's history with the show and let's not kid ourselves he has a reason to want to win as much as Jonathan does.  And Harvey became a fan favorite not just when he won but how he played and he does have a lovable nature to him.

Champions Wild Card 2026 is scheduled to begin on January 5 of that year. Anything that I write about Jeopardy until the start of the Second Chance Tournament will by default have to do with the roster for next year's postseason. And if you're watching the show right now you know that someone's already officially qualified and a lot of you are marking your calendar for that to begin because of it. But one great champion at a time.