We went through March and April of
2026 watching the incredible play of Jamie Ding as he became the fifth
winningest Jeopardy player of all time in both games and money. May barely began and Tristan Williams became the
first player in Jeopardy history to win exactly ten games. Then followed Chris
D'Angelo with 8 wins and Peter McFerrin with six.
And then not even a week after
Peter was defeated comes the fourth super-champion of Season 42 so far: Adam
Remsen. This is pretty fast, even compared to Season 38. There was a week
between Mattea Roach losing and Ryan Long coming along.
Adam has not been quite as impressive
as either Jamie or Harrison Whitaker in winning even though he ran away with
six of his first ten victories. Indeed he reached Tristan's mark far more by
luck then skill. He ran away with five of his first six games but only got
Final Jeopardy correct in two of them. But then he found a groove and with his
next four wins responded correctly in all four Final Jeopardys including the
three where he was the only player to respond correctly and all of which were
not runaways.
After he officially achieved
super-champion status Thursday in what was by far his hardest fought victory
against Kate Raven and Derek Lombardi (both of whom are likely to appear in the
next Second Chance Tournament) Friday's match now had more importance. By
matching Tristan Williams in victories if he were to win it would almost
certainly grant him a bye into the semi-finals of the 2027 Tournament of
Champions along with Jamie Ding and Harrison Whitaker. He'd won $228,806 in his
ten wins to Tristan's $221,902 and while that extra $6900 or so might be
enough to guarantee him that bye, the eleventh win would insure it. In either case it was unprecedented territory
for Jeopardy in this new era and I'm pretty sure the producers would have
appreciated the cup being taken from their lips if they were forced to make a
hard decision. (Unless of course after Adam lost someone else won eleven games
or more in the interim which at this point no one – certainly not me - can discount. But one super-champion at a
time.)
Playing against Kristin Warner and
Clay Stallworth on Friday it took a while to become clear that would happen. He
got off to his usual fast start and at the end of the Jeopardy round he was in
the lead with $8000 to Kristin's $3400 and Clay's $2400. But for Adam that was
the norm. It wasn't until Double Jeopardy was underway that it was clear it
would be Adam's finest hour so far.
He got the first three clues correct
in Double Jeopardy before finding the first Daily Double in PLAYING THE DOZENS.
He wagered $4000:
Hercules labor-ed at 12 tasks to atone
for killing his family, an atrocity committed after this stepmother drove him
insane."
There was a long pause. Finally Adam,
in what he admitted later was a guess, said: "Who is Hera?" It paid
off and he was at $16,000.
Four clues later he found the other
Daily Double in BLANK VERSE. This time he bet $8000:
From 'Invictus', "I am the master
of my fate, I am the 'blank-blank-blank-blank'. He figured this out quicker:
"What is the captain of my soul?" And then he was at $24,800.
It wasn't quite over yet but when it
was Adam had responded correctly to 32 clues including all three Daily Doubles
to finish with $38,000 his most impressive runaway to date. All that remained
to be seen was how high his final total would be.
The category was U.S. LANDMARKS. Norwegian
Arne Petersen was the last to pass through this location which was then
officially closed in 1954. Like his opponents Adam knew the correct
response: "What is Ellis Island?" He bet $12,000 to finish with
$50,000 on his eleventh victory and a new total of $278,806 in those eleven
wins. The bye into the semi-finals was assured.
With Tristan's triumph Adam had
officially entered super-champion status Thursday. But now that he is at a
level that was the officially recognized standard before that, it's time
to see where he stands compared to all those who've come before him.
In this case I think that should stand
for just the post-Trebek era which by now is a more than big enough number. I
will go backwards starting from all those who came before Adam and stop at Matt
Amodio:
Adam Remsen: $278,806
Jamie Ding: $291,820
Harrison Whitaker: $309,000
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
Jonathan Fisher: $246,100
Matt Amodio: $368,699
As you can see Adam's in the middle of
the pack pretty much as the level of the last group of super-champs, not nearly
at the level of the very best. This is true even if you were to go back to the
era of Trebek. He's already won more money in his 11 games then Seth Wilson did
in twelve but he's behind Arthur Chu after he got to eleven games. And he has no realistic chance of getting to
Matt Jackson or Austin Rogers' totals unless he manages to win at least another
three or four games at this pace.
It took him until Friday to finally
hit the $50,000 total in his biggest win. That's really not that shocking, even
the greatest of greats have a lot of trouble reaching that figure. This was by
far the biggest runaway victory Adam has managed and it’s the first one where
he got Final Jeopardy correct with this big a wager involved. Most of his
runaways haven't given him too much room to maneuver and in many of his wins
where the game has been close he has even less. He has managed to get every
single Final Jeopardy correct this week which is a huge improvement over his
last week.
By and large Adam hasn't had a game as
dominant as this before. By and large
he's managed somewhere between 20 and 25 correct answers in every game he's
played to this point. He's also been lucky in most of his matches when his
opponents find Daily Doubles and bet big they've gotten them wrong. He's found
the majority of the Daily Doubles in the Jeopardy round but when he does
they're almost too early to do him much good. This was true today when he found
it on the first clue of the Jeopardy round; he found it on the second clue of
that round yesterday.
How far Adam can go remains to be
seen. Obviously the next point to measure how good he is will be if he manages
to make it to the end of next week at which point he'll have won sixteen
games, officially putting him in the top ten. In previous seasons the last
weeks of the year have been a good time for super-champions: Adam began his run
right around the time Adriana Harmeyer
did two years ago and roughly the same time last year Scott Riccardi
began his run. It's pretty clear Adam is at their level in terms of skill.
When Adam's streak comes to an end
I'll be back with the final ranking. Conversely if he's still around by Friday
you can count on hearing from me during the long weekend. Either way I'll be
back with more on the incredible 42nd season of Jeopardy sooner
rather than later.
No comments:
Post a Comment