Bella's Post-Weekend Nightly Thoughts: Intro to Living in Jeopardy!
Sharing my leaderboard stats and introducing new subscribers to my best content. (ignore email description, Producer's Pick commentary will be for another article)
A Special Introduction
I’m going to be straight with you all: I hate putting a lot of my content behind paywalls. I like to imagine that most people who write don’t like restricting their content to people who are financially well-off, though I don’t have the evidence to back that assertion at this very moment. The reality is, I want all info related to the show to be publicly available, including the entirety of the game archives. Unfortunately, I am physically disabled and not really accustomed to doing the most basic of human tasks. I actually spent many hours at the hospital this past Sunday for sharp pain in my heart, which the doctors…did pretty much nothing to assist me with, except saying I’m fine. I must say, I’m currently feeling very gaslit about it, but there’s not much I can do beyond talking to my primary care doctor.
In the meantime, I make a small amount of income writing about my favorite game show on this website. I have a little more than a dozen patrons, which sometimes gets me fed for about a week or so out of the whole month. As you can imagine, this isn’t particularly sufficient for me and while I don’t want to come off like I’m asking people to toss sympathy money towards me, I’m finding a shortage of options beyond this. I also do believe a lot of my work is truly valuable, a statement that I think many fans are respectful enough to concur with. I know a lot of new people aren’t particularly familiar with me, however, so I want to make this whole article free to every subscriber I have with a list of my favorite articles I’ve written to date… as well as a few comments about the current state of the show and what I’d like to see.
Of the 163 people currently subscribed, ~10% are paid subscribers ($5/month, $50/year, etc.). To unlock full content and extra content surrounding Jeopardy! lore, consider a paid subscription to my Substack. I also offer a free trial for 7 days if you want to get a taste of what my content looks like beyond what’s freely available.
Before we get into the main portion of this article, I also want to give a shout-out to the dozens of new subscribers I’ve gained over the past week. There are a couple of particular people who are responsible for this sudden influx. The first of these people is James Holzhauer, a high-earning Jeopardy! player who you might be familiar with. I’m not sure whether or not this was meant as a true compliment or not, as he was referencing the clickbait-tier “cover photo” I had chosen for the front of my article about culprits and criminals that appeared on the show. The means for the intro was just to give a shout to some of the best players of all time, such as Ken, Brad, James, Mattea, Amy, Matt A., Matt J., and more. There was a small part of my cerebrum that knew this would evoke that response, but I sure didn’t expect it from James himself! Regardless, it drove a lot of traffic and subscriptions to my Substack, and I obviously have to thank him for looking out.
The other person responsible for a lot, if not most, of the traffic I got over the week is Andy Saunders of The Jeopardy! Fan. I respect a lot of the work he does for the show and we see eye-to-eye on plenty of things related to the show and how it’s run, as well as things not particularly related to the show. He mainly does recaps of every single game that airs, as well as plenty of excellent and unique stats. He had the kindness to give me a shoutout in his pre-game thoughts this past Friday before the first final game of the inaugural Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament (JIT). He’s also the only patron to hit me with the Founding Member subscription, which is $240/year or more.
I also wanted to give a shout to fellow Substack writer and good friend of mine, Arif Hasan, who writes about mainly things pertaining to the NFL and the sport of American football. He had a recent article that went viral last month called The Rise and Fall of The Draft Network, which I absolutely recommend to everyone to read, even non-football fans, as an example of what hard-hitting journalism looks like. Now that I’ve addressed the main people I have to thank for driving me to continue this path in my life, let’s get into what got me here in the first place.
The Statisticians Before Me
The current all-time biggest winners on Jeopardy! as of April 7th, 2024. Full board with extra columns here.
A lot of what I did before starting my Substack was keeping track of the all-time biggest winners, a tradition that has existed on the internet as early as 1996, when the alt-tv game shows Google group was popping. A message board user from the Sony Pictures Boards era named “jeopfansincebirth” kept track of the all-time earnings throughout the 2000s and on Jboard.tv through the first half of the 2010s. The torch of all-time Jeopardy! earnings was then passed onto former contestant Keith Williams, also known as the creator of The Final Wager. He championed the sortable all-time leaderboard from April 30th, 2015 up until the end of the 2019 TOC. Around 2019, however, keeping up with the winners became a bit less consistent for Keith, as it wasn’t making him the revenue that he was expecting or hoping for… which sounds pretty familiar to me, tbh.
The oldest Jeopardy! leaderboard that I could find online, compiled by Brian Dominy on August 13th, 1996.
With the development of James Holzhauer and Jason Zuffranieri’s legendary streaks, I decided to start carrying what was done by the people before me in keeping track of all the biggest winners, starting with a Reddit post after the 2019 TOC. It started as the top 100 before becoming the conglomerate that I made it become. There’s now a set of criteria that I’ve created for all the players that are currently archived in the J! Archive website. The ones who don’t make the main leaderboard due to not fitting the criteria are on separate sheets. There are plenty of other spreadsheets in the document as well, including TOC results, Second Chance results, Champions Wildcard results, College Championship results, and much more. I’ve come a long way to get here as a Substack writer.
My “Greatest Hits”
Throwback Thursday: One of the Best Played Games in Jeopardy! History (1993) - My most viewed article to date, with a little over 2,000 clicks. I used to do the theme of Throwback Thursday, where on any given Thursday I would recall an old memory in Jeopardy! lore that sticks out on the date that it would be. This article’s particular date landed on a game featuring 1-time champion David Harris against his opponents Mike Boyd and Rebecca Jacobs.
The Strike on Hollywood: What Does the Future Hold for Jeopardy! Productions? - An important development in the history of not just the game show, but the television industry at large. This is a topic where I supply my more investigative side of writing. I think getting through the article will also give people the knowledge needed to understand why Season 40 has been run the way it’s been this whole time. You do have to pay
Jeoparlore!: Four Champions Who Didn't Return the Next Episode - Another one of my most viewed articles, this one goes into the special lore behind a very small selection of players who didn’t return as champion after winning their previous game, including 2024 TOC finalist Ben Chan. I also wrote an article going over Ben Chan’s unique streak of runaways as his original run was going.
10 Jeopardy! Players I Would Love to See Brought Back for J! Invitational (JIT) - Fitting for right now as we are wrapping up the JIT, a shortlist of players that I had as personal picks for who I’d enjoy seeing play again. You’ll notice that a few of these players were selected for the inaugural JIT, while others appeared in different tournaments such as Champions Wildcard.
Jeoparlore!: The Seven Tournament of Champions Players Who Never Were - Beyond even just this Substack article, I transformed this into my first longform video about Jeopardy! on February 26th this year. This also includes an additional entry to the list not seen in the Substack article, Kelly Donohue. I recommend both reading and watching the video! More video content will be created in the future as well.
What is "The Most Money Ever Won On Jeopardy! By a Woman?" - A pretty self-explanatory article, this goes pretty deep into the history of Jeopardy! in the Trebek era. I plan on eventually turning this into a YouTube video as well, with some extra details I can hopefully find from the Fleming era.
And for my two most recent articles,
The Criminals & Culprits of Jeopardy! Part 1: Blood Loss, Burglaries, & Murder Mysteries - Highly requested from my own audience, people really like the true crime topic. I dig through a wide variety of different crimes committed by eight former Jeopardy! players. Part 2 is going to have just as many players and it will also go in just as much depth.
What is the "Forrest Bounce" and Why Does it Make People So Angry? - My longest and most researched article to date, I dive into the 40 years surrounding the most notorious and influential strategy of Jeopardy! history. Many videos, articles, and historic archives attached in here.
With all that I’ve laid out here for readers to view, I hope the great majority of you stick around. Knowing that this many people are interested in what I have to say, as well as the passion that people have to learn about the greatest game show of all time, is what keeps this publication going. Be prepared for more great content in the future. Thank you again. <3