Jeopardy! Weekly Recap (5/22-5/26): New Champions Take the Throne, Masters Concludes
Ben Chan takes his first loss, while a Jeopardy! Masters winner is crowned.
Ben Couldn’t Run Away Anymore
On Monday, May 22nd, 8-time champion Ben Chan returned with $227,800 in his bank to face off against Joe Lasser, an astronautical engineer from Illinois, and Nancy Duran, a marketing copywriter from Vermont. In the first round, Ben caught the first Daily Double, capitalizing on his full bank of $2,800 with a True Daily Double wager. By the end of the round, he had a big lead with $8,400, compared to $1,400 for Joe and -$400 for Nancy.
Joe caught the first Daily Double, doubling his score of $2,200 to $4,400, before Ben found the other Daily Double in the round, answering it correctly for an extra $2,000. In continuing his streak of consecutive runaway games, he maintained his perfect runaway rate going into Final Jeopardy! with $20,800, compared to $7,600 for Joe and $3,600 for Nancy. Joe and Ben were correct in the final round, with Ben adding $4,000 for a win of $24,800 and a 9-day total of $252,600.
On Tuesday, Ben returned for a chance of becoming one of 17 players to win at least ten games. With his runaway streak being at 9, it looked like it'd be a slam dunk for him. In the first round, he dominated his opponents Danny Leserman and Lynn Di Vito, despite missing a True Daily Double worth $4,200, to finish the round with $7,200, compared to $1,600 for Danny and $1,000 for Lynn. However, the game begin to shift in the second round.
Lynn picked first, and then grabbed $4,800 worth of correct answers before finding the first Daily Double. With a wager of $3,000 and a correct response on a clue in the Medicine category, Lynn was suddenly ahead of Ben. Suddenly it didn’t look like an easy runaway anymore. Ben went on to find the other Daily Double, but missed again to lose $3,000. Despite this, Ben went on a roll for the second half of the round to finish in the lead with $17,400, compared to $14,800 for Lynn and $2,400 for Danny. This was the first game in which Ben did not have a runaway.
The final clue was on Shakespeare’s Characters. The clue was about Beatrice & Benedick, and both Danny and Lynn went with Romeo & Juliet. Danny bet $1,400 to drop to $1,000 and Lynn dropped $3,000 to finish with $11,800. It was Ben’s turn and his final response was revealed as Beatrice & Benedict.
Normally, the show doesn’t penalize for misspelling, but in the case of Ben’s response, it affected the pronunciation and Benedict is a different name than Benedick. He was ruled incorrectly and dropped $12,201 to finish in second place, bringing his all-time total to $254,600. He still holds the highest runaway rate in regular games out of anyone in Jeopardy! history post-2003
New Digs, New Champions
Champion Lynn Di Vito, a museum educator from Colorado, returned on Wednesday, May 24th, to face off against Ed Petersen from Florida and Joyce Sun, a retired lawyer from New Jersey. Joyce was ahead after the first round, with $5,600 compared to $3,200 for Lynn, who missed a $1,200 Daily Double, and $0 for Ed. In the Double Jeopardy! round, Lynn found the first Daily Double but missed again, losing $2,000, followed by Ed missing the second Daily Double worth $1,600. It was pretty competitive, but Joyce came out of the round leading with $10,800 compared to $10,400 for Ed and $6,400 for Lynn.
In the Final Jeopardy! round, Ed had the biggest advantage out of anyone if it ended up being a Triple Stumper in which all three players missed. Surely enough, that’s what happened. Lynn dropped $5,000 to finish with $1,400. Ed bet to cover a doubled score from Lynn, dropping $2,401 to finish with $7,999, also forcing Lynn to be correct in order to surpass him. Joyce was incorrect as well, dropping $10,500 to finish with $300, making Ed the new champ with $7,999.
Ed’s championship didn’t last long though, for his next game featured his string of incorrect responses as being a weakness, as it left him in second place before Final Jeopardy! with $12,400, compared to $14,800 for New York accounting director Jesse Chin, with Pennsylvania library assistant Megan Braught having $6,200. All three players were correct, with Megan adding $1,200 to finish with $7,400, Ed adding $2,401 for $14,801, and Jesse adding $10,001 to win with $24,801.
The final game of the week on Friday, May 26th, was between Jesse Chin, Quebec technical writer Diandra D’Alessio, and Illinois political scientist Alice Ciciora. The match was not very high-scoring, but was very competitive the whole way with all three players within a range of $1,100 from each other.
Alice had the upper hand with $8,900, compared to $8,600 for Jesse and $7,800 for Diandra. All three players were incorrect, which meant wagering was very important. Diandra dropped $4,501 to finish with $3,299, Jesse bet everything, and Alice bet $8,301 to cover Jesse’s doubled score. Diandra became the new champion, and she’ll return Monday to face Travis Lee and Niranjan Murali.
Bow Down to Your Jeopardy! Master
This week, a winner for Jeopardy! Masters was crowned. The semifinals was a clean sweep for James Holzhauer in all three of his games, garnering 72 correct responses and 9 match points. The real indicator for who would join him in the finals was whoever finished with the most match points and correct responses. Matt Amodio struggled his way through the semifinals, getting less correct answers than anyone else. However, he found all of the Daily Doubles and stormed his way to a runaway in the final game against Mattea Roach and Andrew He, thus garnering three points and solidifying his spot in the finals.
Between the three in Matt’s winning game, Mattea did the worst, finishing with 5,799 JepCoins™ compared to 15,199 for Andrew. However, the determination of who would make the finals was determined by correct responses. The first game from Mattea and Andrew against James is what sealed Andrew’s fate, for Mattea had taken command of the game in the second round, getting 20 correct answers throughout the game, compared to 9 for Andrew. At the end of the last semifinal matchup, Mattea had 50 correct answers compared to 45 for Andrew. Mattea got the last spot in the finals, and Andrew took home the 4th place prize of $100,000 for an all-time total of $359,365.
While James had been dominating the whole tournament, the finals were anything but a cakewalk for him. At first, it seemed like he would run with it in the first game after he got his True Daily Double of 8,600 JepCoins™ correct, bringing him to 17,200. Mattea, however, had other plans once they found the other Daily Double, putting all 7,200 JepCoins™ on the line and answering correctly to make it a way closer match. The round finished with James at 22,400, Mattea at 16,800, and Matt with 6,000. All three players were correct in Final Jeopardy! with James picking up 11,914, Mattea picking up 8,000, and Matt picking up all 6,000 JepCoins™.
Going into the second game, it was 34,314 for James, 24,800 for Mattea, and 12,000 for Matt. Like the first game, James found the Daily Double on the very first clue, but again answered incorrectly. He was unusually off his game a little bit in the two-day total point affair at this point, though he still held the lead after the first round with 5,600 JepCoins™ compared to 4,600 for Mattea and 1,200 for Matt.
Double Jeopardy! was an incredibly seismic shift of results, with Mattea catching the first Daily Double to double their score to 14,800 JepCoins™. Matt landed on the second Daily Double, putting all 4,600 JepCoins™ at risk, but unfortunately missing the clue and sealing his fate, even missing a 2,000-point clue to get himself into the hole. He was able to get out with a score of 3,200, but Mattea had completely taken command at this point, finishing the round with 22,800, compared to 9,600 for James. A string of correct answers from James at the end of the round prevented Mattea from running away with the tournament.
In the final round, the clue was about Latin in Literature. The correct response to the clue was Thomas Malory. No one got it right. Matt responded with “who… will… win?!?!” to build anticipation and also provide comic relief, wagering nothing to finish with a game 2 score of 3,200 and overall total of 15,200. James wagered 119, dropping him to 9,481 and finishing with a two-game total of 43,795. Mattea went with Geoffrey Chaucer, wagering 5,915 to cover the highest possible score that James could finish with to finish the game with 16,885. Adding 24,800 from the first game, their two-game total was 41,685.
By 2,110 points, James won the tournament taking home $500,000, with Mattea winning $250,000 for second place, and Matt earning $150,000 for third place. James is now the third person in Jeopardy! history to surpass $3,000,000 in all-time gameplay, with Matt now at 5th place and $1,679,601 within $30,199 of Amy Schneider’s all-time total of $1,709,800, and Mattea rising from 10th to 6th place with a total of $822,983. Andrew also rose 12 spots from 36th to 24th place, following his 4th place finish. Sam Buttrey stands at 59th place with $200,000 in overall winnings following his 6th place finish behind Amy. James, Mattea, and Matt will all be returning to Masters next year, while Andrew, Amy, and Sam will return to Invitational for a chance to win back a spot in Masters.
