What is the "Forrest Bounce" and Why Does it Make People So Angry?
Going over the origins of the notorious Forrest Bounce game strategy and how it grew to be the most commonly used technique among the greatest Jeopardy! champions, including James Holzhauer.
Chapters of Content
1.) Intro to the Bounce
2.) The Origin of the Forrest Bounce
3.) The Pioneering Developers of the Forrest Bounce
4.) The Arthur Chu Affect
5.) Jeopardy James: The Next Great Champion
6.) The Forrest Bounce Courthouse
7.) Post-Holzhauer: The Champions Who Benefited
8.) The Antagonism of a Former Champion
9.) The Current State of the Forrest Bounce
10.) The GOAT Defeats the Creator & the MVP
11.) The Return of Chuck Forrest
“It is WILD to be in a game and realize that Chuck Forrest is Forrest Bouncing against you. I imagine it's like getting punched by Muhammad Ali: it hurts and is a little disorienting, but you're still weirdly grateful for the experience.” - Sam Kavanaugh, 3/28/2024.
(All video footage of the Jeopardy! game show displayed here is owned by Sony Pictures Studios and Jeopardy! Productions, Inc. and is used for educational and entertainment purposes only.)
Intro to the Bounce
It’s been five years since James Holzhauer’s run began. Do you ever wonder, theoretically, how an incredible run from a player like James Holzhauer was able to even happen? In the show’s six decades of gameplay, the show has not only gone through a lot of cultural changes over the years, but strategic adjustments as well. These gaming techniques have captivated and entertained viewers for many years now, but have monetarily benefited only the most elite of players who make it onto the show.
Of all strategies that have developed and evolved over time though, there’s one in particular that everyone is familiar with nowadays, as it’s become the gold standard for success: the Forrest Bounce. Many viewers, longtime and casual, are familiar with that term by now and have become increasingly polarized on how it affects their enjoyment of the iconic quiz show, especially when it comes to the controversial players who adopt the technique for their benefit.
However, there have been a lot of rants I’ve seen and read online about this, often from older fans who are used to the show being played more traditionally, from top to bottom, category to category. In the midst of this, the Forrest Bounce has been often misattributed to certain players due to their insistence upon the use of the strategy, as well as being outliers to the success rate that it actually gives certain players. For today’s article, I’m going to be teaching you all about the origins surrounding this strategy, the most successful and famous players to use it, and the rather troublesome opinion pieces that I’ve run into, why they’re wrong, and what I think they’re wrong about.
The Origin of the Forrest Bounce
An example of established top-down play being used during the Fleming era (4/24/1974).
Debuting just over 60 years ago, Jeopardy! has slowly become the most prominently and passionately viewed and analyzed quiz show, potentially of all time. With Art Fleming hosting the show throughout its first 15 years of daytime and nighttime airings, the show’s beginnings were fairly humble, with clue values being 1/20th of the amounts that they are now (thank you, U.S. inflation rates). Players would nearly exclusively play the game from top to bottom, category to category in hopes of pocketing some quick cash. It wasn’t really the high-stakes and strategy-smothered game that we know it to be now. On September 10th, 1984, the show was revived into a syndication TV slot with Alex Trebek hosting the show. There weren’t any big changes beyond clue values being 10 times the amount they were before, with $100 to $500 in the first round followed by $200 to $1000 in the second round. There were still three rounds and three Daily Doubles in the game, with the second round containing two Daily Doubles.
In the first season, fifteen 5-time champions emerged with Paul Boymel being the top-earning player of the season with $56,200. These players were each brought back in November of 1985 to compete in the very first Tournament of Champions of the syndicated era, which was won by Jerry Frankel. While this was already an upgrade from the typical number of 9 players in a TOC during the Fleming era, there was an even bigger culture shock shot through the airwaves of America’s television screens over a month prior: the debut of Chuck Forrest’s nearly 40-year reign of Jeopardy! gameplay on September 30th, 1985, where he won an astonishing $18,000 in his first game. In his next game, he continued the dominance with winning $12,500, quickly climbing up the ranks and becoming a genuine threat to the stage with his quick buzzing and recall. By his 4th win, he had already surpassed Boymel’s 5-day record with an all-time total of $60,000. After winning his 5th game and accumulating another $12,800, he qualified for the 1986 Tournament of Champions where he would wind up fundamentally changing the way Jeopardy! was played for eternity.
In his quarterfinal game which aired on November 14th, 1986, Chuck selected the first clue due to being at the champion’s podium: Nuclear Physics for $100. Guy Tonti answered the clue correctly and picked the next clue in the category for $200, which Chuck answered correctly. He then switched over to The Queen’s English for $100. It’s far from uncommon for a player to pick another category after answering a clue correctly, but it was a little odd seeing as how Chuck wanted to start with Nuclear Physics in the first place.
The real strangeness came after he answered the clue in The Queen’s English correctly: he went back to Nuclear Physics for $300, a clue which he responded to correctly. After that, he selected The Queen’s English for $200, which he answered affirmatively as well. He bounced back towards Nuclear Physics for $400, then The Queen’s English again, and then finally cleared the Nuclear Physics category. While unorthodox, the strategy was a great success for him as he dominated the game and advanced to the semifinals over his two opponents. He would go on to emulate this same strategy for the rest of the tournament, up until day 2 of the finals. For an example of what this all looks like, let’s take a gander at the first several clues of the deciding game with Chuck Forrest playing against Marvin Shinkman and Paul Rouffa, starting with clue selection #3.
Chuck Forrest bouncing between clues in categories to confuse opponents in the Tournament of Champions finals (11/21/1986).
By the end of the Double Jeopardy! round, Chuck’s lead was so insurmountable that he was unable to be caught by Paul or Marvin. He won the tournament and $100,000 more to surpass Jerry Frankel’s all-time total of $132,650 by $40,000 and change. Along with becoming the winningest money-earner on the show at the time and being called “the Alexander the Great of Jeopardy!” by the LA Times in 1989, he had innovated and pioneered a strategy that would become not only emulated for years to come by many players, but also evolved and expanded upon by some of the most beloved contestants we’ve come to know over time.
In 1992, Forrest and 1988 TOC winner Mark Lowenthal co-wrote a book together called “Secrets of the Jeopardy! Champions” where the two talked about their time on the show, how they became successful, and then gave the readers a wide and diverse amount of trivial facts to help them acquire necessary knowledge to do well on the show. On page 13, both of the players discussed the strategies that are most preferential for them to use. Mark cited starting from the top of the board and making his way down to the bottom. He does acknowledge, however, that this requires a lot of confidence in a category, as well as the ability to build a hot streak. Luckily for Mark, he did have the gameplay ability to back up the strategy, as evident by his 5 wins and TOC victory in 1988. Chuck Forrest, however, cites the strategy that he used to win the 1986 Tournament of Champions.
While he named it as the “Rubin Bounce,” it’s often known to die-hard fans as the “Forrest Bounce,” as he was the first player to successfully implement the strategy on television. Despite pulling this off and being one of the show’s most iconic players to this day, most people took Mark Lowenthal’s traditional and simple approach of going from top-to-bottom for the next 20 years, including all-time money winner Brad Rutter, as well as Ken Jennings, who currently holds the record for the longest streak in Jeopardy! history at 74 wins, which he set in 2004. In the aftermath of Ken’s run, as well as the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, there was a long streak that began at the end of Season 21. It kind of went under the radar due to it not being as long or reported on as Ken’s, and that’s the 19-day streak of David Madden, a student from Ridgewood, New Jersey at the time.
The Pioneering Developers of the Forrest Bounce
David Madden successfully hunting for the Daily Double after bouncing through three different categories (7/22/2005).
In David Madden’s second game, he began the game in an interesting fashion. He started at the $800 clue in “Paying Tribute,” and then went down to the $1000 clue, finding the Daily Double and betting the maximum amount possible. He did the same thing in his 5th game and often closed off these actions by finishing or attempting to finish the category. At the beginning of his 14th game, the final game of Season 21, he bounced through a couple of different categories worth $600-$1000 from clues 5 through 8, before finding the Daily Double on a $600 clue in a different category, where he bet just $200. It seemed intentional that he would hunt for the Daily Doubles in hopes of preventing his opponents from finding them, despite the often conservative bets he’d end up making. This is not something that Chuck’s initial implementation of the technique seemed to account for, but David used it to his advantage even when Daily Doubles weren’t on the board.
A more flashy example of this is what happened in his next game in the Season 22 premiere on 9/12/2005, when Willy Jay held a $13,000 lead over him after finding both Daily Doubles in the Double Jeopardy! round. After clearing the Baltic Cruise category, David decreased his deficit from the lead to $9,400. With two categories left and a lot of ground to make up, David went to the bottom of the board for Poetic Lines. After answering that correctly, David switched over to 2-Letter Abbreviations for $2000, followed by the $1600 clue in Abbreviations, the $1200 clue in Poetic Lines, and continued the rhythm until the end of the round.
While Willy answered a couple of more clues correctly, his lead was no longer insurmountable. By the end of the round, David used the Forrest Bounce to cut his deficit from $13,000 to just $1,400 and then won the game on a double-miss between him and Willy. With $21,400, he had a 15-day total of $354,701. Inverting the clue value selections that we’re used to seeing from Chuck gave the technique new life, as David continued his reign as one of only a little over a dozen champions to win more than 10 games.
Another player who prominently benefited from bouncing around the board was Roger Craig. While he wasn’t a supreme user of the Bounce, he was very noteworthy at the time for capitalizing strongly on aggressive bets whenever he found Daily Doubles. So much so that he ended up breaking Ken Jennings’s one-day record of $75,000 in regular gameplay with a score of $77,000 on his second win before winning 4 more games for a 6-day total of $230,200. Similarly to Chuck Forrest, his full potential was unlocked during the Tournament of Champions in 2011 when he made it to the finals against Tom Nissley and Buddy Wright. What started and developed as a pretty evenly matched game between the three quickly turned into the Roger Craig Show once the category “Anagrammys” was cleared out.
Roger Craig finding both Daily Doubles in Double Jeopardy! and betting it all on both clues, quadrupling his score (11/14/2011).
At this moment, with or without intention, Roger had upgraded the Forrest Bounce. When Chuck pioneered the technique, it was a move meant to confuse and throw off opponents. David elevated the blueprint by using his broader knowledge base to answer higher-valued clues and prevent his opponents from grabbing the Daily Doubles. With Roger, however, not only did he do both of these things, but he took the initiative of going as big as possible to make it to where his opponents had no hope of catching up. As a result of these two big moves, Roger easily won the TOC worth $250,000 and became one of the show’s biggest winners of all-time, surpassing all-time legends like Larissa Kelly and Dan Pawson at the time. With the big streaks and big wins of these players coming into fruition so many years following Chuck Forrest’s groundbreaking run, it was only a matter of time before the strategy would begin catching a lot of wind from upcoming players, as well as the ire of many viewers. It all began on January 28th, 2014, when Arthur Chu made his first appearance.
The Arthur Chu Affect
Arthur Chu immediately and aggressively hunting for the Daily Doubles in his first game (1/28/2014).
In a fashion that immediately emulated other precedents from all-time greats such as David Madden and Chuck Forrest, Arthur bounced right to the bottom of the board on the hunt for Daily Doubles and in hopes of confusing his opponents after answering the first clue correctly in his first game. In the Double Jeopardy! round, he found the last Daily Double of the game and was in third place with $7,600. He put everything at stake on the clue doubled up to $15,200 with a correct response. By the end of the round, he held a narrow lead over Julie Singer, the returning champion.
It was in Final Jeopardy! where he benefited most, when he was the only one to solve the clue. Rather than wagering for the win though, he wagered for the tie, betting $17,200 to win with $37,200, the maximum score that Julie could have acquired. At this time, tiebreakers in regular gameplay didn’t exist, so whenever a tie occurred all players with the same score would wind up returning the next game. In Arthur’s second game, he implored the same Forrest Bounce technique to find all three Daily Doubles, with him betting the $5 minimum in the first round to spite the dreaded Sports category.
Arthur Chu betting $5 after bouncing to a category he hates, Sports Hall of Fame (1/29/2014).
Even though he threw the Daily Double that he hunted for, his opponents no longer had a chance to use it as a crutch against him. In the second round, he bet it all on the second Daily Double he found but lost all his money following an incorrect response. Luckily for him, the Forrest Bounce still came in handy with him as he answered all of the high-valued clues with precision and gained back $10,000 by the 19th clue, where he found the last Daily Double. Arthur put $5,000 at risk and finally capitalized from an accurate response. In Final Jeopardy!, he extended the chaos even further by betting for the tie again, which ended up manifesting as a result. With Carolyn Collins betting it all to win $26,800 with Arthur, he had a 2-day total of $64,000 as well as a co-champion by his side. The next game was nowhere near as lucky for Carolyn, however, as Arthur dominated the game to earn a win worth $18,800, followed by $20,000 the next day…where he wagered for the tie again. As a result of this
With Arthur’s run taking place in the midst of the Battle of the Decades, there were a couple of detours in the middle of his run. But whenever he was on the screen, he was making a lot of viewers mad. As the age of social media began to expand, the likes of Facebook and X formerly known as Twitter™ foamed at the mouth to insult him. Big media outlets such as The Washington Post and The Guardian, tabloids like Medium, and even longtime Jeopardy! archivists such as Fikkle Fame were writing lengthy pieces about how Arthur was impacting the game. At the time, Arthur was very controversial as people were at odds with the way he played, the way he conducted himself on social media, and the attitude that they perceived from him while he was playing the game.
Arthur Chu ended his run with 11 wins and just under $300,000. His gameplay was a stark contrast from the other big streak and high-money earner of the season, 20-game winner Julia Collins, who played the traditional way and picked up $428,100, just a couple thousand dollars less than David Madden. In the 2014 Tournament of Champions, both Arthur and Julia made the finals but lost to 8-game winner Ben Ingram. In order to be competitive with Arthur, both Julia and Ben had to go to the middle of the board and then down, which almost worked for Julia in the first game of the finals when she found the Daily Doubles. However, it was Ben who benefited the most due to being the sole solve of Final Jeopardy in game 1, which was helped by a triple miss in the second game of the finals.
With the big new changes in game strategy coming through from players like Madden, Craig, and Chu especially, more players with tendencies to make aggressive bets and bounce around the board came through, such as 2015 TOC finalists Alex Jacob and Matt Jackson. The latter of the two won 13 games and just over $400,000, while the former ended up winning 6 games and a little bit under $150,000.
Alex Jacob going on a tear at the beginning of his 5th game using Arthur Chu’s alteration of the Forrest Bounce strategy (4/16/2015).
Between the two, Alex Jacob was much more accustomed to using Arthur Chu's specific variation of the Forrest Bounce and the true effect of Chu’s cause. As a World Poker player, when Alex found a Daily Double that he was hunting for, he'd often go all-in to put the game away, or $100 to keep himself safe. This could also be seen as a callback combination of the aggressive style of Roger Craig, as well as the risk-averse style of David Madden, perhaps resulting in a maturation of the already deadly strategy. Unlike Chu, his procedural predecessor, his implementation of the upgraded strategy resulted in him winning the TOC over Matt Jackson in what was described by Alex Trebek as the most dominant performance that he had seen in tournament history.
While other 10+ game winners like Seth Wilson and Austin Rogers tended to start from the top, Austin and 2017 TOC winner Buzzy Cohen often took the initiative of hunting for the Daily Doubles. As this phenomenon of gameplay began to really become more common, Alex Trebek was interviewed by Vulture the following year to talk in depth about a diverse range of topics, which included discussion surrounding the Forrest Bounce and how it developed over time. The passage about it reads as follows:
When this interview portion was mentioned to Chuck Forrest in his own Vulture interview, he made the following statement:
“Sure, I think he’s right to a certain degree. Some of these categories are written so that you need to start from the top. I’ve had experiences where I jumped in the middle and didn’t understand what the category was, and I found myself getting a question wrong. You have to be in a very dominant position in order to use this. People sitting at home might find it confusing. There are a few people who have been able to use it effectively, and many others will try it, hit a roadblock, and wish they wouldn’t have done it. You see people psychologically give up. You’ll see other people claw back into the competition. And it all happens in a very short period of time. If you were to make this show an hour, I don’t think it would be any better or a better way to determine who’s a better player.”
And this was all true. Outside of a few TOC players, there weren’t many players who really grew super accustomed to this way of playing even if they could pull it off. For the longest time, it was just traditional gameplay while Chuck Forrest was very much an outlier in this instance. By the 2010s, it was no longer the same.
With the Forrest Bounce becoming more utilized over time and with new players coming in to constantly innovate and evolve upon what we already know about the blueprint it provided, it was only a matter of time until the Forrest Bounce’s optimal efficacy was maximized. After this interview, the All-Star Games featuring 18 of the show’s best and most memorable players premiered in February of 2019, ending on March 5th. Despite the wholly competitive nature of this tournament, the Forrest Bounce was really only prominently used by one or two players at best since most of the players had competed in an era where this kind of method wasn’t often exposed or put into practice.
Chuck Forrest made this grandiose statement about the state of the Forrest Bounce in 2024:
“When I got to the show on the stage, I could see the physical advantage of it. When you name the category and amount, everybody has to look for it. But you know where you’re looking. That half-second advantage makes a big difference. Now the balance has been turned into a tool for searching for Daily Doubles. I didn’t see the Daily Double as a great opportunity. It’s a risk more than anything else. Some of these new contestants have found ways to keep multiplying and build up huge scores by finding Daily Doubles. James Holzhauer is the prime example of that.”
Jeopardy James: The Next Great Champion
On March 24th, 2019, a promo on television hinted at “the next great champion.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Living in Jeopardy! to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.