Tag: Ken Jennings

This Jeopardy! contestant’s story about a serial killer might be the quiz show’s wildest ever

This was … something!

Uhhh, wow.

I’m usually one of those Jeopardy! watchers who doesn’t pay much attention to the personal stories told by contestants (no offense!), but this one? You’re going to want to pay attention.

It starts with Ken Jennings and Amanda, a contestant. He mentions she’s got a story about … a serial killer?

Turns out her middle school hall monitor was a little “off,” and there was a reason for that: he was a serial killer who had bodies buried under his house.

“Welcome to the show, Amanda,” Jennings says with a tinge in his voice that can only be described as “… Wow.”

Same here, Ken!

https://twitter.com/clairemcnear/status/1834329257478070306?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1834329257478070306%7Ctwgr%5E1398c4900c8ea3baf9e08b232be129e4a0b5744a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrobible.com%2Fculture%2Farticle%2Fjeopardy-contestant-serial-killer-personal-anecdote%2F

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James Holzhauer had a wild Jeopardy! Masters exchange with Ken Jennings: ‘Keep it in your pants’

“Keep it in your pants, Ken!”

Jeopardy! Masters is into its second week, with James Holzhauer ahead of the rest of the field of legends.

He’s also winning when it comes to bantering with host and former rival, Ken Jennings. Last week, we saw Holzhauer use his Final Jeopardy board to joke with the host: “Stop ducking a rematch, Ken.”

Then, there was a clue that flummoxed the competitors. Jennings jokingly said that he refers to Holzhauer as “elegantly erotic and full of enchanting terror,” as the clue said.

The reply from Holzhauer?

“Keep it in your pants, Ken.”

LOLOL! Can’t wait to see more of this as the week goes on:

James Holzhauer trolled Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! Masters with a hilarious Final Jeopardy answer

This is too good.

Ah, the James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings “rivalry.”

The two Jeopardy! all-time greats have exchanged so much trash talk in the past, leading up to and after Jennings won the GOAT tournament.

Now, we’re up to Jeopardy! Masters, featuring Holzhauer — the professional sports gambler — and Jennings is the host. James ended up winning one of the rounds, but before he did, he trolled Jennings with his Final Jeopardy answer, and it was very funny.

Instead of answering the clue that would have gotten you “What is the Manhattan Bridge,” Holzhauer wrote down, “Stop ducking a rematch Ken.” And their exchange is delightful:

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The new Jeopardy! Masters tournament and format, explained

What to know about Jeopardy!’s latest tournament of stars.

Welcome to FTW Explains, a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. We here at For The Win are big Jeopardy! fans, and the Jeopardy! Masters tournament is no exception. What’s that? Glad you asked.

Ken Jennings is the ultimate Jeopardy! GOAT — remember a few years ago when he topped James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament? — but that’s not stopping him from hosting a new best-of-the-best Jeopardy! tournament.

Monday kicks off the first episode of the Jeopardy! Masters tournament, which will pit some of the shows most successful candidates against each other to see who will become a different kind of Jeopardy! champion.

James Holzhauer playfully roasted Ken Jennings ahead of Jeopardy! Masters

James Holzhauer playfully roasted Ken Jennings ahead of Jeopardy! Masters

James Holzhauer is back on his trolling ahead of Jeopardy! Masters.

Jeopardy! champion James Holzhauer has cultivated a reputation for being a phenomenal trash talker, and he’s at it again ahead of next week’s Jeopardy! Masters competition.

Holzhauer will be squaring off with fellow Jeopardy! heavyweights like Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, Mattea Roach, Andrew He and Sam Buttrey, with former Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings hosting the shows.

Well, Holzhauer found a hilarious way to warm up his intimidation tactics by roasting Jennings’ standing as host.

First, Holzhauer takes aim at the way that the game shows are being marketed with Jennings front and center. He compares it to the NFL advertising a Super Bowl with a referee as the main draw. Ouch.

Next, Holzhauer pokes fun at Jennings by comparing him to legendary Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek.

Having competed against him, Jennings knows how effective Holzhauer can be once he’s on the Jeopardy! stage. He’s now the warm-up target for Holzhauer’s trolling ahead of next week’s marquee games.

A ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant trolled Ken Jennings so hard with his final answer

Ouch.

When you’re Ken Jennings and you’re an all-time legend of a Jeopardy! champion, maybe you don’t mind being trolled a little.

That seemed like the case when Brian, a contestant who was in the lead, answered this clue: “Adjusted for inflation, the nightly rate this company put in its name in 1962 is now $51.”

The answer was “Motel 6.” But Brian didn’t know that and instead put down, “H&R Block.”

Why is that significant? That was the correct answer in a Final Jeopardy back when Jennings’ 74-game winning streak ended, and it was an answer that Jennings whiffed on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgjkb6fBMHg

Here’s the moment from 2004:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FFT8HCUIg

Well played, Brian. And good reaction, Ken.

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Ken Jennings revealed an Alex Trebek good-luck charm he had while hosting ‘Jeopardy!’

Jennings had his first episode as guest host air.

Ken Jennings stepped in as the first guest host of Jeopardy! since the death of the legendary Alex Trebek, and by many accounts, the GOAT champion did a solid job.

The guest host also came out and started the show with a heartfelt tribute to Trebek in which Jennings got choked up: “Not many things in life are perfet, but Alex did this job pretty much perfectly for more than 36 years, and it was even better up close,” he said, going on to say no one can replace Trebek, “but we can honor him by playing the game he loved.”

Jennings also revealed he carried a good-luck charm in his pocket while taping his guest-host stint that had a connection to Trebek: an audience ticket from Trebek’s first time hosting the show in 1983:

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Brad Rutter on the ‘biggest factor’ behind his shocking Jeopardy! GOAT performance

Brad Rutter explained an often overlooked aspect of winning Jeopardy! games.

Ken Jennings won Tuesday night’s episode of the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament, marking his third match win of the tournament and officially earning him the title of Jeopardy! GOAT. In the first-to-three-matches format, James Holzhauer won one match, while Brad Rutter consistently finished in third.

For people who aren’t diehard Jeopardy! fans or casual viewers just tuning in for the GOAT tournament, it’d be easy to wonder how Rutter earned his spot on stage with the others. But trust us: Brad earned it.

But throughout the tournament, Rutter noticeably struggled and got some bad bounces. To combat Holzhauer’s aggressive betting strategy, Rutter and Jennings agreed they’d have to go all in on each Daily Double, and while Rutter picked several of them, he had a lot of incorrect responses, which would regularly drop his score back down to zero and make it nearly impossible for him to catch either Jennings or Holzhauer.

Following the final episode of the GOAT tournament, Vulture spoke with Rutter about his experience. While the second runner-up said he will “absolutely” remember this tournament fondly — even though it was the first time he lost to a human being on Jeopardy! — he explained why his performance lagged.

Here’s an excerpt from Rutter’s Q&A with Vulture this week:

Looking back at your matches, was there a moment when you realized things weren’t going in your favor? Was it missing all those Daily Doubles?
No, not really. It was just going that way from the beginning and never stopped. [Laughs.] If James had won last night’s game, I’d still be alive but have to win three matches in a row. I’ve done stuff like that, coming from behind, before in a show. I think the reason I’ve been successful at this point is staying focused on what was in front of me. I was just thinking, Okay, if I can get to match five, we’ll see what happens. Since it was going to be a new week, maybe my buzzer skills would magically come back. You never know.

Do you think your buzzer reflexes weren’t as sharp?
Yeah, I do. It’s more timing, really, with the buzzers. We’re probably talking about hundredths of a second here. I’ve played a bunch of times before with Ken and I was always getting just as many responses as he was. Throwing another very quick buzzer into the mix hurt me. It’s impossible to figure out unless you have access to the actual buzzing-in data. In any sort of evenly matched match, the buzzer is going to be the number one thing. Ken and James were able to get the timing right and I wasn’t, and that was probably the biggest factor.

(Poor Brad. No, Rich Brad.)

An often overlooked factor about winning a Jeopardy! game is the buzzer. And buzzing in first is not as easy as immediately doing it one the clue comes up. It’s much more nuanced than that, as Jennings recently explained to Good Morning America.

“The timing of the buzzer is very tricky on Jeopardy!,” Jennings told GMA on Tuesday. “You can’t buzz when you know it. You have to wait for Alex [Trebek] to finish reading the question. If you buzz early, you get locked out for a tiny second. So what you need to do is to find this exact second and for me it’s just following the rhythm of Alex’s voice. We’ve heard him read tens of thousands of clues over the years, and you just know how he’s gonna say it, and then there’s gonna be one beat and then you buzz! But if I think about it, I can’t do it. It’s kind of a zen thing.”

Harder than it seems, and Rutter just got beat by the buzzer — and by a few tricky Daily Doubles.

While Jennings has a record 74 consecutive Jeopardy! wins and Holzhauer owns the top-10 single-game winnings records, Rutter, even after the GOAT tournament, still has the record for most money earned on Jeopardy!

He entered the special series with $4,688,436 earned and walked away with another $250,000 as the second runner-up. He would probably have more records or long win streak, but when he first appeared on the game show in 2000, contestants were limited to five game wins before having to retire undefeated. So Rutter won his five games and earned most of his money from winning tournaments, during which he beat Jennings multiple times.

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Jeopardy! GOAT: The strategy behind Ken Jennings’ 0-point wager in Final Jeopardy

Jeopardy! betting strategy is as important as trivia skills.

Ken Jennings officially became the Jeopardy! GOAT on Tuesday night after winning the fourth match of the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament. It was a first-to-three format, and Jennings won the first and third matches in the episodes that aired last week, while James Holzhauer won only the second and Brad Rutter comfortably finished in third place each match.

But the way in which Jennings — who holds the record for most consecutive regular-season wins with 74 games — won might seem a little puzzling. He wagered nothing in Final Jeopardy, which was his best available option, and won.

While on Good Morning America on Wednesday after the last Jeopardy! GOAT episode aired, Jennings was asked about that strategy, which surprised a lot of people, including George Stephanopoulos.

So the GOAT explained:

“There’s a little bit of math that goes into wagering on Jeopardy! Generally what happens is the person in second should often make a very small wager. You’re counting on the person in first to make a big wager, so it doesn’t matter at that point.

If they get it wrong, they’re out. So it doesn’t matter what you wager. You want to risk as little as possible for that eventuality.”

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If that still doesn’t totally make sense, let us break it down further.

Each match is divided into two regular Jeopardy! games, and the point totals from both games are combined to determine the winner of the match. So after Game 1 of the fourth match Tuesday, their scores were…

Ken Jennings: 65,600
James Holzhauer: 34,181
Brad Rutter: 0

(Poor Brad. No, Rich Brad.)

After winning Game 1, Jennings entered Game 2’s Final Jeopardy round trailing Holzhauer, who bet big on a Daily Double and got it. Here were their scores going into that Final Jeopardy…

Ken Jennings: 23,000
James Holzhauer: 44,000
Brad Rutter: 1,400

Jennings said because he was in second place, he needed to assume Holzhauer in first would make a large wager. If Holzhauer went all in and got the question right, his Game 2 total would be 88,000 points. Combine that with his 34,181 from Game 1, and he’d finish with 122,181 points and would win the match.

With 23,000 in second, even if Jennings also went all in and had the correct answer, his 46,000 points combined with his 65,600 from Game 1 would give him 111,600, which wouldn’t be enough to beat Holzhauer (still assuming he went all in).

So, as he told GMA, Jennings doubling his total in Final Jeopardy wouldn’t matter if Holzhauer got the question right. And that meant his best option was to bet as few points as possible, banking on Holzhauer betting big, being wrong and losing enough to fall behind to second place.

And as it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

The Final Jeopardy category was Shakespeare’s Tragedies, and the clue was:

He has 272 speeches, the most of any non-title character in a Shakespeare tragedy.

The correct response is: Who is Iago? (He’s also the antagonist in Othello.)

Jennings got it right with his zero-point wager, Holzhauer got it wrong after going all in, and that’s how Jennings became the official Jeopardy! GOAT.

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Ken Jennings: James Holzhauer’s Jeopardy! strategy ‘puts the fear of god’ in competitors

Ken Jennings is officially the Jeopardy! GOAT, but he said any one of them could have won the tournament.

Ken Jennings managed to keep a massive Jeopardy! secret to himself for the few weeks between the taping and airing of the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time tournament. He told no one that he won the tournament, was crowned the Jeorpardy! GOAT and earned $1 million.

Well, almost no one.

While speaking with Good Morning America on Wednesday following Tuesday night’s airing of the fourth match of the Jeopardy! GOAT, Jennings admitted that while he didn’t tell his kids or his parents about how he fared against James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter, he did tell his wife.

“My wife knew,” Jennings said on the morning show from Seattle. “I didn’t want her to divorce me. I told my wife immediately. But my kids didn’t know, my parents didn’t know. We totally kept it under wrap. I just thought it would be more fun for them to have the surprise, and it was a lot of fun watching it together.”

In the race to win three matches (made of two regular games combined for one-hour episodes), Jennings won the first game, Holzhauer won the second and Jennings won the third.

Then during the fourth match Tuesday night, he bet big on a Daily Double on his way to winning Game 1. And in Game 2 as he tried to fend off hard-charging Holzhauer, he didn’t have to wager anything in Final Jeopardy. The category was Shakespeare’s Tragedies, and Jennings, who entered Final Jeopardy in second, bet nothing, while leader Holzhauer went all in and got the question wrong.

Because of that with their combined earned points from the match’s two games, Jennings won his third match and officially became the Jeopardy! GOAT. Rutter finished third in all four matches.

“It was not a dominating win at all,” Jennings told GMA about the tournament. “I think all three of us are very experienced Jeopardy! players, and if you run this back 10 times, you’re going to get a different winner. You’re never going to get the same winner twice in a row.”

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Each of the three GOAT contestants left their marks on the game. Jennings has the longest win streak ever with 74 regular-season games, Holzhauer owns all the top-10 single-game winnings records and Rutter has earned the most money on Jeopardy! with $4,688,436 prior to the tournament. (While Jennings won $1 million, Holzhauer and Rutter each earned $250,000.)

Particularly with Daily Doubles and sometimes in Final Jeopardy, Jennings and Rutter adopted Holzhauer’s aggressive strategy of going all in. By doing that during his regular-season run in 2019, Holzhauer was often able to put the game out of reach for his competitors early on.

About adjusting their strategies to follow Holzhauer’s lead, Jennings said:

“It’s really just a credit to James, how much he’s changed the game of Jeopardy! that Brad and I both came in realizing we were going to have to play like him if we were going to have any hope of containing him. That’s just how smart and demoralizing his strategy is. You’ve gotta make those big bets even if it scares you because he puts the fear of god into the other two contestants.”

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