Idiotic Jeopardy wagers (no spoilers before 6 EST)

I just want to sit down and interview these people afterward to understand their thought process, it would be ****ing fascinating.

I mean even if their thinking is "leader is way smarter than me and I hate the category and it's never ever ever gonna be a RW combo in my favor", just betting $0 is fine for staying in 2nd and earning the extra grand. $1201 is functionally the same as betting $0 but just seems so exact, there must have been some kind of weird idea going through their head.

Most likely it's a shoutout to a family member (birthday 12-01) or something along those lines.

Best guess I’ve heard on the number…..

9800 - 3800 doubled = 2200 but contestant does the math as 1200. Then instead of subtracting the 1 she adds the 1.

Pretty laughable regardless.

Haven't watched tonight's (Monday) episode but Isaac has been solid. Find him quite funny and charming in his interviews. He's definitely beatable, that game against the two ladies he was getting crushed on the buzzer for the first two-thirds of the game, then he got that massive triple-correction by Ken that vaulted him into first place, and then hit the daily double and it was OVAH. But he's good, and has been perfect when needed in FJ.

That has to be an all time worst double jeopardy wager.

10day champ goes down because he overbet from 2nd place, and not a peep? Cost himself potentially 100's of thousands

Cliffs?

Lady gets the last DJ clue near the end of the game, don't recall the numbers but say 15k 1st and she is at 5k and bets 1k. You get the point. She gets it right but locks herself out of the game.

He was pretty good too. Much better than the other big multi day winner earlier in this season. It's wild how these people can be so bad at the easiest part of the game.

Current champ has now won twice after being in the lead at FJ and not betting to cover 2nd.

It’s always shocking when these incredibly smart people fail at simple game play strategy.

1st had like 12k
2nd hits last DD and had 8k
There’s like $2000 left of clues on the board

He wagers 5k, so if he misses, it’s a run away. If he answers correctly he has 13k, only a 1k lead. But there’s $2500 left

If he just sacks up and wagers the whole 8k he can secure a lead going into final. 5k or all in has the same downside but different upsides

It’s just hard to watch

3rd had like 3k, irrelevant

Yeah I feel like this is an interesting spot where you're polarized between betting everything if you like the category, and maybe something like 1k if you don't (an amount that would help shore up your chances of maintaining at least a 2:3 ratio going into FJ and the ability to win on a double miss, but also not put you too much at risk of falling below runaway territory). Agreed that 5k is a crappy no-mans-land bet there.

Been meaning to post this since last week. Did anyone else notice this kid on Jeopardy last week?

Turned on a couple of the Pop Culture Jeopardy episodes. Nothing that great. Will watch if I got nothing else to do.

i was surprised by how many of the answers i knew as i'm very out of the loop generally

As an old (55), got the older, tougher answers. No chance on anything from the past 10 years

Forget Jeopardy. I don't think it's worth starting a gameshow thread, so I'll just share this here. I was watching a show called Person, Place or Thing. Basically, the contestants have to guess a person, place or thing. They're given the category and are allowed to ask yes–no questions to help them figure out the answer, and sometimes they're given clues. In this case, the category was "person," but the host clarified that they were actually looking for the name of a band, not a specific individual. To narrow it down, the first contestant was allowed to ask a question. You know, something like: "Is the band still together?" What did they ask?... "Does this band play instruments?"

Another one that I remember reading about was bad math on The Price is Right. This one is more forgivable but still bad. You know how they spin the wheel on that show, and they get two chances to get as close to 100 as they can, without going over? Well, the first guy spun something like a 25, decided to spin again, hit 90 and went over. He was out. The next contestant spun a 20, decided to spin again and hit a 10. They're score was now 30. The third contestant spun a 30 on their first try, tying the game. Bob Barker or Drew Carey gave them two options: spin again and hope to not go over 100, or go to a spin-off where each contestant is given one spin, and whoever's is higher goes to the Showcase Showdown. The contestant chose the spin-off, giving them a 50% chance of winning. If they spun again, they would have had a 70% chance.

I mean yeah, people are terrible at math, and many are either degens or hopelessly risk averse, and game shows love that and take full advantage of it.

I think the reason we specifically pick on Jeopardy players for it is that it's a game that attracts the intellectual/nerd crowd, who you'd think would have a handle on some really basic principles like "bet small in FJ if you have >2/3 the leader's total and 3rd is out of it". But they keep doing the same weird **** over and over and over again.

I almost mentioned this in my comment. Players who apply for gameshows obviously have to fill out questionnaires and take tests, and I imagine the shows pick players who are most likely to not know the answers and make -EV decisions.

Well, did the band play instruments or not?

👍

I mean it does rule out boy bands

Is this champions tournament live or a replay from the past?

Haven't watched jeopardy in forever

It’s live.