Did anyone else see Tuesday night's Jeopardy?

[daviddesper]

Since we can talk about anything in the Clubhouse, I thought I would ask this question about the July 8th episode of Jeopardy. If the people on there are supposed to be so smart, then how can they sometimes still be soooooooo stupid???? Anyone who saw tonight's show will know what I mean and the sad part is that it is not the first time I have seen this exact same thing happen. Here is the scoop:

At the end of Double Jeopardy, the three scores from left to right were $6,800, $11,000, and $22,000. So anybody, ANYBODY AT ALL, could tell that A) the returning champion was probably toast; B) that the person on the right was not going to wager anything at all on Final Jeopardy because he was guaranteed no worse than a tie and a second game tomorrow night; and C) that the person in the middle had one chance and ONLY ONE CHANCE if she wanted to come back tomorrow.

I am sure the rest of you are with me....she simply HAD to wager the full $11,000 so that she would tie the other guy with $22,000 and they would come back as co-champions. No other wager was going to make any sense at all, right?

So I could not believe my eyes and ears when she got the question right and then revealed this wager that she was soooooooo proud of..........$2,601!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes indeed, she decided that she would try to beat the returning champ by one dollar [[assuming he had wagered his full $6,800) and she completely ignored the only person she should have been worried about. She simply HAD to know that he was about to reveal a big fat zero on his screen!!!!

As a result he comes back tomorrow with his $22,000 and this goofy woman goes home with whatever the second place consolation prize is when she could have, should have, and WOULD have been right there with him. What WAS she thinking????

Before any of you point this out to me, yes I know it is no skin off my nose and not worth the 20-30 minutes it took me to type this, but I just hate it when people who are supposed to know better just don't use any common sense.

[Jerry Oz]

People sometimes out think themselves. The prevailing logic on "Jeopardy" is that if you cannot catch the leader, then you have to make sure the person in third place cannot catch you. That person was gutless to wager less than $11,000 in the situation that you described. The amazing part is that they are guaranteed to leave with no less than what they came with, so there was nothing to lose. So, in order to win second place [[$3,000? $5,000?), they lost $22,000. It's not like they came out of pocket to play the game and they had losses to hedge.

[daviddesper]

I have also seen occasions on there over the years in which the person who was guaranteed no worse than a tie still blew it and lost. For example, using the same figures I used in my post, I have actually seen cases when the person who had the $22,000 would actually wager $1, thinking that they had to do that to beat the other person by $1. But then they missed the final question and actually LOST by a dollar instead of settling for the tie.

Here is another thing they will do on that show that just floors me. Say for example, the Double Jeopardy round is winding down and one player has $23,000 and his or her competitors each have $10,000 or less. On the last question of the round, that person with the $23,000 hits a Daily Double.

Any idiot should know that in that situation, he or she cannot be caught and will WIN the game if they make a smart wager, no matter what happens in Final Jeopardy. So they should therefore wager less than $3,000 on that Daily Double so as to protect their "can't be caught" position. Right?

But yet I have seen people in that situation wager $5,000 or more, miss the question, and lose their safe position. The only reason I could figure for doing that would be if they felt confident in the Daily Double category and just wanted to put the game away right then and there. But still, why wouldn't you just play it safe and take the sure thing?

When they make these goofy mistakes it is not because they are pressured and under time constraints. I have never seen a taping of the show of course, but my common sense tells me that it takes time to change sets, go over the instructions with them on using the pen, etc. So they probably have 15-20 minutes or more to decide on their wager, not just the 2 minutes or so that it appears on TV.