Jeopardy again and this time it is not just me!!!!

Today on my Yahoo news alerts, there is an article about a Twitter debate currently going on about last night's [[July 12) Jeopardy episode. It was another one of those cases in which the top two contestants were in a position going into Final Jeopardy in which there was only one wager for each one of them that made any sense at all, yet neither one of them made the correct move. As a result the returning champion won again, although he deserved to lose.

The situation was that the champ had $20,000 and the challenger had $10,000. So the only obvious choices were for the champ to wager nothing and the challenger to wager everything. That would have opened up the possibility for a tie, which these days would be resolved by a tense, tie-breaking question to decide the match.

Well the challenger for some odd reason only wagered $3,000, but he got the question right, so he finished at $13,000. The champion then missed the question, but had bet $1.00, so he finished at $19,999. Therefore we now know that if the challenger had bet everything, as he should have, then he would have won by a $20,000 to $19,999 margin.

This kind of thing happens often enough that it makes you wonder why such brilliant people can answer so many questions but apparently cannot do simple math. The champ by the way had won his first game on Monday with an odd wager as well.

I told my wife about that when I watched it last night. It's mind numbing that such smart people don't apply logic when they place their final bets. If the winner was going to bet anything, the least logical amount to bet would be one dollar. I could attribute a $10,000 bet to hubris, but a $1 bet is almost tempting fate.

Totally agree.

My partner is fairly knowledgeable but is TERRIBLE with numbers and math. Whenever he sees a contestant win by $1 he is amazed that they were able to figure it out so precisely, especially when it is not a number ending in zeroes.

It's possible that the contestants could be bad at arithmetic or just feeling pressure from the game and end up making a hasty final wager.

As for this contestant he had an opportunity before Final Jeopardy to make it easier for himself. The last clue was a Double Jeopardy, as I recall, and was his. He wagered $5,000, which was a brave bet, and with his correct response it put him exactly $10,000 ahead of the second place contestant. Since he was brave enough to wager $5,000 he should have wagered $5,001 so that in Final Jeopardy he could wager $0 and win by $1, with a correct or incorrect response, even if the second place contestant had wagered $10,000, with a correct response.

Good point. I had not thought of that. Anyway, as most of you likely know, he lost tonight so at least that particular player won't be around any more.