So, who's left to root for? Well, if you're any kind of Jeopardy fan you have 6 super champions squaring off in a 10 day, 20 game tournament called Jeopardy Masters.
There's the usual champs. Amy Schneider, James Holzhauer, Andrew Hee, Mattea Roche, Sam Buttrey and Matt Amodio. Ken Jennings gets the honors of hosting the shows.
They are accumulating points, with the leader at he end of a game getting 3 points, 1 for second place, and none for third place. There are standings, with the tie breaker in points being number of correct answers or games won.
They are all super winners who have emerged in the last few years. I forgot that Matt Holzhauer's wins were with Alex Trebek as the host in 2019. Jim has gone on to being the host of his own game show and gets quoted in the Wall Street Journal in a story about online betting and making parleys. He still squints, and makes his patented move of going all in. He is still primarily listed as a professional gambler, still living where the action is, Las Vegas.
In one game, he went all in on the final Jeopardy question, changed his answer from Haiti to Nicaraqua, and lost. The answer was Haiti.
Amy Schneider has definitely left her job and is now writing her memoirs and sitting on an NGO board for LGBTQ rights. Mattea Roach seems to have put her pursuit of law school on hold and now does podcasting and writing. Matt Amodio still seems to be in academic circles doing post-doctoral work at Harvard and MIT. Andrew He is still a software developer, and Sam Buttrey is still listed as an associate professor at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, California, a school my cousin attended..
They are all very likeable people and seem to have developed some bonds outside the show. Andrew He shared a story of meeting Mattea and her friends in Toronto and getting soundly beaten in mahjong. The contestants banter, and pick on Ken Jennings. Sometimes Ken picks on them.
They are all clearly having fun, no matter where they are in the standings. The latest telecast opened with Amy playing air guitar, Sam pounding on an imaginary keyboard, and Andrew mimicing playing drums and hitting a cymbal.
Sam Buttrey still emphatically calls out "bring it" for the last clue if it's his turn. Jim writes notes to Ken Jennings in Final Jeopardy when he doesn't know the answer. He is itching for a Tournament of Champions rematch with Ken and wants that GOAT title. He's certainly on his way so far
If the American dream is a house and a car, then the next ranked American dream might be life as a game show contestant bringing down life changing money.
Jeopardy Masters is scaled like a golf tournament, or a Grade I horse race, with the distribution doling out a grand prize of $500,000, going all the way down to 6th place: $250,000, $150,000, $100,000, $75,000, $50.000. Nice work if you can get it.
There were four telecasts last week, featuring 8 games. The standing so far are:
James Holzhauer 9
Andrew He 8
Mattea Roach 7
Amy Schneider 3
Matt Amodio 3
Sam Buttrey 2
If Holzhauer missed with an all in a previous game, he cracked it open with the right answer in the latest. He is formidable with his rapid answers and rapid choice selections after.
It's still anybody's game. It's the only playoffs worth watching these days for New Yorkers.
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