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The worst is when he sounds like he's pushing out a turd after selecting a clue.
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May 24, 2019 19:19
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1glitch0 posted:I was baffled why both didn't go all in, because if it was me I would assume the other guy would be doing that. But neither did so I guess they were both right not to? I dunno. Because Nate knows James has to bet enough to cover his all-in, Nate can then second-level and bet low enough that he wins if they both miss. This is the case any time the second place player has more than 2/3 the leader's score, if they have less than that (but more than 1/2, otherwise it would be a runaway) they need to get it right AND the leader has to miss.
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May 24, 2019 19:24
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Spokes posted:James doesn't have to go all-in, he just has to bet enough to beat Nate's all-in. I would botch betting so bad on Jeopardy.
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May 24, 2019 19:43
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1glitch0 posted:I would botch betting so bad on Jeopardy. Aside from getting steamrolled by James, this is my greatest fear.
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May 24, 2019 19:49
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Tater Love 
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People smart enough to remember a billion random facts to get on Jeopardy are also smart enough to remember betting strategy, so I'm surprised more don't memorize it. https://thejeopardyfan.com/final-jeopardy-betting
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May 25, 2019 08:10
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I hosed up the math so badly when I was trying to figure out the betting for final for my second game that at one point my math told me that I needed to bet $32,000 and I was like "uhhh I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that's wrong". Eventually I got the figure I was fairly certain I wanted, and tacked on an extra $100 or so just in case I was still super bad at it. And I had actually practiced doing the calculations on a piece of paper and stuff before I went to film, since it's so vital. But the day is just so insane, it's very easy to just completely blank on how basic addition/subtraction works.
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May 25, 2019 11:32
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Spokes posted:not actually a spoiler, just speculation: Ken's loss made news the day of the taping, and we knew it was coming for weeks. And it was pretty mainstream news. Once James loses I'm sure we'll know the day of the taping as well. Sorry if the spoiler tags are unnecessary. Just airing on the side of caution.
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May 25, 2019 13:24
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HookShot posted:I hosed up the math so badly when I was trying to figure out the betting for final for my second game that at one point my math told me that I needed to bet $32,000 and I was like "uhhh I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that's wrong". Fair point. Everyone says the lights and cameras change everything. You can definitely see sometimes when someone obviously knows the question but just chokes and it has to be due to the stress. And the last time I did arithmetic with pen and paper was middle school, so yeah.
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May 25, 2019 20:43
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User posted:Fair point. Everyone says the lights and cameras change everything. You can definitely see sometimes when someone obviously knows the question but just chokes and it has to be due to the stress. And the last time I did arithmetic with pen and paper was middle school, so yeah. I was in the audience and it was disorienting as hell even before you factor in nerves. Couldn’t imagine being on stage.
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May 25, 2019 20:55
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User posted:People smart enough to remember a billion random facts to get on Jeopardy are also smart enough to remember betting strategy, so I'm surprised more don't memorize it. https://thejeopardyfan.com/final-jeopardy-betting 1glitch0 posted:I would botch betting so bad on Jeopardy. zakharov posted:Aside from getting steamrolled by James, this is my greatest fear. HookShot posted:I hosed up the math so badly when I was trying to figure out the betting for final for my second game that at one point my math told me that I needed to bet $32,000 and I was like "uhhh I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that's wrong". And yeah, my own wager was kinda straightforward, but in the heat of the moment underneath the lights (even if wagers are made during a break for commercials) can make you mess up your math badly or forget all about the betting strategy you attempt to remember/learn/memorize. It’s why I wish Keith Williams still did The Final Wager daily analysis of those wagers. Though I guess his website is still up, in addition to Andy Saunders’ Jeopardy Fan guide linked above. https://thefinalwager.com BigBallChunkyTime posted:Sorry if the spoiler tags are unnecessary. Just airing on the side of caution. Erring. Sorry, I’m somewhat obsessive about proper word usage in cases like that. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 22:28 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 22:23
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GhostStalker posted:Yeah, this is a thing. During one of the finals of a Tournament of Champions like 5 years back, Kristin Sausville was taking so long with her bet because she was trying to figure out every possibility, that Alex walked up during the long break and “jokingly” asked if she wasn’t good with math (har har, another Uncle Alex moment). You kinda do have all the time you need within reason to figure your Final Jeopardy wager, doubly so during tournaments, so she took as much advantage of that as she could. Can you explain the dude in second place on Friday who didn't bet it all? Like that would be my instinct. And I can't remember the totals going into FJ but I think if he had bet it all he would have beat James. If you don't win you get 1k or 2k which ain't much after taxes either way. Why not go all in, even if you don't know the category? Maybe you get lucky and know the answer or guess right. Like if there's a time to go for broke in your life that's the time. Either you win or you come in second or third, and if you don't win you still mostly have enough money to fly home and have a nice dinner. But I'm a moron who couldn't be on Jeopardy so I obviously don't get it. I could beat Wolf Blitzer, tho! But who couldn't? 1glitch0 fucked around with this message at 23:15 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 23:12
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At this point there’s a chance James is still going past Alex dying.
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May 25, 2019 23:17
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1glitch0 posted:Can you explain the dude in second place on Friday who didn't bet it all? Like that would be my instinct. And I can't remember the totals going into FJ but I think if he had bet it all he would have beat James. If you don't win you get 1k or 2k which ain't much after taxes either way. Why not go all in, even if you don't know the category? Maybe you get lucky and know the answer or guess right. Like if there's a time to go for broke in your life that's the time. Either you win or you come in second or third, and if you don't win you still mostly have enough money to fly home and have a nice dinner. James had $31,200 going into Final Jeopardy and successfully wagered $20,908 for a final total of $52,908. This would have covered Nate's final total of $51,600 had Nate successfully risked it all. As noted above, if you are in second place and have 2/3 of first, I believe the optimal strategy* is to bet just enough to surpass first place's total going in to FJ, assuming (a) first place wagers enough to cover second place doubling up, and (b) third place isn't a threat to win. If first place has $10,000 and I have $8,000 going in to FJ, I should bet $2,001. Assuming first place bets $6,001 to cover me, I win if I'm right and he's wrong, or if we're both wrong ($5,999 vs $3,999). *I think I saw at least once where this backfired; had second place bet it all, they would have beaten first place's successful wager
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May 26, 2019 00:05
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i think the worst is when the third place person who's far behind the other two (who are close) wagers anything when the correct move - wager nothing - would've won t hem the game. i can only think of it happening once in all my time watching the show.
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May 26, 2019 01:06
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Groovelord Neato posted:i think the worst is when the third place person who's far behind the other two (who are close) wagers anything when the correct move - wager nothing - would've won t hem the game. i can only think of it happening once in all my time watching the show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HUyXYNYA4g 1st and 2nd place are tied so they're kind of forced to bet everything. 3rd place can't catch either of them with a double up so DON"T BET STUPID.
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May 26, 2019 01:30
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i really don’t understand how someone can watch jeopardy to the point you’d get on the show and not know you don’t bet there. mind boggling.
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May 26, 2019 01:54
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There was also a 3 way $0 tie in the Teen tournament once which incidentally directly allowed the previously eliminated eventual winner with his famous “some guy in Normandy I don’t know I won” answer through.
Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 02:10 on May 26, 2019 |
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May 26, 2019 02:08
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:At this point there’s a chance James is still going past Alex dying. I've thought so too, but James has had a few relatively close calls. And all things being equal (eg, his opponents search as well as he does), there's about a 30% chance he gets no daily doubles on a given day.
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May 26, 2019 02:53
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MD2020 posted:James had $31,200 going into Final Jeopardy and successfully wagered $20,908 for a final total of $52,908. This would have covered Nate's final total of $51,600 had Nate successfully risked it all. Oh cool, thanks. Bad at math!
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May 26, 2019 05:32
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1glitch0 posted:I was baffled why both didn't go all in, because if it was me I would assume the other guy would be doing that. But neither did so I guess they were both right not to? I dunno. Seconding this. I like when someone just comes in and cleans house and makes it incredibly difficult because for me it makes it more interesting to see if anyone gets close to Knocking him off. However I see a lot of people going through Jeopardy withdrawal when he finally loses and everything just goes back to playing the game in order and making pathetic Final Jeopardy Wagers
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May 26, 2019 06:10
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TurboFlamingChicken posted:Seconding this. I like when someone just comes in and cleans house and makes it incredibly difficult because for me it makes it more interesting to see if anyone gets close to Knocking him off. However I see a lot of people going through Jeopardy withdrawal when he finally loses and everything just goes back to playing the game in order and making pathetic Final Jeopardy Wagers It'll be weird to after a month of games with 50,000 or 80,000, or 100,000 final scores we go back to "and Billy Bob wins with 7,850 dollars!"
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May 26, 2019 07:04
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Yeah I honestly hope that James's performance gets other players to bet a bit more aggressively. Not saying they ought to go as far as he does, unless they also know 97% of everything and are a machine on the buzzer, but most players really are way too conservative with the daily doubles. If you got onto an episode you probably have at least a 75% chance of knowing the question, so don't bet 10% of your bankroll! I think James actually said something similar in one of the hojillion interviews/podcasts he's done with regard to football coaches not taking risks with high expected value, like 2 point conversions. Edit: Interestingly, it looks like football coaches are also reluctant to break with tradition for similar reasons to many Jeopardy contestants: https://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/events/MLSA16/papers/paper_1.pdf User fucked around with this message at 07:37 on May 26, 2019 |
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May 26, 2019 07:33
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Football coaches makes decisions too conservatively but if you fail you will be criticized.
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May 26, 2019 11:57
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It's like penalty kicks in soccer, where no one kicks it straight down the middle, even though the goalie is probably going to jump to the left or to the right.
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May 26, 2019 12:01
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1glitch0 posted:Can you explain the dude in second place on Friday who didn't bet it all? Like that would be my instinct. And I can't remember the totals going into FJ but I think if he had bet it all he would have beat James. If you don't win you get 1k or 2k which ain't much after taxes either way. Why not go all in, even if you don't know the category? Maybe you get lucky and know the answer or guess right. Like if there's a time to go for broke in your life that's the time. Either you win or you come in second or third, and if you don't win you still mostly have enough money to fly home and have a nice dinner. Yeah, the math has been detailed above, assuming you mean the Thursday game with Nate in it. While betting to cover someone like James’ almost inevitable large Final bet (compete with idiosyncratic uneven and sometimes personally significant numbers) from first place as someone in second, who will certainly be betting enough to cover you doubling up for a win if they miss may be a bit complicated and a lot less exciting that going all in, it is the smart play of you think about betting strategy and work that all out on the slip of paper they give you to do that math with during the Final Jeopardy setup break for commercials. Yes, glare of the lights and nerves and all that, but it usually works out, barring any large failures in math or sudden brain farts/forgetting strategy on that piece of paper from the said nervousness on the podium. Doesn’t silence the peanut gallery armchair mathematicians though, some of whom are very vocal about how one should’ve bet in another fashion or whatever, like going all in anyway, despite the math not working out the best if they did take their advice. But I do get it, large bets are exciting to watch, and may seem smarter than betting to cover, but it’s just not good strategy in these cases. Shimrra Jamaane posted:There was also a 3 way $0 tie in the Teen tournament once which incidentally directly allowed the previously eliminated eventual winner with his famous “some guy in Normandy I don’t know I won” answer through. That was Leonard Cooper, who was just on the All Stars Games tournament. It was fun seeing him again. 1glitch0 posted:It'll be weird to after a month of games with 50,000 or 80,000, or 100,000 final scores we go back to "and Billy Bob wins with 7,850 dollars!"  . It’s gonna be difficult to go back to a time when Alex thought $20-30k was a large amount for champs to win on occasion and they more often won only a bit over $10k.User posted:Yeah I honestly hope that James's performance gets other players to bet a bit more aggressively. Not saying they ought to go as far as he does, unless they also know 97% of everything and are a machine on the buzzer, but most players really are way too conservative with the daily doubles. If you got onto an episode you probably have at least a 75% chance of knowing the question, so don't bet 10% of your bankroll! I would blow Dane Cook posted:It's like penalty kicks in soccer, where no one kicks it straight down the middle, even though the goalie is probably going to jump to the left or to the right. Yeah, if it works out, then you’re a hero who has “changed the game” until all the other sportsball coaches pick up on what you’re doing and try to employ the same tactics or come up with something to counter them, and then you’re just marginally better than where you started off, or you use it until your strat crashes and burns, leading to the commentators to say it was trash all along. You gotta have the right confluence of factors for something like that to work out, even if the stats say that you will get marginally better utility from doing so; most people will hold off until they know that what they’re trying to do is pretty much a silver bullet. Kinda like James, since people have tried to employ his strats before (and now against him), but he’s got the trivia recall, buzzer speed, and killer instinct on bets to make it all work better than his competitors. Former champs went down a similar route (Alex Jacob, Buzzy Cohen, Arthur Chu, Matt Jackson, Austin Rogers, etc), but James just picked up what they were putting down, put his own spin on it, and made it work better than anyone else has. Until James inevitably flies too close to the sun and misses a big bet that’s too late in the game to recover from, he’ll keep winning, and spawn imitators who can’t do it as well as he can, until someone else with the same or similar right confluence of factors who can perform almost as well as he can (but not completely to his level) will build on his strats for his own run of success (albeit not on reaching his heights), and people will say that the paradigm has shifted again, or there’s been a second coming, or whatever. But others will keep playing the same conservative game that served some other champs (like Julia Collins or Kristin Sausville or Ben Ingram) and most one to two game winners so well, and the viewers that James attracted with his run will complain it’s boring to go back to same old, same old. Just, they know they don’t have the chops to make James’ strat work, so they don’t try it; same with not hunting DDs, not Forrest Bouncing, and taking categories from the top down in order like most do. They don’t have to be James, no matter how some might want to see them try to be, because they know it won’t work for them, and that’s ok. They’ll just win a smaller amount of money than him, get their television exposure, and go home, content that they’ve made it on the show and not made a fool of themselves (or if they got blown out, especially by James, that at least they made it to the show anyway). Wow, this got a lot longer than I meant it to be... GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 17:11 on May 26, 2019 |
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May 26, 2019 17:07
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It took a long time for football coaches to start going for it on 4th down more (and they still should do it more). It will be a long time again till going for two points every time becomes acceptable and won't get a coach fired.
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May 26, 2019 17:22
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Ambrose Bierce posted:'You acted unwisely,' I cried, 'as you see
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May 26, 2019 17:45
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zakharov posted:Aside from getting steamrolled by James, this is my greatest fear. I loved having people on the internet talk about how much of a numbskull I was for not doing math right under the most intense pressure of my life.
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May 27, 2019 11:18
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Yeah, but how loudly did you click the button?
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May 27, 2019 12:45
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MorgaineDax posted:Yeah, but how loudly did you click the button? Very politely. I respect the game.
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May 27, 2019 13:27
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mennoknight posted:I loved having people on the internet talk about how much of a numbskull I was for not doing math right under the most intense pressure of my life. Well then stop being a numbskull, jerk!  Just playing.
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May 27, 2019 18:05
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Everyone that makes it on Jeopardy is really freaking smart. So yeah I don't think anyone should sweat it. After all, everyone that ever gets on the show loses sooner or later, and the vast majority lose sooner. Getting on at all really is a fantastic achievement. I can totally see how if I got on the show I would spend all of my prep time on the knowledge areas I was weakest, and then fumble on the betting strategy because doing arithmetic on an index card what, can't I have a slide rule or an abacus or something at least? Edit: It's interesting how divisive James's run is. Pretty much everyone has a strong opinion. Either they're like me and they really like seeing someone just crush it, or they absolutely hate it and think it's totally boring. Both are valid opinions obviously, but I've only seen a couple people say yeah he's ok I guess it would be ok if he kept winning, or didn't, I just like couch playing. Of course we all like couch playing, right? Edit edit: I'm really looking forward to the inevitable Ken, Brad, and James face-off. The answer writers are going to get to show off for that one. User fucked around with this message at 04:19 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 04:04
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this has probably already been floated as a possible counter-strategy but has anyone tried to search out daily doubles to deny him his biggest cash spikes?
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May 28, 2019 08:14
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The problem is that he's so quick on the buzzer that he dominates the game.
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May 28, 2019 08:18
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right, the person who did that would also have to emulate his buzzer strategy and be at least almost as good at the trivia as he is. meaning, don't hold your breath
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May 28, 2019 08:20
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What if no one can beat James and he’s stuck on Jeopardy forever?
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May 28, 2019 08:24
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R. Guyovich posted:right, the person who did that would also have to emulate his buzzer strategy and be at least almost as good at the trivia as he is. meaning, don't hold your breath
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May 28, 2019 11:33
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:What if no one can beat James and he’s stuck on Jeopardy forever? Ken Jennings looked just as invincible for most of his run and he eventually lost. The gaudy number totals are different but the domination is the same. I think the big post James change we'll see more people going all in on the first DD. I don't think we'll see many more huge bets on the second and third. Most people don't have his confidence.
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May 28, 2019 13:34
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jennings even lost on an easy final. it's possible something like that dooms james as well.
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May 28, 2019 14:25
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Groovelord Neato posted:jennings even lost on an easy final. it's possible something like that dooms james as well. Through 28 games, Ken missed 10 FJs, James has missed a grand total of one (and it was "were you cognizant of celebrities in 1982"). James is definitely beatable with enough skill and luck but it's unlikely he misses "H&R block" or whatever, someone will probably need to go into FJ leading to beat him
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May 28, 2019 17:28
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