At one point, contestants could ring in at any time which led to quick guesses and negative scores. So they required that the host finish reading the clue before the contestants can buzz in. On some level, you need to be able to determine who rings in first and that needs to reset in between questions. I don’t view buzzer timing as a gimmick.
Answers in the form of a question was something of a gimmick. In the 60s when the show was created. At this point its a feature.
I don’t think the show needs to add drama. Its fine as it is. Leave that for other game shows.
We just saw the champ, Andrew, make a bonehead final Jeopardy bet tonight - exposing himself to the potential of a Cliff Claven debacle for the princely sum of $1. He escaped, but what was he thinking? A tie with the nearest challenger would have served as well as a victory. He was assured of coming back if he stood pat. Rather than take the sure thing he made the visceral move to win the match - for no reason at all, for $1. That was a phenomenal goof, but he survived it to tell the tale.
Ah, makes sense now. Didn’t know of that rule change but should have figured that a smart guy couldn’t have been that dumb. He shouldn’t have gone really big because he had the guy in the fairly close third spot to guard against. Faced with doing the math in a short space and having decided to make final jeopardy the hill to die on, that bet is understandable.
$1 was definitely the correct bet for Andrew. In 2014, Jeopardy introduced a tiebreaker question if the score is tied after Final Jeopardy (prior to that both contestants came back the next game). Don’t think it was used until 2018. It is one question in a shootout type fashion.
Another example I think of contestants maximizing chance of coming back for the next show over maximizing $$ winnings. Not only are you looking at what happens if you get the question right but what happens if you don’t. If he bets $0, Andrew runs the risk that Molly (second play contestant) makes a max bet, gets it right (which she did) and then gets the tiebreaker question right. Percentages say his chance of getting Final Jeopardy correct were higher than chance of winning a “race to the buzzer for just one question” situation.
Bet big in Final Jeopardy for someone with the lead with a runaway game is betting the most you can bet and still win if you get it wrong (and second place is correct on a max bet). Today wasn’t a runaway game so you look at betting enough so that if you get the Final right (as the leader) you win the game no matter what the other contestants do. That’s what Andrew did today. In the past without the tiebreaker, some contestants with the lead did bet $0. I think confidence played a role sometimes pre-2014 judging on how strong you thought the other contestants was in terms of facing her/him again the next show.
Today was another game with all three Daily Doubles being answered correctly and each on max bets.
But let’s suppose the guy in the third spot last night had brought only a minor amount - say $2,000 - into Final Jeopardy. Once Andrew decided to end it on Final Jeopardy he had to top the woman in second place by betting at least $1, but there would have been in that case no reason not to go big - so long as he didn’t leave himself with less than $4,001 in the event of an incorrect answer. He was either going to answer final Jeopardy correctly and beat the woman in second place no matter how she answered; or he was going to answer incorrectly and still beat her if she answered incorrectly; or, if he answered incorrectly and she answered correctly, she was going to beat him no matter what he bet. The only possibility he needed to take out of play was that both he and she would answer incorrectly and the guy in third would answer correctly. Last night the guy in third had too much money for Andrew to do this with a significant bet. He could have bet more than $1, but, as I remember the scores, not much more, so there was not much point in running the risk of a mathematical miscalculation with so little at stake. I’m pretty impressed by Andrew.
Incidentally, if I may be a bit arch, this rule change creating the tie-breaker seems to me to be a gimmick but a pretty good one - designed to make Final Jeopardy meaningful and suspenseful in just these cases where there is the possibility of a tie.
Andrew could have risked $3,999 yesterday and not risked a loss to the third place contestant. In round numbers, he could have easily risked $1,000 or $2,000 with no real risk of a math error. But he didn’t.
You do need to look at each of the other 2 contestants (assuming there are 2 in Final Jeopardy with you) to determine the final bet that makes the most sense. Again people tend to bet to come back the next day over winning the most money possible. Few contestants (like close to none not named James) even place max bets (which can bring big $$s with no risk of losing if you are wrong – any even James liked to bet certain dates that were meaningful to him rather than max bets). Dangling bigger dollar potential (with an actual risk of not coming back for the next show when your performance in the first 2 rounds meant you earned the right to come back) doesn’t really make sense to me.
You want more oomph and supense in runaway games. I think the oomph and suspense comes in the first two rounds to get to a runaway game. Everything doesn’t need to end up with high drama and last second heroics to be interesting. Maybe basketball games should let the team behind (no matter how far) to shoot a shot from the upper deck and if they make it, they win the game. You could create a whole host of end of the game scenarios that would create oomph and suspense up until the very last second. Doesn’t mean it makes sense to do that though.
I am not a fan of the rule change. I think it was fine to have 2 contestants return for the next show. But it didn’t happen very much and the tie breaker rule has been used I think 2 or 3 times since being instituted in 2014. Your rule change would be at play in more games.
It wasn’t all that long ago that they had a three way tie. The champ could have won it all by betting something (or more) but thought it was cool to have the 3 way tie.
Your analogy to a basketball game with a trick shot at the end isn’t perfect: that would be giving the loser the initiative to take the win away from the winner by the trick. In my proposed rule the decision would rest entirely in the hands of the winner. It would tempt the winner to take that risk for the sake of doubling his money. I agree that there’s suspense all through the game leading to that moment, and that’s part of the fun of the game. In the cases that the leader hasn’t doubled his nearest opponent the fun and suspense continues into final jeopardy. That’s also good. So what is lost if suspense can be made to continue into final jeopardy even when there’s a leader who has doubled? It may be that the leader in such cases will seldom take the bait and put his win at risk, but, if so, again, what is lost by dangling it as a possibility? And surely some will take it, even if only very occasionally. How dramatic will that be when it happens!
I agree the basketball game analogy isn’t perfect. But point being that there are a lot of contests that are not decided in last inning, quarter, minute, second, end, shot, play, etc. We should look for ways to make all of them decided as late as possible so as to allow as much drama as possible. Is that the be all and end all of all contests? As much last second drama in all cases as possible?
Jeopardy could add bankrupt squares. Whammies. Steal your opponent’s money squares. There are an endless list of possibilities there. All to create more drama and oomph with every selection (not just Final Jeopary but each and every square on the board would be the potential for oomph, drama and suspense.
What is there to lose? I have watched a number of new game shows over my lifetime. And all of them other than Jeopardy have artificial drama. To me, its because they need that for anyone to be interested in watching them. Jeopardy doesn’t. James run created highest ratings for the show in more than 10 years. Matt Amodio’s run increased ratings for the show as well. And most of their games were runaways (without oomph, suspense or drama in FJ).
In the last year, I realized that though I liked Alex Trebek, I like the show better. Neither of us will convince the other on the issue. I hope the change you suggest is never made to the show. To me the show works the way it is now. Changes with an eye to “improving” are more likely to do the opposite in the long run.
But everything about this or any quiz show is artificial, isn’t it? Not in a bad way: “Jeopardy!” isn’t life, it’s a set of specific rules and practices. Surely it’s a question of whether improvements to what is already a highly artificial construction are warranted, not whether those improvements are in themselves artificial. And that’s a distinct question from whether we love the show as it is. You make the latter point eloquently, and I join you in it. But can a good thing never be made a better thing? And why is it ever a good thing for the last three minutes of a show to be often a dead zone? Sure, we liked watching the runs of Matt and the other great champs, even absent a meaningful Final Jeopardy most of the time, but why is that an argument against making final Jeopardy actually meaningful, not to say actually creating “jeopardy”?
There is some luck involved with Jeopardy, but it’s more skill and knowledge than luck. Gimmicks like Steal Your Opponents Money, Bankrupt, etc. would be gimmicky and introduce too much luck. Let Wheel of Fortune keep its lucky spins, etc. The nerds among us cherish this game because it rewards what you know, not your personality, bubbliness, ability to flirt, etc.
Kinda like my surgeon–I want him/her to know stuff, not just have a vivacious personality or be attractive.
Agree with your charactization of the show as it is, @MADad , but don’t agree if you’re saying that the show wouldn’t be improved by fixing the weakness in Final Jeopardy. If you say that doing that makes the show just another Wheel of Fortune, you’re cycling the slippery slope fallacy. And what are the three Double Jeopardies if not gimmicks? Good ones. One man’s gimmick is another man’s artful tweak. It’s all a matter of judgment.
But pehaps no one except me believes that Final Jeopardy is not living up to its potential.
I agree that Jeopardy is more skill than luck. Even Daily Doubles have elements of skill to them (the more questions you get right the more you pick the next clue giving you more chances to find DD and you have to get the question right to win money on a DD). But my suggestions (which were intentionally absurd) were in the context of the discussion that Jeopardy needs more oompth and and suspense.
That discussion started with the statement that “the main structural weakness in Jeopardy is that Final Jeopardy seldom has any tension in it.” I don’t have any stats but if I had to guess, I would say that at least 75% of the games are not runaways. Not sure I see anything that happens 75% of the time as happening seldom. In that sense its a solution for something that isn’t a problem.
Let’s keep score, @saillakeerie , starting tonight, for the next two weeks, beginning with: Finals with tension 0, Finals without tension 0. But even if the balance is as you say it is, why is that an argument for not fixing it on the every fourth day it does occur - indeed, making that fourth day especially dramatic? The rule-change I am plumping for here would simply not apply on the other three days. Those Finals are just fine as they are. The new rule would only apply when the leader has doubled the field, something he would still have the same incentive to attempt to do in the course of the two prior rounds. In fact it gives him a potential reward for having accomplished this - and more to the point, it makes Final Jeopardy worth watching for the rest of us just to see whether he will take that risk and, if he does, succeed at it - i.e., actually put himself in jeopardy. As it is now, the only reason to watch the Final in these situations is simply to see the funny scribbles of those who didn’t know the answer and to feel smart oneself if one does know the answer.
According to Jeopardy Fan, Amy is the 12th contestant to win at least 10 games (often referred to as ultra champions). Fewer than one/season since they eliminated the 5-day rule. This season so far there have been 3 ultra champions.
