Who is James Holzhauer on here?

[thechaoz]

he seemed a little flustered after missing that 1st daily double but then re bounded nice in the 2nd round, he will be tough to beat because he seems to know every subject

I knew he'd come right back.
He over thought a low level question but I knew He'd roll back and crush the competition ..

Which is a joke..

Guy is a savant

[pavyracer]

He won 6 figures today to make up for yesterday. Gambler's move!

[reigle9]

miss this every day

7pm on what channel?

[gojetsgomoxies]

monday night was a perfect example of what i was talking about in terms of jeopardy betting (pre-james) being sub-optimal

james missed his first all-in daily double, and i think almost missed the 2nd one (my recollection was he seemed very unsure but ended up getting it right)... anyway, he missed his first all-in daily double and still ended up with huge runaway lead for FJ....

EDIT: i could check the math/answers for monday, but i think james could have still been runaway leader at FJ if he had missed his first TWO daily doubles. just get some money and nail the 3rd daily double. i'd have to see the timing though. he definitely would have needed some time to build his stack back up for the 3rd daily double
now, people may say "james is a very good player, he can make a big comeback if he misses an "all-in" daily double. BUT for an inferior player there is even more reason to be very aggressive on daily doubles.

look at it another way, you are an inferior player (like most of us). you've grabbed a daily double on a $2000 square on a category you really like. why would you bet $3K when betting is only limited by what you have.

i think trebek chastises people for taking huge risk and missing. and i also think it's embarassing to not be able to play FJ... but you are there to win. behavioural factors are stupid.

as for time jeopardy plays, my sense is it varies by market. (not sure. it might be time-shifting i.e. watching a dallas channel on san francisco cable system... but i think it plays different times in different cities.......... is wheel always before jeopardy?

[cincinnatikid513]

wow the machine wins another 100k guy is crushing it over 500k in earnings watch out ken jennings

[spurginobili]

Unlike most players, his strategy is starting with the biggest amounts, going across every category, then working back down.

He's obviously looking for the Daily Double, and by starting with the biggest amounts in each category, he has more cash to bet when he finds one.

He's gone all-in on every Daily Double he's hit in the first round since he's been on the show.

He's now a 9-day champion with $566,660

[thechaoz]

wow the machine wins another 100k guy is crushing it over 500k in earnings watch out ken jennings

Guy isn't "good at trivia" , he's a savant.

Going to crush Ken's record

[cincinnatikid513]

Guy isn't "good at trivia" , he's a savant.

Going to crush Ken's record

so james is already 2nd behind ken jennings in regular jeopardy earnings, jennings won 74 consecutive wins and 2.5 million, james has 9 wins and over 500k so he's on pace to shatter jennings total earnings number, there is a 3rd guy not too shabby brad rutter he played earlier on when rules were different he only got to win 5 regular games but he has won every thing else and never been defeated by human players only the ibm watson, jeopardy needs to give us a 2 day battle between james holzhauer ken jennings and brad rutter, it would be epic the 3 best jeopardy players of all time the ratings would be off the charts

[thechaoz]

so james is already 2nd behind ken jennings in regular jeopardy earnings, jennings won 74 consecutive wins and 2.5 million, james has 9 wins and over 500k so he's on pace to shatter jennings total earnings number, there is a 3rd guy not too shabby brad rutter he played earlier on when rules were different he only got to win 5 regular games but he has won every thing else and never been defeated by human players only the ibm watson, jeopardy needs to give us a 2 day battle between james holzhauer ken jennings and brad rutter, it would be epic the 3 best jeopardy players of all time the ratings would be off the charts

It would be epic once he's done.

Unless they get another genius level contestant, I can't see how this run ends.

His only weakness I've picked up on is animal catagories, whether about them in general or pictures/sounds.

Everything else is stupid.

[BigJay]

He’s a machine. Only way I see him losing is because of his style. Because of the amounts he bets on daily doubles, if he happens to get one wrong late, leading to a non-runaway heading to final. Only way I see him getting beat.

I thought he might be slightly autistic when I first started watching him.

[gummo]

$131000 today another record. Producers are going to have to find a way to sabotage him.

[ChuckyTheGoat]

$131000 today another record. Producers are going to have to find a way to sabotage him.

What a performance. He's un-beatable.

I think they'll ask him to tap out.

[pavyracer]

They will put something in his food or drink to make him sick.

[d2bets]

U of I representing!

I know one of his relatives.

[cincinnatikid513]

good article about the machine and interview

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vulture.com/amp/2019/04/jeopardy-james-holzhauer-winning-strategy.html

[cincinnatikid513]

i saw yesterday jeopardy wrapped up its filming for season and wont start filming again til september how fR does james go i noticed they dont have any sports categories they must do that on purpose not to help him any

[ChuckyTheGoat]

i saw yesterday jeopardy wrapped up its filming for season and wont start filming again til september how fR does james go i noticed they dont have any sports categories they must do that on purpose not to help him any

Good point, Ckid. Have to give him some sort of handicap, right?

[cincinnatikid513]

guy bet 75k ken griffey jr would get over 75 pct vote hall of fame, that seems way too easy was a good article above



What’s the weirdest sporting event you’ve ever bet on?This isn’t super weird, but my wife was mad at me one time. It was the week of the 2016 Baseball Hall of Fame induction, the year Ken Griffey Jr. was eligible to be inducted. There was a place that would let me bet $75,000 he would be inducted with more than 75 percent of the vote.

[eidolon]

I'm James Holzhauer

[blankoblanco]

He’s a machine. Only way I see him losing is because of his style. Because of the amounts he bets on daily doubles, if he happens to get one wrong late, leading to a non-runaway heading to final. Only way I see him getting beat.

Yeah. He's a monster, but there's a lot of variance not only in the categories but just in daily doubles and final jeopardy that have huge influence on scores. Ken Jennings lost on a final jeopardy that was kind of stupid and simple for a lot of people but just not something on his radar at all. To go 74 straight in this game like Ken did is utterly absurd no matter how smart you are and just won't happen ever again

[cincinnatikid513]

i wonder if james will go tout after the jeopardy run, this guy could make a ton selling his picks everyone will think he must be greatest gambler ever by his jeopardy run

[ChuckyTheGoat]

i wonder if james will go tout after the jeopardy run, this guy could make a ton selling his picks everyone will think he must be greatest gambler ever by his jeopardy run

He made comment today. Said that books likely won't look too kindly on his action (going fwd).

[cincinnatikid513]

He made comment today. Said that books likely won't look too kindly on his action (going fwd).

hes prob done as a sports bettor he can do the game shows make more money

[ttwarrior1]

how can i get on, i memorized the almanac

[spurginobili]

Just watched today's show...lol

Improved his single day record...holy shit man

[cincinnatikid513]

Just watched today's show...lol

Improved his single day record...holy shit man

im not gonna lie when i saw his competition tonight knew it was going be a beatdown they looked like deer in headlights

[eaglesfan371]

He made comment today. Said that books likely won't look too kindly on his action (going fwd).

I thought the largest books such as Westgate and MGM basically will not ban people. Thats part of the "allure" to vegas I thought (if you win you can still continue winning, come to Vegas and beat us). They allow people to bet posted maximums which aren't that high, like 5k most sports, 20k NFL.

[eaglesfan371]

i wonder if james will go tout after the jeopardy run, this guy could make a ton selling his picks everyone will think he must be greatest gambler ever by his jeopardy run

He can pretty much become a consultant to whatever he wants. He is clearly a genius and people will respect his opinion.

[spurginobili]

im not gonna lie when i saw his competition tonight knew it was going be a beatdown they looked like deer in headlights

Likewise, I didn't think they stood a chance either

[blankoblanco]

He can pretty much become a consultant to whatever he wants. He is clearly a genius and people will respect his opinion.

Almost as smart as JoeCool

[ChuckyTheGoat]

I thought the largest books such as Westgate and MGM basically will not ban people. Thats part of the "allure" to vegas I thought (if you win you can still continue winning, come to Vegas and beat us). They allow people to bet posted maximums which aren't that high, like 5k most sports, 20k NFL.

There's been a lot written about this. Depends on the book. Some books will use information from top players to move their #.

[cincinnatikid513]

Jeopardy! Champ James Holzhauer on Why His ‘Strategically Aggressive’ Gameplay Paid Off

Sure, Game of Thrones might be the last show we all watch together, but when a contestant has a crazy hot streak on Jeopardy! for weeks and weeks on end? That’s what we call appointment television — and we’re ready to fight Merriam-Webster on that. The latest player to cause such a tizzy is James Holzhauer, a professional sports gambler from Las Vegas who’s excelled at a quietly aggressive gameplay meant to get as much bang for his buck as possible: He starts on the bottom with the most “expensive” clues while sniffing out the Daily Doubles in the process, all while his fellow competitors stand around looking pretty dumbfounded. You could say it’s been a damn good strategy, albeit not a super-popular one. At present time Holzhauer has amassed $566,660 in winnings, making him the second-best player in Jeopardy! history, behind only the great Ken Jennings.
Holzhauer was nice enough to take a call from Vulture earlier this week and share more about his Jeopardy! experience, which is still chugging along in remarkable fashion. Among other things, we discussed how being a gambler gives him a competitive advantage, why more contestants need to embrace their aggressive side, and one very amusing Alex Trebek story.


Can you tell me more about your background as a sports gambler, and how that became your line of work?
When I was a kid, I would turn on the television as soon as I got home from school. The afternoon options for the Chicago area were Cubs games and Jeopardy! So I got super into baseball statistics and Jeopardy! That informed who I am today. I was one of those kids who wanted to get every single baseball card in the set. The internet was the only way I could get all of these players’ statistics and put them in Excel and determine who the real MVP of the league was. And even when I was a kid I would tell my dad, Man, I wish there was something that was a stock market but for sports teams instead of businesses. Fast-forward to adulthood, there is indeed such a thing! You just have to look for it.

Do you enjoy gambling on baseball more than other sports?
Kind of. I first got into gambling because it was a way for me to leverage my love of baseball statistics. For the first few years, that’s all I would focus on. They have this thing called “future bets” where you pick which team is going to win the division or the World Series. It’s easy to analyze those odds mathematically. The next few years I transitioned to betting on individual baseball games, which has a much bigger market. As it went on, the bookies were getting better at setting their baseball odds, so I branched into different sports where I thought they were still behind the curve. You have to find different ways to get edges. In-game betting has become very popular. Every time there’s a commercial break, new odds are set for the game. That’s the kind of thing you can make mistakes on, because you only have ten or so seconds to work on those odds. Now I bet on hockey a lot, too.

What’s the weirdest sporting event you’ve ever bet on?This isn’t super weird, but my wife was mad at me one time. It was the week of the 2016 Baseball Hall of Fame induction, the year Ken Griffey Jr. was eligible to be inducted. There was a place that would let me bet $75,000 he would be inducted with more than 75 percent of the vote. It seemed easy to me, but I made the mistake of telling my wife about it. She got all scared we were going to lose this bet, although I have no idea how that could’ve happened. [Laughs.] I never tell my wife when I make bets like that anymore!


So what motivated you to give gambling a break and audition for the show?
When I watched Jeopardy! as a kid, I would primarily watch with my grandmother. She was the most beautiful person the world has ever seen. Her first language wasn’t English, so she couldn’t follow along well, but she wanted to share this experience with me since she saw it was something I really liked. I promised her I’d one day be up on that stage for her. I don’t promise anything unless I intend to fulfill it. To me, it’s fulfilling the promise I made to her 25 years ago. Once I really decided to take this seriously, I wasn’t going to half-ass it. It didn’t matter if I won, but if I went home knowing it was the absolute best I was capable of, that’s all I really cared about.
How did you prepare for the show? Did you go all-in on Jeopardy! game theory?
What I do in sports betting is I look at what the typical bettor does. I look at every aspect and think, What can I do just a little bit better than the average person? If you synthesize, like, ten different things, you do one or two percent better than someone else. I would look at Daily Double wagering. What can I do that’s a little ahead of the curve? Is it better to build up your score first or try to find the Daily Double right away so no one else can have it? I like to look in the children’s section of the library to get a base of knowledge of every subject. Often the Daily Double is going to be in a subject I’m not familiar with, so I need at least some knowledge of every category. It was finding a little bit of an edge in every aspect of the game as I could.
How do you think your experience as a gambler further enhanced your gameplay? Did you go in with an advantage compared to the other players?
Yeah, I definitely think so. My theory is that you need to be betting very aggressively on Daily Doubles and in Final Jeopardy. A lot of people bet big when their backs are against the wall, but people don’t realize … everyone thinks, Oh, I want to go into Final Jeopardy with some chance of winning.But that’s not the best strategy. I bet on sports, and as an example, there comes a time in a football game where a team is down three points with a minute left, so they’re going to try a field goal to tie and go into overtime.But really the best chance of winning is to go all-out for the touchdown. Players need to be playing more aggressively when they get Daily Doubles in “regulation time,” so to speak. Maybe it’s just the mind-set of football teams doing this, but in my job, I have to bet very large amounts of money from time to time. I know life goes on if you make a big bet and you lose. But if you don’t give yourself the best chance of winning, you’re going to kick yourself tomorrow. I’m used to gambling. To me, these are just points on the scoreboard and not actual dollars. That mind-set was very helpful for me.
How else would you define your strategy besides being aggressive?
I guess I’d call it strategically aggressive. I didn’t model my strategy after anyone in particular. My basic thoughts going in were, Okay, I want to have some money before Daily Doubles, and if this helps take my opponents off[their] game, that’s just a bonus. Some players in the past have said they bounced from category from category on purpose to throw everyone. I wasn’t trying to do that at all, it wasn’t my goal. I was just trying to get as much money I could before the big bets came in to leverage that. I do feel maybe the opponents I faced tried to play “the James style” — I guess you can call it that — of going for the high-value clues first, like what I was doing. But maybe since they didn’t go in with that game plan, they were less comfortable with that. That gave me a home-court advantage, so to speak.
You say your goal wasn’t to throw everyone off with your strategy. But did you go on Jeopardy! with any goal in mind?
I had one specific goal, which was to win an episode with exactly $110,914, because that’s my daughter’s birthday. A lot of people said, Okay, good luck, keep dreaming. But I knew it was achievable if I played my cards right. I was very happy I got the opportunity to do that. I didn’t have a “this will be a failure if I don’t win more than X games”mind-set.
Why do you think the vast majority of past Jeopardy! players never adapted to your aggressive technique? It seems pretty simple to me: If you want more money, start with the bigger-money clues and seek out Daily Doubles.
I think what you’re describing is the best strategy for me, but the most important thing for every contestant is to be comfortable and don’t succumb to nerves. If you’re not playing a game you find comfortable, that’s going to be worse for you than just having a suboptimal game-theory strategy. If you’re the kind of player who needs to take the low-value clues first to become comfortable with the categories to move along, that’s what you should do. But if you’re like me, who goes in cold-blooded about it, then you play the cold-blooded strategy. Everyone is doing the best things for themselves.
The general chatter on social media is that you “broke” the game with your playing style. Would you agree with that?
I wouldn’t agree with that at all. I think Jeopardy! is a great game that could never be broken. I see it as a compliment, but there’s nothing about the game that needs fixing. It didn’t get broken, I just found a way to play that fit well with my style. I don’t foresee them changing the rules or anything going forward. I’ll be interested to see down the road if anybody else tries a similar style and see how it works for them. I would actually like to see something like that. It would make me feel good.
Do you follow hot-dog eating?
Can’t say I do.
About a decade ago, nobody ever thought someone could eat more than, like, 25 hot dogs in ten minutes. But this guy named Takeru Kobayashi came along and he shattered the record by so much that people realized there was a new blueprint to do this. So I’d be interested to see if there was a new paradigm in the show. If someone comes along and breaks my record, and attributed to my style, that would be really great.
Has Roger Craig reached out to congratulate you on breaking his single-day record?Yeah, Roger did reach out. He was really gracious. He congratulated me and offered some advice about the media frenzy that he knew was coming for me. I wasn’t ready for it, but he helped me prepare me a bit better than I would’ve been.
In one of your first episodes, Alex Trebek said we should be on the lookout for you becoming the next Ken Jennings. Do you welcome those comparisons, either to Ken or any other famous Jeopardy! player?
All of these comparisons are an honor. I play the game very differently than Ken does. If you look at his statistics, he was a much more dominant player on the buzzer than I could ever hope to be. So I needed to play the game differently than he does to achieve the same results, if that makes sense. I created my approach to the game by myself, but I definitely see some similarities between me and champions who have come in the past. It’s a credit to them that they had this stuff figured out before I did.
Okay, you brought up the buzzer. I have a weird question for you.Shoot.
What does it actually look and feel like? I hear so much about “buzzer theory” that I forget viewers can barely see it while watching the show.
It’s a cylinder, kind of like the size of a ballpoint pen. But a lot thicker. What I did to prepare was I took an old mechanical pencil and wrapped a lot of masking tape around it to simulate the shape of the buzzer. I heard others took an old toilet paper tube and worked with that. When I was practicing, I would put on my dress shoes, stand up, and actually click this makeshift button I made while watching old episodes. That helped me improve my comfort level before I even got onstage.



You got to spend some time with Alex before he gave a not-so-great updateabout his pancreatic cancer. Do you have a favorite memory of him during your time on the show?
My favorite thing that happened with Alex occurred during the post-game interview after my record-setting game. He pointed to the audience, where the next two contestants were sitting. We were going to tape the next show in about 15 minutes. And he just looks over at me and whispers, “Look at them, they’re thinking, Oh shit. We have to face James next.”[Laughs.] There was something about hearing your elderly uncle on television whip out this curse word that was very entertaining.

I have to ask, did you have fun playing? Was this a fun experience?
You know, I definitely did have fun. I lost myself in the playing zone during the actual game, but the producers do a wonderful job of making sure everyone’s having a good time. They keep it light. Everyone’s laughing in the green room. Everyone’s smiling, even the people I beat. I lost to this guy who beat the record, I can go home with my head held high. So yeah, it’s fun!

[BigJay]

Dude was 40-for-40 today on answers he buzzed in on, then nailed final for a new record.

[thechaoz]

I maxed all the SBR bets. Obviously very limited

[BigJay]

I maxed all the SBR bets. Obviously very limited

How did you play them?