Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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Linear Gnome
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Re: Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Linear Gnome »

I'm torn about whether to post this because I think Mike and Yellowlees are awesome and I don't want it to come across as a criticism of either of them, but Friday's game gives such a good illustration of the strategy behind my wager in Tuesday's game that it's hard to pass up.

I'll put it in "my" thread to avoid hijacking theirs, and I'll put it in a spoiler just in case someone hasn't watched Friday's game yet.
Spoiler
The scores going into FJ on Friday were Drew 15200, Mike 11800, and Yellowlees 10200. My strategy would have led to starting with a 5000 bet (note that Drew finished with 6799 and this would give me 6800) but reducing it to 1599 to stay ahead of Yellowlees if she decides not to bet anything. Mike and I (with the same score, coincidentally) can win either if everyone gets it wrong or if leader is wrong and everyone else gets it right, but we can't cater to both, and these are the only* scenarios in which our wager matters. The advantage of Mike's bet is that you're betting on yourself, everyone understands it, and you win more money if you're right. The advantage of my bet is that, historically, the triple stumper comes up much more often than the single miss by leader (reinforced by the fact that literature is not a strong category for me).

*Dylan's offering the tie on Tuesday complicates things, but that's such a low frequency occurrence that it can't practically be factored in.

What's sort of sad is, if you lose by betting more than what would have worked out, everyone shrugs their shoulders and says "unlucky". But, in many people's minds, I will forever be the middle-aged lady who lost because I was afraid to bet enough to win. Still, in the alternate universe in which I bet more and lost on a triple stumper, I would have never forgiven myself for not giving myself my best chances of winning.

But my favorite alternate universe is the one in which I made the bet I did and FJ was a triple stumper. :geek:
Golf
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Re: Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Golf »

Linear Gnome wrote:I'm torn about whether to post this because I think Mike and Yellowlees are awesome and I don't want it to come across as a criticism of either of them, but Friday's game gives such a good illustration of the strategy behind my wager in Tuesday's game that it's hard to pass up.

I'll put it in "my" thread to avoid hijacking theirs, and I'll put it in a spoiler just in case someone hasn't watched Friday's game yet.
Am definitely glad your wager had rational thought behind it rather than the random number it initially appeared to be. I just don't agree with the logic.

But, if in the end you are totally satisfied with this strategy, that's really all that matters. None of our votes count.
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Linear Gnome
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Re: Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Linear Gnome »

Golf wrote:
Linear Gnome wrote:I'm torn about whether to post this because I think Mike and Yellowlees are awesome and I don't want it to come across as a criticism of either of them, but Friday's game gives such a good illustration of the strategy behind my wager in Tuesday's game that it's hard to pass up.

I'll put it in "my" thread to avoid hijacking theirs, and I'll put it in a spoiler just in case someone hasn't watched Friday's game yet.
Am definitely glad your wager had rational thought behind it rather than the random number it initially appeared to be. I just don't agree with the logic.

But, if in the end you are totally satisfied with this strategy, that's really all that matters. None of our votes count.
Well, for some value of "totally". :) FWIW, I was (and am) not offended by your initial post. One reason I didn't "come out" until after my game aired is that I knew how my bet would look and I wanted to read some commentary that would be unbiased by the fact that I was here. I was gratified when a couple of people started saying, "Well, maybe it's not such a terrible wager--maybe it's a coincidence, but here's a valid way of coming up with that number."

You, and anyone else, are perfectly entitled to disagree with my wager and/or think it was a mistake--as long as people recognize that I did have a strategy, I have no qualms. Do you know that I actually brought visual aids to my watch party so I could explain what I did? Some people got it, and some didn't, but I think they all got the idea that there was a thought process involved.
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Re: Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Bamaman »

Thanks for explaining your get. I'd never bet on myself to miss and would have made the MSB against Drew. But it did have logical reasons and gives you a win tie on a TS.

Congrats on making it further than I have on the show.
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Linear Gnome
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Re: Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Linear Gnome »

Bamaman wrote:Thanks for explaining your get. I'd never bet on myself to miss and would have made the MSB against Drew. But it did have logical reasons and gives you a win tie on a TS.

Congrats on making it further than I have on the show.
Thanks. I can see why you think of it as betting on myself to miss, but I was thinking of it as betting that, any literature question easy enough for me to get, Dylan would get, too. I haven't had a literature class since 1978 and it's one of the categories in which my knowledge is about three inches deep. So I thought my best chance was a hard FJ that we would all get wrong. (Being offered a tie in this situation is rare enough that I don't think I can/should take it into account.)

Addendum the next day: you know, I've been thinking about this for such a long time that sometimes it's hard to keep track of what I was thinking when. While preparing for my taping, I wanted a strategy that would be Ilene-proof when under extreme stress. I thought I could handle the 2/3 scenario and I knew that I'd have to give up the win on the triple stumper if I bet more. Under the lights, it did occur to me that Drew could pass me, but there had been so much conservative betting so far that week that I really didn't expect him to bet to double. (He has several strategies available; what he did is one excellent option, especially if he is confident in the category, but it's hard to predict what the player in third will bet.) Basically, I knew my bet would work on a triple stumper or in the actual case with a smaller bet by Drew, so I stuck with it.
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Re: Tuesday, March 5, 2013 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by SavoyGirl »

OKlibrarian wrote: I agree that none of the contestants exactly seemed like ToC potential based on today's play. (now watch Drew go on a 5+ game tear...)
I've been haunted by that remark for the past week...
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