Monday, June 16, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[cosmos]

6390. bois

No. That was a triple stumper.

John, the returning champ, was leading Claudia with $13,400 to her $9,000. John bet $5.700 to more than cover the possibility of Claudia doubling her score. But Claudia only bet $1,000 and she won the game.

[Rex Kramer]

6260. pal

Also no.

Rex

[Rex Kramer]

I totally would have gone TDD on Katie's final DD. A second-level clue in "Noose Men" with the (for me) pre-called Saddam Hussein still unrevealed? I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

In fact I would have been tempted to say, "I'd like to make it a True Daily Double, Alex, and I'm going to respond, 'Who is Saddam Hussein?' Final answer." But I probably would have given that a second thought.

Congratulations on the win, Andrea, and welcome to the Boards!

Rex

[Bamaman]

Although I said at first I'd have bet all but a dollar on the DD just to save myself for FJ, betting it all would have been a much better bet. If she doubles up to $24,000, she can ring in and miss the last clue snd still have a lock tie as long as second place doesn't get it right.

I was surprised they did not use Major Andre in the category.

[thenextofken]

Am I the only one who caught the "Hong Kong Phooey" reference? Or am I just the only one here who will admit to being that old?

[TenPoundHammer]

Am I the only one who caught the "Hong Kong Phooey" reference? Or am I just the only one here who will admit to being that old?

I remember watching it on Cartoon Network for that brief period that we had Primestar in the late 90s. Sometimes I'd even watch it in Spanish. It was about 3 more years before we got Cartoon Network again.

[MarkBarrett]

Am I the only one who caught the "Hong Kong Phooey" reference? Or am I just the only one here who will admit to being that old?

I'm old enough to have watched it first run on ABC. Later when seeing The Shining it was distracting knowing that was Hong Kong's voice.

If the last two categories would have been Flint and Stones you would not see a bunch of people commenting on the connection since it's in the common knowledge area. Hong Kong Phooey is too well known to have slipped by people of the right age, but not clever enough to have caused posts about it.

[A drop of golden sun]

Sorry for the late reply, I just watched this episode on YouTube, having forgotten to DVR it. This was a ridiculously easy Final Jeopardy! and a ridiculously bad wager by Katie, who does not impress me nearly as much as she impresses Alex Trebek. If I had been in Andrea's position, behind by just a little bit going into FJ, I would have made a very small wager (Venusian wager) assuming that it would take an incorrect response by Katie to win, so why put myself in a position to have to also be correct to win? Most games that would have been a good wager, but in this game that wagering strategy would have been disastrous, as Katie would have been able to win precisely because of her horrible wagering, which no challenger could have predicted.

Correct me if I'm wrong...I think there was a Battle of the Decades game in which a leader after Double Jeopardy correctly anticipated a triple stumper and a Venusian (preservation) wager by the player in 2nd place? In most games, I am confident enough in my own knowledge that I would wager based on an assumption of a correct response by me, but the Battle of the Decades was not most games.

[seaborgium]

Correct me if I'm wrong...I think there was a Battle of the Decades game in which a leader after Double Jeopardy correctly anticipated a triple stumper and a Venusian (preservation) wager by the player in 2nd place? In most games, I am confident enough in my own knowledge that I would wager based on an assumption of a correct response by me, but the Battle of the Decades was not most games.

You are wrong; both "win or go home" games in which a leader made a small wager had sole gets by third place. In Pam Mueller's case, her wager guaranteed victory in all outcomes. (Fritz Holznagel in second place could have won on a cover and miss by Pam if he just wagered to keep Dan Melia locked out; he did and Pam missed, but her $0 wager took advantage of the fact that Fritz's maximum wager in this strategy wouldn't be enough to catch her.) In Colby Burnett's case, his wager made his victory contingent on Celeste DiNucci missing FJ. (He had a small lead and Celeste could overtake him while still keeping Tom Nissley locked out, which she attempted to do. Colby wagered to stay above Celeste's pre-FJ score, and won when both of them failed to get FJ correct.)

[A drop of golden sun]

Sg, Do you have a photographic memory for Jeopardy! scores and results, or did you look up those results just now? Your reply would have been a bit more helpful if you had included each player's score before FJ, their wager, and their final score...I'm not going to take the time to look them up right now...but I seem to remember a player cleverly betting based not an an assumption of a typical opponent FJ wager, but on a FJ wager by somebody who has studied game theory just enough to have that used against them.

Annoyed with myself for not getting Montevideo and Buenos Aires...the only sensible response (I said Brasilia instead of Buenos Aires, which makes some sense because there are some parts of Brasil where Spanish is widely spoken...but for the same dialect to be spoken in two world capitals, they would have to be close to one another, which Brasilia is not (having been chosen as the location for the new capital precisely because of its central location, and therefore, not near another country.)

I didn't get the book of Amos, but I sure wouldn't have responded "Nostradamus"...Montgomery was a gimme, so was Jerry Brown, which nobody got (you don't have to be a Californian to know Jerry Brown--anybody who pays any attention to politics at all should have gotten it easily)...I think Katie should have known Adolf Eichmann was the only person executed by Israel (nobody rang in), but I remembered that correctly...Britannia was a gimme if you read the clue, which led you right to the correct response...assuming you know the song, which apparently none of them did. I stupidly responded "Oregon" for Portland (1820) because I wasn't paying attention to the year. Not coincidentally, 1820 was the year of the Missouri Compromise, which involved Maine becoming a new free state, having previously been part of Massachusetts.

Actually, the clue about Adolf Eichmann was INCORRECT--the clue stated that only one person has been executed by Israel. There was one other, Meir Tobianski, an Israeli soldier who served in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and was court martialed and executed by firing squad for treason. Adolf Eichmann was the only person executed who was tried in a civilian court.

[econgator]

Actually, the clue about Adolf Eichmann was INCORRECT--the clue stated that only one person has been executed by Israel. There was one other, Meir Tobianski, an Israeli soldier who served in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and was court martialed and executed by firing squad for treason. Adolf Eichmann was the only person executed who was tried in a civilian court.

It was fine.

1) The category was NOOSE MEN, so we're we're looking at people who were hanged.
2) The clue stated he was the only one "sentenced to death". Tobianski was never sentenced by anyone who had the authority to do so.

[davey]

Actually, the clue about Adolf Eichmann was INCORRECT--the clue stated that only one person has been executed by Israel. There was one other, Meir Tobianski, an Israeli soldier who served in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and was court martialed and executed by firing squad for treason. Adolf Eichmann was the only person executed who was tried in a civilian court.

It was fine.

1) The category was NOOSE MEN, so we're we're looking at people who were hanged.
2) The clue stated he was the only one "sentenced to death". Tobianski was never sentenced by anyone who had the authority to do so.

Yes, since the person who gave the order for Tobianski's death was later convicted of manslaughter - though he was then pardoned - it could be argued that the execution was not "carried out" with the authority of the state of Israel or the Israel Defense Forces.
But it's an interesting story.

[Vanya]

Headlines from the Onion - a slightly better category than Oprah reads the clues.

[seaborgium]

Sg, Do you have a photographic memory for Jeopardy! scores and results, or did you look up those results just now? Your reply would have been a bit more helpful if you had included each player's score before FJ, their wager, and their final score...I'm not going to take the time to look them up right now...but I seem to remember a player cleverly betting based not an an assumption of a typical opponent FJ wager, but on a FJ wager by somebody who has studied game theory just enough to have that used against them.

Those games were interesting enough that I remembered them, and I understood what made the unusual wagers tick, which made the situations easy to reconstruct. I guess my understanding of the workings of wagers made me think that what I posted was plenty helpful without the exact numbers that someone with a photographic memory (or, on the other end, someone who had had to look up the games to pick them apart) might have provided.

Fritz was a very good potential victim of the "turn a two-thirds situation against second place" strategy, as someone who has shown himself as a canny bettor in such situations. (He won his fourth game, I believe, on a triple stumper by betting small when he trailed with around $7,000 against the leader's ~$10,000.)

[A drop of golden sun]

Another difference between a tournament game and a regular game, besides tougher clues, is the ability to study your potential opponents' wagering tendencies based on prior games. I think most, if not all, of the BOTD players were multi-dimensional players who had mastered how to decipher the clues, knowing when and when not to take a guess, the timing of the signaling device, AND wagering strategy.

[Magnoliasims]

I question calling the book of Amos as biblical -- it's a book by a prophet (not the Bible which is the Five Books of Moses).
Well, that's the Jewish perspective, anyway.
Amos is one of the twelve prophets in Trey Asar,

What I thought was ironic was that neither ANDREW nor ANDREA got the AMOS question.
No one else remembers AMOS and ANDY?
Get it?

[Vanya]

Holy mackeral.

[OrangeSAM]

Oy vay.

[TenPoundHammer]

I thought he was a Cajun who lived by himself in the swamp.