Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

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lieph82
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by lieph82 »

koam wrote:I wouldn't expect Arthur to return or do me a favor if he determined I was a worthy opponent who had a better-than-average chance of ending his run. If he saw me as a strong player, I'm sure he'd go for the win if he were ahead. He's said he's there to stay there, not make friends and I think that's smart.
Arthur has said that he made his FJ decisions by rote. If he was ahead and not in a lock, he would bet to tie. He did absolutely no thinking about the decision beyond executing the algorithm that he had prepared. He has said this here--him betting for the tie does not take into account one bit who he's facing, only that his odds of winning that specific game increase by betting for the tie. If he saw you as a strong player, I'm sure he'd go for the tie if he were ahead.
ihavejeoprosy wrote:
lieph82 wrote: Probably to the person who asks "why would you even consider doing that?" to someone who had already laid out his reasons for doing so above.
Look at the title of this thread. Why do you feel that comment was specifically addressed to you? Please don't get so worked up over a hypothetical situation.
We have different definitions of the phrase "worked up." So be it. I only meant that had you read the thread before you posted, you would have seen that several possible answers to your question were proposed.
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Magna
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by Magna »

ihavejeoprosy wrote:Why would you even consider betting to tie him? Playing him again would give him the advantage of being familiar with your style and provide him an opportunity to correct his errors. If you think you can cover him, you should go for it.
On the other hand, if you've been sitting in the audience, waiting for your turn to play him, you've had far more chance to get used to his style than he to yours. And during the one game he played against you, he didn't know what the outcome would be and probably wasn't focusing on your style at all. In that sense, you're a virtually unknown quantity to him, but he isn't one to you. Second, and he's alluded to this, playing game after game can be tiring. Playing against him later in his run might give you an advantage. Third, his style isn't off-putting to me in the way it is for others. So if it were otherwise advantageous to me, I'd probably offer him the tie.
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Spaceman Spiff
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by Spaceman Spiff »

Arthur or no, I'm of the mindset to play to win.

And for someone of Arthur's skill, giving him a mulligan to come back and kick @$$ the next day is foolish. But that's just my opinion.
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by Leander »

Spaceman Spiff wrote:Arthur or no, I'm of the mindset to play to win.

And for someone of Arthur's skill, giving him a mulligan to come back and kick @$$ the next day is foolish. But that's just my opinion.
It's an opinion I completely agree with.

But that raises a question for me. Do contestants know how long the person they are playing against has been champ? They might approach this question differently against a one day champ vs. an 8 time winner.
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ComingUpMilhouse
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by ComingUpMilhouse »

Leander wrote: But that raises a question for me. Do contestants know how long the person they are playing against has been champ? They might approach this question differently against a one day champ vs. an 8 time winner.
Yes.
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koam
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by koam »

Johnny announces the Champ's tenure and winnings at the start of every show. And then Alex often comments on them.
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by ComingUpMilhouse »

Maggie also brings it up in the green room, or at least she did when I was taping. My first tape day (the second tape day of that week), the other contestant left over from the previous day also mentioned it on the shuttle from the hotel.
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by Sherm »

If you are Arthur you can play for the tie. Why? Because he's sexy and he knows it.

You don't get on the show unless you are really good at trivia, but there are some that are just at another level. Arthur is one of those, I'm sure he feels as though he can beat you today or tommorrow, it really doesn't matter. Why not play for the tie, you aren't beating him the next day, and it maximizes his chance of playing the next day.

I still think Arthur made a mistake in offering Julie Singer a tie, because she is probably the only player that he has played against that the today or tommorrow statement may not be true, she showed the game before and in Arthur's first game that she was a very strong player (she got 8 of the 12, $2000 clues in those two games), but short of her, he hasn't played anyone that can come close to matching him.

If I'm playing a 6 day champ, and somehow I have to lead going into final jeopardy, I'm not playing for a tie. They just didn't win 6 games because they aren't very good. If I'm playing two people and I've pretty much dominated the game, but don't quite have a lock. Yep, I'd play for the tie, that is someone I want to play the next day.
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by Sherm »

koam wrote:I wouldn't expect Arthur to return or do me a favor if he determined I was a worthy opponent who had a better-than-average chance of ending his run. If he saw me as a strong player, I'm sure he'd go for the win if he were ahead. He's said he's there to stay there, not make friends and I think that's smart.
Don't agree, go back and look at his first game. He even said on this board he was impressed with Julie Singer and he had just watched her hammer two people. Arthur risked it all on a daily double to get a decent lead, and then watched her slowly chisel away at the lead in the rest of the DJ!.

He still offered her a tie. His strategy is about winning one game. It doesn't take into account who's coming back tommorrow.
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MDaunt
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by MDaunt »

Always play to win.
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ArthurChu
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by ArthurChu »

Well, as I said, I'm a defensive guy. The risk of possibly losing the game by betting too much looms over me way more than tomorrow's game does -- that's the mindset I brought into this whole strategy.

It's not that it didn't cross my mind that getting rid of Julie would be a good idea, it's that "Literary Quotes" is too unpredictable a category to plan as though I already know I've gotten the question right. (A good thing, too, given that it was a 2/3 Stumper -- it could just as easily have been something I blanked on.)

As I said, there's one situation where I *might* consider betting the extra $1 and that's if FJ were a gimme category AND I was facing a buzzsaw opponent. Neither of those have happened yet -- "Literary Quotes" is not a SCARY category like "Sports Halls of Fame" but it's not a category with a finite set of facts to memorize like "World Capitals". Conversely, Carolyn was not a bad player in the game where we did get "World Capitals" but she also was not Julie Singer.
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billy pilgrim
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by billy pilgrim »

A win is, you get to keep the money and come back to play again. How is a tie for first not a win? If Jennings had 74 ties his winnings would be the same.
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koam
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by koam »

In the context of this thread, "win" is sometimes shorthand for "win by $1(thereby eliminating the 2nd-place contestant in order to face 2 new contestants in the next game)" or "win by $1." I think everyone acknowledges that a tie is also a win, just a different kind of win. If someone writes "win" while clearly intending the meaning of "win by $1, (etc.)" it doesn't mean they're saying that a tie isn't also counted as a win.
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MDaunt
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by MDaunt »

billy pilgrim wrote:A win is, you get to keep the money and come back to play again. How is a tie for first not a win? If Jennings had 74 ties his winnings would be the same.
It is a win, but...

There is a small added risk in going for the outright win. In my opinion, the opportunity to eliminate an experienced opponent is worth the risk.
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by seaborgium »

billy pilgrim wrote:A win is, you get to keep the money and come back to play again. How is a tie for first not a win? If Jennings had 74 ties his winnings would be the same.
No they wouldn't. He would have had to lose a helluva lot of money to tie some of his competitors.
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southsidehitman
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by southsidehitman »

The "going for the tie vs. going for the win" scenario doesn't work in this situation because a tie is considered a win by the Jeopardy! rules, whereas in sporting events (to which this is compared) a tie is either considered a "half-win/half-loss" or a match cannot end in a tie. Ideas on momentum or relative player strength only really apply in an elimination game in a tournament, where a game cannot end in a tie (quarterfinal matches don't count, since the wagering strategy changes due to the presence of the wild card slots).

The goal in Jeopardy! is the win the day's match. Assuming you want to knock out a perceived stronger competitor in favor of getting two new opponents the next day instead of playing for the tie and having only one new opponent the next day is a bad strategy - the opponents for the next game cannot be determined or derived until the beginning of the next game, and even so, their relative strengths can't be determined or derived objectively until the next game has actually been played. (This, incidentally, is another reason that the sports analogy is problematic - there is no advance scouting in Jeopardy, aside from the max. 60 clues/responses provided in the current game, which is not a large enough sample size to accurately determine relative strengths of players. It would be like someone deciding that just because Mickey Mantle went 3-for-16 in his first four MLB games, that he's gonna suck.)

That data cannot be used in determining wagering strategy for the current game because it has not been, and will never be, established for the present game. You cannot have the goal of winning game 5 until you have won games 1, 2, 3, and 4 - in that order.
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georgespelvin
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by georgespelvin »

I just don't understand (I don't mean that literally) why given the chance to knock out a Superchampion like Arthur rather than tie him and face him again, you would not go for the knockout. The odds against another player like Arthur being in the taping pool is astronomical. Moreover, even many of the greatest champions had close calls in their first games before they got their sea legs, so even if there was another Arthur there, your odds would likely be better against the less experienced one. The only exception would be if you were content with winning just one game for sure and getting the money that comes with it--which is not a bad justification in itself, but that's not what the arguments are here. Just my opinion.
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Magna
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by Magna »

southsidehitman wrote: Ideas on momentum or relative player strength only really apply in an elimination game in a tournament, where a game cannot end in a tie (quarterfinal matches don't count, since the wagering strategy changes due to the presence of the wild card slots).
Don't you mean the opposite of this? Momentum and player strength are not considerations when deciding whether to offer a tie in a tournament setting, because as you say, the only way to advance is to win outright. It's only in regular play that deciding whether to offer a tie is a real issue. Player strength and momentum are a couple of the factors one would want to consider when making that decision.
the opponents for the next game cannot be determined or derived until the beginning of the next game
You can make an educated guess, though. If you know you're facing a truly daunting contestant, the odds are that neither of two randomly-selected contestants will be as strong.
seaborgium
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by seaborgium »

I would weigh in, but there's a non-zero chance that I may play Arthur someday, so I will have to keep quiet (although it would probably be a situation in which ties would not be desirable).
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southsidehitman
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Re: Would you bet to tie Arthur, or bet to win?

Post by southsidehitman »

Magna wrote:
southsidehitman wrote: Ideas on momentum or relative player strength only really apply in an elimination game in a tournament, where a game cannot end in a tie (quarterfinal matches don't count, since the wagering strategy changes due to the presence of the wild card slots).
Don't you mean the opposite of this? Momentum and player strength are not considerations when deciding whether to offer a tie in a tournament setting, because as you say, the only way to advance is to win outright. It's only in regular play that deciding whether to offer a tie is a real issue. Player strength and momentum are a couple of the factors one would want to consider when making that decision.
Not necessarily, especially when dealing with a category in which you feel less than reasonably confident, or when playing in a game where you've hung on for dear life through to FJ. This is a situation where you may decide that the extra chance to "not lose" by offering the tie and taking your chances on the tiebreaker clue is preferable to going for the win in regulation (or vice versa, as the case may be).
the opponents for the next game cannot be determined or derived until the beginning of the next game
You can make an educated guess, though. If you know you're facing a truly daunting contestant, the odds are that neither of two randomly-selected contestants will be as strong.
True, but there is always a non-zero chance that your next opponents will be even stronger than your current ones. The point is, you know what you know now, and you don't know what you don't know going forward to the next game.
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