Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by darkgreenblue »

Congrats to Pam! Way to go, Princeton girls -- first Terry wins the College tourney, now Pam wins with a great wager tonight. But come on now, that FJ answer... :? There is a thing that separates Scotland and Wales, but it's called England. :mrgreen:

Playing against other champs certainly affects the wagering, yes? You have to assume they're more likely than an everyday contestant to make a savvy move... And that they'll assume the same about you.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by econgator »

alietr wrote:What really sucks about FJ is that I must have crossed it at some point (twice, actually), and still had never heard of it. I went with Belgium/Holland as well.

Congrats, PamIAm!
Ditto -- once in a car, once on a train.

I have to admit, I did shout at the TV on her reveal: Scotland and Wales? C'mon, Pam. ;)
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by This Is Kirk! »

El Jefe wrote:I thought Offa's Dike sounded pretty close to Uff Da! and so put it between Norway and Sweden.
Now that would be one long dike!
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by kingskip »

Does anyone know why Ryan now goes by Fritz?
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Golf »

Really hilarious how some are saying Pam made a great wager, naturally you'd be saying the exact same thing had she answered FJ correctly and lost. Not.

But, unlike yesterday, the better player today did prevail. Was expecting more from Dan, but I guess sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by seaborgium »

I wonder if Pam benefited from knowing the field ahead of time. Fritz has shown himself to be a careful wagerer in his previous games (his Crackle game shows him winning his fourth game on a triple stumper by betting $888 while trailing $7,000 to $10,000, for example), so it wouldn't have been tough to predict he wouldn't be finishing with more than $14,468.

Does anyone know why Fritz finally switched to his nickname after four previous outings as Ryan?
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by seaborgium »

Golf wrote:Really hilarious how some are saying Pam made a great wager, naturally you'd be saying the exact same thing had she answered FJ correctly and lost. Not.

But, unlike yesterday, the better player today did prevail. Was expecting more from Dan, but I guess sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
I wondered when you were going to come whining about the wager that won her the game.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by chalupabatman786 »

TenPoundHammer wrote: It's been a while since I've seen it, but I don't remember that line at all.
If I had a nickel for every time you said that...
But seriously, the act is wearing thin. Ignorance may not something to be ashamed of, but it surely isn't something to be proud of.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by teapot37 »

TenPoundHammer wrote:Have they ever had to BMS a response twice before?
At least once, in this game.

When RyanFritz hit the first DD, I was all, "Is he gonna go palindromic?" And then he did, and I was happy.

The "dyke" had me in the Netherlands (and Belgium) as well.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Golf »

seaborgium wrote:
Golf wrote:Really hilarious how some are saying Pam made a great wager, naturally you'd be saying the exact same thing had she answered FJ correctly and lost. Not.

But, unlike yesterday, the better player today did prevail. Was expecting more from Dan, but I guess sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
I wondered when you were going to come whining about the wager that won her the game.
Whining? Had she answered FJ correctly and lost how many people would say it was a great wager? None. That was my only point, some people are judging solely by the outcome. Kind of like a poker player calling an all-in with 2 outs and then celebrating his greatness when he hits one of them.

I will say this about this type of wager, against a known player, someone with multiple intelligently played games under their belt, it can be something to rationally consider. Of course then if the smart player employs third level thinking you're toast. But in a normal game against randoms, it's simply dreadful.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by seaborgium »

Golf wrote:
seaborgium wrote:
Golf wrote:Really hilarious how some are saying Pam made a great wager, naturally you'd be saying the exact same thing had she answered FJ correctly and lost. Not.

But, unlike yesterday, the better player today did prevail. Was expecting more from Dan, but I guess sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
I wondered when you were going to come whining about the wager that won her the game.
Whining? Had she answered FJ correctly and lost how many people would say it was a great wager? None. That was my only point, some people are judging solely by the outcome. Kind of like a poker player calling an all-in with 2 outs and then celebrating his greatness when he hits one of them.

I will say this about this type of wager, against a known player, someone with multiple intelligently played games under their belt, it can be something to rationally consider. Of course then if the smart player employs third level thinking you're toast. But in a normal game against randoms, it's simply dreadful.
I would have recognized and acknowledged the strategy in her wager regardless of the outcome.

How do you know people are judging solely by the outcome? Did you ask them all?

Edit: anyway, I think judging her wager based solely on the outcome is fine, because her wager reflects that she apparently predicted that very outcome.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by lieph82 »

seaborgium wrote:
Golf wrote:
seaborgium wrote:
Golf wrote:Really hilarious how some are saying Pam made a great wager, naturally you'd be saying the exact same thing had she answered FJ correctly and lost. Not.

But, unlike yesterday, the better player today did prevail. Was expecting more from Dan, but I guess sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.
I wondered when you were going to come whining about the wager that won her the game.
Whining? Had she answered FJ correctly and lost how many people would say it was a great wager? None. That was my only point, some people are judging solely by the outcome. Kind of like a poker player calling an all-in with 2 outs and then celebrating his greatness when he hits one of them.

I will say this about this type of wager, against a known player, someone with multiple intelligently played games under their belt, it can be something to rationally consider. Of course then if the smart player employs third level thinking you're toast. But in a normal game against randoms, it's simply dreadful.
I would have recognized and acknowledged the strategy in her wager regardless of the outcome..

How do you know people are judging solely by the outcome? Did you ask them all?
I also would have recognized and acknowledged the strategy in her wager regardless of the outcome. For sure, the wager works much better in this tournament against a player who you know will wager rationally than it does in a normal game against two randoms. In a game that's not a crush, making the cover wager is essentially you betting on yourself to get FJ right. This is nearly always the correct strategy in a regular game, but how low does the FJ get-rate have to be for this to cease to be the case? 30%? 10%? Remember what percentage of UTOC games were FJ "upsets"? The BotD games a month ago, too. These FJs in these super tournaments are hard, and making the cover wager hasn't been nearly as effective as it is in regular play.

So…

-$0 is a rational alternate wager for Pam purely because of the math. Vermonter often lists "clever" alternative wagers for certain situations, and I'm sure he'll note this one as such.
-Pam can expect Ryan to make the rational small wager here. Of course, this can get into mind games and third and fourth and fifth level thinking, but Fritz hasn't shown himself to be a mathematical genius in his games--he has pretty much always made a fairly standard rational wager (+/- a few bucks for kicks).
-These FJs are very hard; they have stumped and continue to stump some of Jeopardy!'s greatest champions. Making a bet where, if your opponent wagers rationally, you have to get FJ right in order to win, is not necessarily the best option.

Go do an analysis of UTOC games and tell me how well the standard cover wager fared there.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Vermonter »

This might have been the most complicated wagering situation I've seen, although maybe the strange amount for Fritz had something to do with it.

For him, I liked a wager in the 4,067 - 4,802 range. Sure, you might fall below Dan, but I'd prefer to take my destiny into my own hands to some extent, especially when I might be marked as a Venusian to my leading opponent.

Pam should have wagered 737, but who's counting? :)
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by dhkendall »

opusthepenguin wrote:It took me almost a minute to figure out who Fritz reminded me of when he uncovered that last DD. Maybe the proper dialogue would've helped.
I'm wondering if there is advantages to doing non-round numbers for DD bets. Watson must've done it for a reason, but as a mere meatbag, I can't think of any practical reason. The only one that comes to mind is that maybe it'd be hard for opponents to calculate how much is needed in a proper DD or FJ bet, but a) they have lots of time to come up with their wager, even for DDs, and b) they're Jeopardy! players, math-on-the-fly is usually part of the job!

I will admit that the FJ clue was just offal. I talked myself out of the wrong answer, thinking a dyke couldn't be that long, and not knowing of any natural border there (nor any reason to keep out the Welsh, I thought the English and the Welsh intermixed since Roman times), I then, like a lot of you, went to the Netherlands based on the "dyke" part, but couldn't think of any neighbour that'd work (as I assumed (rightfully so it seems) that the dyke went from water to water, and there's no border with the Netherlands that does that). The "Offa" name finally brought me to Scandinavia, and I put down Denmark-Germany, knowing full well as the Think Music wound down that the Danish-German border is even smaller than the English-Scots one, but I had nothing else.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by MDaunt »

jpahk wrote: yeah, i got there without knowing offa's dyke. hadrian's wall put me in the north of england, but "twice as long" made me think it was further south, where the island is wider. and the ff in offa seemed like it could plausibly be welsh. anyway, i was very pleased to be correct.
Offa was English - King of Mercia in the 8th century.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by opusthepenguin »

Golf wrote:Whining? Had she answered FJ correctly and lost how many people would say it was a great wager? None. That was my only point,
A classic hallmark of whining is that the whiner isn't interested in understanding the other side. We know your position. You apparently don't get ours. We would have spoken highly of Pam's wager and we would have speculated about Fritz's wager to beat her (which would have required opening himself up to a loss to Dan on the speculation that Pam would bet small). Was it subtly brilliant or simply reckless? We also would have groused about the mouth-breathers who judge such things by the outcome rather than by reason and hence thought Pam lost because she was too chicken to make the right bet when in fact the opposite was true.

Or to put it more briefly, you had only one point, and it was wrong.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by lieph82 »

Golf, let's say you were in a regular Jeopardy! game, you were in Fritz's position, and the leader beat you this way. Let's also say you got FJ right and lost anyway, because of the leader's $0 wager. Would you respect the fact that you got beaten by a clever wager, or would you grouse about how you only lost because of your opponent's absurd, stupid, ridiculous, awful wager?

If this scenario can't apply because you would have bet big from Fritz's spot, then imagine a similar situation in which someone beats you because of a nonstandard wager.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by opusthepenguin »

seaborgium wrote:anyway, I think judging her wager based solely on the outcome is fine, because her wager reflects that she apparently predicted that very outcome.
We can't know for sure, but it does seem likely. We should be clear that "outcome" here can mean something larger than "the result given those wagers and a missed FJ by Fritz and herself." It can mean "the inevitable result given those wagers, regardless of who got FJ right and who didn't." Fritz could have gotten FJ right and it wouldn't have mattered. Pam's wager works so brilliantly that, once all three had locked in their wagers, SHE COULD NOT LOSE. That's a pretty powerful outcome-based reason to say she wagered well.
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by lieph82 »

opusthepenguin wrote:
seaborgium wrote:anyway, I think judging her wager based solely on the outcome is fine, because her wager reflects that she apparently predicted that very outcome.
We can't know for sure, but it does seem likely. We should be clear that "outcome" here can mean something larger than "the result given those wagers and a missed FJ by Fritz and herself." It can mean "the inevitable result given those wagers, regardless of who got FJ right and who didn't." Fritz could have gotten FJ right and it wouldn't have mattered. Pam's wager works so brilliantly that, once all three had locked in their wagers, SHE COULD NOT LOSE. That's a pretty powerful outcome-based reason to say she wagered well.
The ONLY thing she needed to predict here was Fritz's wager. Once she predicted Fritz's wager, Dan's wager didn't matter and none of their responses to FJ mattered. Where this gets really interesting is that now all of her future opponents in the tournament have seen her do this…let the mind games begin!
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Re: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Golf »

dhkendall wrote:I'm wondering if there is advantages to doing non-round numbers for DD bets. Watson must've done it for a reason, but as a mere meatbag, I can't think of any practical reason. The only one that comes to mind is that maybe it'd be hard for opponents to calculate how much is needed in a proper DD or FJ bet, but a) they have lots of time to come up with their wager, even for DDs, and b) they're Jeopardy! players, math-on-the-fly is usually part of the job!
Many moons ago I told myself if I ever get the call I'd wager amounts like this because it gives my opponents a higher chance of making mathematical errors. That's the only reason as far as I'm concerned. Could care less about the strange looking amounts.

opusthepenguin wrote:A classic hallmark of whining is that the whiner isn't interested in understanding the other side. We know your position. You apparently don't get ours. We would have spoken highly of Pam's wager and we would have speculated about Fritz's wager to beat her (which would have required opening himself up to a loss to Dan on the speculation that Pam would bet small). Was it subtly brilliant or simply reckless? We also would have groused about the mouth-breathers who judge such things by the outcome rather than by reason and hence thought Pam lost because she was too chicken to make the right bet when in fact the opposite was true.

Or to put it more briefly, you had only one point, and it was wrong.
I fully understand the thought process used by the small wagerers. I already agreed that in a tournament like this it holds a bit more weight than in regular games. I will also agree that with the difficultly level ratcheted up significantly that the strategy is a bit more plausible.

But when it comes right down to it, you're doing nothing except taking a somewhat educated guess with tons of money at stake. And in the end, the contestant has to live with that wager. And just how do you think a contestant is going to take being in the lead going into FJ, answering correctly, and losing? A helluva lot worse than being in the lead, making the cover bet, and losing.

Believe me, I understand all the positions completely. Even the part about living with your wager, living with a decision worth a boatload of money. Perhaps you should think about that, because if you haven't been there, it's not the easiest thing to comprehend.
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