J! in the Media

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Bamaman
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Bamaman »

Barack Obama incurred the wrath of The Price is Right fans.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-no ... 04446.html
Unless Godzilla is attacking the Eastern seaboard, Obama doesn't need to be interrupting the Price is Right," tweeted Amanda Marie, a viewer.
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Volante
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Volante »

Bamaman wrote:Barack Obama incurred the wrath of The Price is Right fans.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-no ... 04446.html
Unless Godzilla is attacking the Eastern seaboard, Obama doesn't need to be interrupting the Price is Right," tweeted Amanda Marie, a viewer.
Yeah...that wasn't exactly something that required interrupting regular broadcasting. We've got enough dedicated news networks to choke a hippo; toss em a bone once in a while...
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by dhkendall »

Bamaman wrote:Barack Obama incurred the wrath of The Price is Right fans.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-no ... 04446.html
Unless Godzilla is attacking the Eastern seaboard, Obama doesn't need to be interrupting the Price is Right," tweeted Amanda Marie, a viewer.
The scariest part was "View comments (489)". I was really scared to click that link, and I've seen some *very* seedy websites that one shouldn't go to unless they're armed to the teeth with anti-malware. Anything political would bring out the worst in people. If it was a Republican president, exactly the same thing, down to the same number and tone of comments, would happen. The only thing that would change is the name, not people's attitudes.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by jeopardyhopeful »

Lack of College Football knowledge in Jeopardy! again highlighted here:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr- ... 29935.html
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Dudd »

Mathew5000 wrote:
jeopardyhopeful wrote:
I had a good email conversation with him. His sole intent was maximizing the expected value of the total payouts, "logical" wagers be damned.
Ahhh....I see. As opposed to increasing an individuals' chance of winning.
It's a rather silly article; its analysis shows that if the leader always wagers to tie and the second-place player always wagers all-in, then both players would benefit. Okay, that might have been obvious but it's good to check it empirically. The problem is, the author calls this "optimal wagering" in the title, and concludes that "players should virtually always play for the tie". The conclusion might be correct if the players were a team, cooperating with each other and colluding against the production company. But in real life the players are not going to cheat like that. Therefore the second-place player frequently has better options than an all-in wager. Hence the word "optimal" is misleading in the title of Devin Shelly's article.
I'm sort of bringing this way back from the dead, but I wrote this article and just noticed it got linked here. I'm not sure if this is the right thread for this, so I'll try and keep it short, but I disagree that this is collusion or cheating in any form. The Final Wager lays out the reasoning for betting for the tie from first place far better than I can and since he's posted itt, I'm sure you're all aware of it, so I'll defer to him for the reasoning behind betting to tie from first place.

Currently, it's optimal for second place to usually bet small since hardly anyone actually does bet for the tie, so in the event you both get it right, you'll still lose. Therefore, you need to make sure that if you both get it wrong, you'll manage to win. However, if everyone followed in the path of The Final Wager/Arthur Chu, that's no longer true: now, in the event you both get it right, you both win. Historically, FJ is pretty much a coin flip: if you can expect the leader to bet for the tie, your winning percentage will be ~50% whether you bet small and hope for him to miss or bet it all and hope to get it right. Today, since the leader pretty much always plays for the outright win, betting it all only results in a winning percentage of around 25%, somewhere under that actually because there's some degree of correlation between first and second place's chances of getting it right. It hurts the leader too, since by encouraging second to bet small, he should lose every time they both get it wrong, assuming the scores are close enough. So, in my mind, it's not collusion since neither player is minimizing their short term expectation with the expectation that tomorrow, the other guy will do the same. Even if there was no such thing as a returning champion on Jeopardy, it would still be in both players best interests to bet this way.

If the three players did want to collude, betting to tie second place's double up is the wrong way to go about it. Instead, they should simply tell third place to bet nothing. First and second place would then wager the difference between their score and third place's score, and then intentionally get FJ wrong. They'd end up playing from now until one of them died, although I'm not sure if they'd ever get paid since my understanding is you don't get any money until all of your shows have aired.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by seaborgium »

People whose appearances bridge two seasons are paid a separate check for each season. Alex actually gave Ken Jennings his season 20 check during a season 21 taping when Ken was still a contestant.

(I was unaware that this was how it was done when I appeared on the show, figuring Ken was just an outlier whom they paid on air because they could. My season 25 check was lost in the mail sometime in October 2009, and I was none the wiser until I got my season 26 check for $2,000 in December!)
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lieph82
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by lieph82 »

Another possible reason they might not get paid is because they're cheating...
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Vanya »

Dudd wrote:
Mathew5000 wrote:
jeopardyhopeful wrote:
I had a good email conversation with him. His sole intent was maximizing the expected value of the total payouts, "logical" wagers be damned.
Ahhh....I see. As opposed to increasing an individuals' chance of winning.
It's a rather silly article; its analysis shows that if the leader always wagers to tie and the second-place player always wagers all-in, then both players would benefit. Okay, that might have been obvious but it's good to check it empirically. The problem is, the author calls this "optimal wagering" in the title, and concludes that "players should virtually always play for the tie". The conclusion might be correct if the players were a team, cooperating with each other and colluding against the production company. But in real life the players are not going to cheat like that. Therefore the second-place player frequently has better options than an all-in wager. Hence the word "optimal" is misleading in the title of Devin Shelly's article.
I'm sort of bringing this way back from the dead, but I wrote this article and just noticed it got linked here. I'm not sure if this is the right thread for this, so I'll try and keep it short, but I disagree that this is collusion or cheating in any form. The Final Wager lays out the reasoning for betting for the tie from first place far better than I can and since he's posted itt, I'm sure you're all aware of it, so I'll defer to him for the reasoning behind betting to tie from first place.

Currently, it's optimal for second place to usually bet small since hardly anyone actually does bet for the tie, so in the event you both get it right, you'll still lose. Therefore, you need to make sure that if you both get it wrong, you'll manage to win. However, if everyone followed in the path of The Final Wager/Arthur Chu, that's no longer true: now, in the event you both get it right, you both win. Historically, FJ is pretty much a coin flip: if you can expect the leader to bet for the tie, your winning percentage will be ~50% whether you bet small and hope for him to miss or bet it all and hope to get it right. Today, since the leader pretty much always plays for the outright win, betting it all only results in a winning percentage of around 25%, somewhere under that actually because there's some degree of correlation between first and second place's chances of getting it right. It hurts the leader too, since by encouraging second to bet small, he should lose every time they both get it wrong, assuming the scores are close enough. So, in my mind, it's not collusion since neither player is minimizing their short term expectation with the expectation that tomorrow, the other guy will do the same. Even if there was no such thing as a returning champion on Jeopardy, it would still be in both players best interests to bet this way.

If the three players did want to collude, betting to tie second place's double up is the wrong way to go about it. Instead, they should simply tell third place to bet nothing. First and second place would then wager the difference between their score and third place's score, and then intentionally get FJ wrong. They'd end up playing from now until one of them died, although I'm not sure if they'd ever get paid since my understanding is you don't get any money until all of your shows have aired.
From the article: "The leader in Final Jeopardy! should always play for the tie. In a lock game, this means betting enough so that if he answers incorrectly, his score is equal to a second place double-up."

Lol. I'm not surprised 2+2 let this travesty of an article go through, since it's a poker site. As I've said before, Jeopardy is not poker.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Dudd »

For the record, even if you don't offer the tie in that situation, it doesn't change things much. I think per capita winnings dropped by a few hundred bucks, far smaller than the overall ~4k increase. I know a lot of people would fear bringing back a player with buzzer experience, but I would also posit that a player who finds themselves locked out is likely a worse than average Jeopardy player who you wouldn't mind playing again. Whether the increased buzzer familiarity outweighs that, I don't know, I wouldn't fault anyone for keeping an extra dollar behind, or even less depending on what their individual utility curve looks like.

Really though, all I tried to do was ask, What would Jeopardy look like if everyone bet like Arthur Chu? Well, if everyone bet like Arthur Chu, then everyone should bet like Carolyn, the woman he tied. Under those conditions, how much would everyone win, and how would it compare to today?
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Vanya »

Dudd wrote:For the record, even if you don't offer the tie in that situation, it doesn't change things much. I think per capita winnings dropped by a few hundred bucks, far smaller than the overall ~4k increase. I know a lot of people would fear bringing back a player with buzzer experience, but I would also posit that a player who finds themselves locked out is likely a worse than average Jeopardy player who you wouldn't mind playing again. Whether the increased buzzer familiarity outweighs that, I don't know, I wouldn't fault anyone for keeping an extra dollar behind, or even less depending on what their individual utility curve looks like.

Really though, all I tried to do was ask, What would Jeopardy look like if everyone bet like Arthur Chu? Well, if everyone bet like Arthur Chu, then everyone should bet like Carolyn, the woman he tied. Under those conditions, how much would everyone win, and how would it compare to today?
To use a poker analogy, it's like saying you will split the pot with your opponent(s) if they fold. And you will leave a portion of the pot on the table. Such a player would be laughed out of every poker room.

Let's say I have $30,000, my opponent has $11,000. So I should give up $8000 for the sake of a tie? Are you nuts?
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Dudd »

I'm not saying intentionally get the question wrong or anything, just wager 8k. If you get it right, you walk away with 38k. If you get it wrong, you end up with 22k and second place has the opportunity to double up and tie. Given that you're likely a strong player to have such a lead, you're also likely to have a >50% chance at correctly answering FJ (historically, leaders during lock games have answered correctly ~60% of the time), so since you're getting 1:1, that wager has a positive expectation of 1.6k dollars, and betting any smaller number decreases that amount. Depending on your risk tolerance, maybe you're not comfortable betting 8k. Maybe you believe that second place with a day of buzzer experience is better than an opponent drawn at random and you want to ensure that they get eliminated. Maybe the category really doesn't suit your knowledge base. All of those are valid reasons for holding back at least one dollar or more from your wager, but if I were in that situation, I think I'd often bet the maximum.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Vanya »

Dudd wrote:I'm not saying intentionally get the question wrong or anything, just wager 8k. If you get it right, you walk away with 38k. If you get it wrong, you end up with 22k and second place has the opportunity to double up and tie. Given that you're likely a strong player to have such a lead, you're also likely to have a >50% chance at correctly answering FJ (historically, leaders during lock games have answered correctly ~60% of the time), so since you're getting 1:1, that wager has a positive expectation of 1.6k dollars, and betting any smaller number decreases that amount. Depending on your risk tolerance, maybe you're not comfortable betting 8k. Maybe you believe that second place with a day of buzzer experience is better than an opponent drawn at random and you want to ensure that they get eliminated. Maybe the category really doesn't suit your knowledge base. All of those are valid reasons for holding back at least one dollar or more from your wager, but if I were in that situation, I think I'd often bet the maximum.
Your whole premise is wrong. Most contestants get one or two chances to play Final Jeopardy. Expected value, probability and statistics are irrelevant. What happens to other contestants is irrelevant. He or she gets the answer wrong or right, and wagers wisely or doesn't. Granted it is sometimes wise to not wager the additional dollar in certain scenarios. Why would anyone risk 8 grand they already have in their pocket? To use another poker analogy, it's like raising yourself.
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lieph82
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by lieph82 »

Vanya wrote:Why would anyone risk 8 grand they already have in their pocket? To use another poker analogy, it's like raising yourself.
To make another 8 grand.

I love how you say Jeopardy!'s not like poker and then use several poker analogies to make points about Jeopardy!. Well done.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Vanya »

lieph82 wrote:
Vanya wrote:Why would anyone risk 8 grand they already have in their pocket? To use another poker analogy, it's like raising yourself.
To make another 8 grand.

I love how you say Jeopardy!'s not like poker and then use several poker analogies to make points about Jeopardy!. Well done.
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Trebek on Queen Latifah

Post by Gnatz »

Found this episode of the Queen Latifah Show in which she and Will Smith (formerly the "Fresh Prince" - yes that comes into play) play an actual game (sorta kinda) of J! with Alex Trebek hosting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DAIcuK3L2A

Fast forward to 10:40 if you want to skip the conversation before they play.

Warning: The poster of the video recorded this from his TV on his phone's camera, and makes comments now and again. Also for some reason he seems to have dubbed in the J! them and think music even though they played them on the show.

Fun, nonetheless!
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by Turd Ferguson »

A Triple Stumper about the Commonwealth Games from Julia's 19th game appeared on Jon Oliver's brilliant HBO show last night.

"In America, we not only don't know what the hell they're talking about, we couldn't tell you if you offered us $2000"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Aj3KZa1ZCM

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Re: J! in the Media

Post by QuizGeek75 »

Craig Ferguson mentioned host Alex Trebek in his monologue last night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNpzaRf ... rt1HseGirg
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by MarkBarrett »

QuizGeek75 wrote:Craig Ferguson mentioned host Alex Trebek in his monologue last night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNpzaRf ... rt1HseGirg
Thanks. I laughed and watched the whole thing. Some of us though are busy or have short attention spans. 1:02 for the Trebek mention.
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Re: J! in the Media

Post by zakharov »

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014 ... _over.html

Jeopardy! Gets Shady: Is Gay Culture Over?

This seems pretty silly.
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