Monday, November 28, 2011 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[mam418]

Didn't get FJ - knew it was an astronomer, but got stuck on Galileo, knew it was wrong, but couldn't pull out the right one. However... I precalled a DD!! The Adam Smith one - I precalled 'invisible hand'. (Granted, I was an Economics major. And there's only just so much that J! will ask about him. But I'm still very proud of that! )

I'm in agreement - Kendra is awesome. Here's hoping she makes the ToC! (My husband says I have a bit of a girl crush on her. He might be right - it's fun to watch her play so well.)

[Turd Ferguson]

Having eaten in that cafeteria was not much help in that category (it's actually a pretty popular spot known for its good food).

Yes, Kendra did pretty darn well again, but as always I refuse to make any TOC predictions this early. Sometimes luck works in your favor, and sometimes it doesn't. We'll have to see what the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate has in store for her.

Agreed, hasn't every superchampion gotten some "luck" along the way, being just "one clue away" from losing early on in their run? Even Ken is just another strong four-day champ if his opponent gets a not-ungettable FJ! in his fifth game. Then there are the unfortunate players like HugoZ or TomKBaltimoreBoy (or many many others) who didn't get that "luck" the first time they needed it... who knows what would have happened if they'd been "luckier"?

[Volante]

Having eaten in that cafeteria was not much help in that category (it's actually a pretty popular spot known for its good food).

Yes, Kendra did pretty darn well again, but as always I refuse to make any TOC predictions this early. Sometimes luck works in your favor, and sometimes it doesn't. We'll have to see what the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate has in store for her.

Agreed, hasn't every superchampion gotten some "luck" along the way, being just "one clue away" from losing early on in their run? Even Ken is just another strong four-day champ if his opponent gets a not-ungettable FJ! in his fifth game. Then there are the unfortunate players like HugoZ or TomKBaltimoreBoy (or many many others) who didn't get that "luck" the first time they needed it... who knows what would have happened if they'd been "luckier"?

Ken doesn't even rate footnote if TPTB refuse to accept a last name only for "(Marion) Jones" for FJ! in his first game. Luck, buzzer skill, knowledge. That's about how it goes, I think, no?

[econgator]

Ken doesn't even rate footnote if TPTB refuse to accept a last name only for "(Marion) Jones" for FJ! in his first game. Luck, buzzer skill, knowledge. That's about how it goes, I think, no?

And think what came from that: there may never have been a UToC (I forget ... was that something that was a done deal already or did that solely come about because of Ken), leaving Brad and Jerome as considerably poorer. Would IBM have gone ahead so diligently with Watson? Would Grand Slam still have happened?

[jpahk]

Luck, buzzer skill, knowledge. That's about how it goes, I think, no?

i disagree. first of all, there is a hugely important 4th factor, which you might call strategy. this is where i feel roger outclassed the rest of the ToC field: finding the DDs, wagering on both DDs and FJ, understanding your opponents. there's quite a lot of skill in that area, and most players give almost no thought to it at all. i felt pretty good about my wagering but the lack of awareness/DD-hunting ultimately proved to be my downfall.

also, i'd modify "buzzer skill" to just "speed". either that, or add a 5th factor, "quick thinking". just knowing stuff isn't enough if you can't recall it quickly enough to ring it, and there are also plenty of jeopardy clues where you don't really start out by knowing the answer, but you can kind of put the pieces together based on TOM or wordplay or whatever—provided you're fast on your feet.

anyway, of the four factors, i actually think knowledge is by far the most important in some sense. if you picked three people off the street to play jeopardy, the one with the most knowledge would win the vast majority of the time. given that the contestant selection process winnows the field exclusively to people who will almost certainly know more than half the material, it becomes less of a distinguisher, but the differences remain important, especially because knowledge difference is more of a factor for the high-$ clues. the other hidden factor here is that knowledge plays a huge role in strategy—as roger has amply demonstrated, the DDs can be a ridiculously powerful weapon if you know your stuff (and you know you know your stuff). i like the way roger used the DDs much more than somebody like madden, who found them and essentially neutralized them with small wagers (despite an incredible 96% career success rate on them).

buzzer skill has kind of the opposite effect; there is a pretty wide range of speeds among jeopardy contestants, so it obviously matters. at the same time, i think there are plenty of us (especially the ones who get to hone their skill over many games) who are all fast enough that it's not possible to be consistently faster. so when you have two or three of those players buzzing on the same question, it comes down to luck.

i do think if you're good enough at everything else, you don't need much luck; as one example, look at how many of roger's/david's/ken's games were lock wins before FJ. but the relative importance of the factors depends quite a bit on the level of the contestants. for "regular" jeopardy games i'd rank them speed, knowledge, strategy, luck; for the ToC i'd go strategy, knowledge, luck, speed.

[DBear]

Precalling got me into nothing but trouble today. Precalled 'Catherine', based on three of Henry VIII's wives. Was so fixated on Tudor England that 'Poland' in the clue barely registered until far too late.
Poor boards for me, but I got 'hijinks' and the last New Math trash.

[legendneverdies]

Ken doesn't even rate footnote if TPTB refuse to accept a last name only for "(Marion) Jones" for FJ! in his first game.

They probably would have said they needed a first and last name at the outset if a last name wasn't going to be accepted. So he got away with it. And the supposedly oldest J! champion of the Trebek era, Jerry Harvey(who was supposedly 80 or so years old when he won his $70K in two games) would have won three games and with one more win probably made the Fall 2004 TofC. And Jerry would maybe have been beaten by INvision Game SHow Forum moderator Matt Ottinger two and a half weeks later.

[seaborgium]

Ken doesn't even rate footnote if TPTB refuse to accept a last name only for "(Marion) Jones" for FJ! in his first game.

They probably would have said they needed a first and last name at the outset if a last name wasn't going to be accepted. So he got away with it. And the supposedly oldest J! champion of the Trebek era, Jerry Harvey(who was supposedly 80 or so years old when he won his $70K in two games) would have won three games and with one more win probably made the Fall 2004 TofC. And Jerry would maybe have been beaten by INvision Game SHow Forum moderator Matt Ottinger two and a half weeks later.

They more likely accepted "Jones" because there was no other prominent female Olympian by that name (some call that "assuming contestant knowledge not in evidence"; I call it "giving the benefit of the doubt," as is commonly done when contestants omit given names). Jerry Harvey's age is exaggerated. Julia Lazarus would have won.

[Paucle]

That's my pet phrase, Stefan, but that's not where I'd ever use it. (For the record, I've never had a problem with Ken's first FJ answer, and in fact my very first protest was "live," when his response was questioned at all. J! has always been "last name is sufficient unless told otherwise, and if told otherwise, last name alone is insufficient." So why was there ever a question? Ken either needed a first name or he didn't, as per pre-FJ cautions. If he didn't need it, Jones alone should've been accepted unequivocally.

My use of "Assuming contestant knowledge not in evidence" generally follows when someone argues, essentially, "Player couldn't have meant (potential alternate answer) because it's the wrong answer."

[dmleach]

They probably would have said they needed a first and last name at the outset if a last name wasn't going to be accepted.

I can't speak to what the rules were six years ago, of course, but Glenn and Maggie make a very big deal about telling the players now that they should write down as much information as they think they need in order to be definitively correct. They underscore the fact that Final Jeopardy is the one point in the game where they cannot ask you to be more specific, and if you've not given an unambiguous answer you will be judged wrong. This comes up both in the morning rules overview as well as onstage right before FJ is played. There are no warnings specific to the question.

[heelsrule1988]

Kendra is a pretty steely competitor. I look forward to seeking how far she can take it.

i completely agree. Even without the steely.

This.

Brian

But if I say it...