2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

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zerobandwidth
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by zerobandwidth »

econgator wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:50 pm
zerobandwidth wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 11:46 pm
econgator wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:23 pm Looks like only me and zerobandwidth had the correct winner tonight. :)
3/3… I kind of can't believe it.
And ........... it's over. ;)
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by hbomb1947 »

Sherm wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:30 pm
How is this for a wild idea? Have a play in game with three tourny winners, while the 14 top money winners go straight in.
If you're implying that the Teachers Tournament winner should have to go through a play-in, frankly I find that offensive. Colby Burnett's TOC win should have put to rest any notion that the TT champion is somehow less worthy of inclusion in the TOC than a player who qualified through regular play. And Jason Sterlacci, as anyone who has paid attention knows, is among the very strongest players in this TOC, no matter what happens the rest of the way.

You would expect College Champions to be underdogs, if only because they've had less life experience and less time to build their knowledge base. But neither Lilly nor Sam embarrassed themselves in this TOC; as I write this, Lilly remains in contention for a wild card. And anyway, in most TOC's there would only be 1 College Champion and 1 Teachers Tournament winner (and how would you have implemented your silly play-in idea in this TOC that has featured four tourny winners (not three), anyway?
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by opusthepenguin »

hbomb1947 wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 11:21 pm
Sherm wrote: Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:30 pm
How is this for a wild idea? Have a play in game with three tourny winners, while the 14 top money winners go straight in.
If you're implying that the Teachers Tournament winner should have to go through a play-in, frankly I find that offensive. Colby Burnett's TOC win should have put to rest any notion that the TT champion is somehow less worthy of inclusion in the TOC than a player who qualified through regular play. And Jason Sterlacci, as anyone who has paid attention knows, is among the very strongest players in this TOC, no matter what happens the rest of the way.

You would expect College Champions to be underdogs, if only because they've had less life experience and less time to build their knowledge base. But neither Lilly nor Sam embarrassed themselves in this TOC; as I write this, Lilly remains in contention for a wild card. And anyway, in most TOC's there would only be 1 College Champion and 1 Teachers Tournament winner (and how would you have implemented your silly play-in idea in this TOC that has featured four tourny winners (not three), anyway?
Sherm just threw out an idea for discussion. We've established upthread that teacher winners and college champs don't run quite as difficult a gauntlet to secure their berth at the TOC. Take 15 random players from regular play and the odds are that NONE of them will advance to the TOC. Take the 15 teachers and 15 college kids and the odds are 100% that one each of them will. It's not offensive or silly to speculate about ways to address this inequity. Colby Burnett and Jason Sterlacci don't prove that the playing field is level any more than Usain Bolt proves that Jamaica has the same ability to produce gold medalists as the US.

That said, I'm fine with the inequity and don't have any particular zeal to see it addressed. And I don't think the producers really want to either. Teachers and students have certain built-in fan bases and can draw viewers from demographics that might not ordinarily watch.
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by Sherm »

I was just throwing that out there for $hits and giggles. They aren't changing anything.

I do believe the 13th, 14th biggest money winner is probably a stronger player than winners of the teachers or college tourny in most years. You mention Sterlacci (who I in this thread said, is probably the favorite in the whole thing before it started) and Burnett as examples of how strong the teachers winner can be, but I can list a lot of teachers and college winners that haven't done very well. I think you would find, as a rule, they normally do not advance, and if Sterlacci or Burnett had to go through a play in game. I'd say 90% or better chance, they would advance. They would have a lock before final jeopardy the majority of the time, but those guys are truly top notch players. If TPTB made Rutter and Jennings go through the one and done playin (45 to 15) for the battle of the decades. They would have no problem doing it with anybody.

I figure if the NCAA can go 68 over 64, then the Jeopardy ToC can do 17 instead of 15, and I really don't think it would be very hard to make sure there were only 3 tournies in a ToC cycle instead of two or four, so no one will be excluded.

Regarding Jason Sterlacci or Colby Burnett, you never know, but it could be argued that these two guys cost themselves money by being in the teachers tourny, both would have been very capable of running off winning streaks of 5 or better, and winning more than $100,000 in regular play.
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by StevenH »

I remember someone posting a few years ago that the college champion has statistically done better on average in the ToC than the last qualifier from the regular games. But I would still prefer for the college champion not to be included in the ToC. It seems like there is almost always an alternate who I would have liked to have seen in the tournament, and there have still only been 3 college champions who have made the finals.
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by Sherm »

Your post got me wondering, about last player in versus the college champ. Over the last week, I went through the Jarchive. I compared all tourney winners to the top three winners coming into the ToC (I used wins first, followed by money amounts to determine order). This includes the people in this year’s tournament, except for the winner. I would hope this stuff is accurate, it turned out to be a lot of data.
For this years tourney you would have.
First – Austin Rogers
Second - Seth Wilson
Third - Buzzy Cohen
Last in - John Eisenman

Then I looked at how far they went
1 - Advance to semi’s (60% of all players do)
2 - Won their Quarterfinal (33.3%)
3 – Advanced to the finals (20%)
4 – Won the ToC (6.7%)

This is what you end up with

First------------------------88.9%--81.5%--51.9%---19.2%
Second---------------------59.3%--40.7%--33.3%---11.1%
Third-----------------------70.4%--55.6.%--33.3%--15.4%
Last in----------------------48.1%--11.1%--14.8%----3.7%
College (28 tourneys)----46.4%--14.3%--10.7%----3.6%
Teachers (7 tourneys)----28.6%--28.6%--14.3%---14.3%
Seniors (10 tourneys)----50.0%------0%--20.0%------0%
Teens (14 tourneys)------50.0%--28.6%------0%------0%

Interesting things of note.

The dominance of the top player in the field, surprised me. Though it may be indicative of TPTB giving them favorable first round matches, but it doesn’t explain over half of them getting into the finals

Burnett and Sterlucci are the only teachers to advance in the ToC, which may lead to why teachers get a bit of a bad rap.

Julia Collins and Austin Rogers are the only top winners coming in to advance without winning a quarterfinal

The only last player in to win a ToC was Rachael Schwartz.

There have only been 4 college champs win a quarterfinal (Terry O’Shea, Vanita Kailasanath, Pam Mueller, Scott Gillispe)

The three college winners that made the finals, all advanced to the semi’s as wildcard winners. (Tom Cubbage, Jeff Stewart, Cliff Galiher)

To this day there have been as many teens win quarterfinal matches as there have been college champs
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by dhkendall »

Sherm wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:27 pm Your post got me wondering, about last player in versus the college champ. Over the last week, I went through the Jarchive. I compared all tourney winners to the top three winners coming into the ToC (I used wins first, followed by money amounts to determine order). This includes the people in this year’s tournament, except for the winner. I would hope this stuff is accurate, it turned out to be a lot of data.
For this years tourney you would have.
First – Austin Rogers
Second - Seth Wilson
Third - Buzzy Cohen
Last in - John Eisenman

Then I looked at how far they went
1 - Advance to semi’s (60% of all players do)
2 - Won their Quarterfinal (33.3%)
3 – Advanced to the finals (20%)
4 – Won the ToC (6.7%)

This is what you end up with

<snip Sherm's analysis>

To this day there have been as many teens win quarterfinal matches as there have been college champs
Who’s the only first seed to not advance to the semis?
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by RCraig »

dhkendall wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:13 pm
Sherm wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:27 pm Your post got me wondering, about last player in versus the college champ. Over the last week, I went through the Jarchive. I compared all tourney winners to the top three winners coming into the ToC (I used wins first, followed by money amounts to determine order). This includes the people in this year’s tournament, except for the winner. I would hope this stuff is accurate, it turned out to be a lot of data.
For this years tourney you would have.
First – Austin Rogers
Second - Seth Wilson
Third - Buzzy Cohen
Last in - John Eisenman

Then I looked at how far they went
1 - Advance to semi’s (60% of all players do)
2 - Won their Quarterfinal (33.3%)
3 – Advanced to the finals (20%)
4 – Won the ToC (6.7%)

This is what you end up with:
<snip Sherm's analysis>
To this day there have been as many teens win quarterfinal matches as there have been college champs
Who’s the only first seed to not advance to the semis?
Matt Carberry's amazing site is very helpful for answering a lot of these questions:
http://mattcarberry.com/Jeopardy/j-toc.html

However, Sherm's analysis offers a fair amount that's not immediately clear by looking at Matt's table. e.g. last one in stats, as they're positionally aligned ordinally counting from 1st on down.
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by Sherm »

dhkendall wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:13 pm
Who’s the only first seed to not advance to the semis?
In 27 ToC's its happened three times. 24/27, gives you the 88.9%

Mehrun Etebari(2007)
Doug Lach(2001)
David Sampugnaro(1996)
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Re: 2017 ToC Quarter-Final Matches Revealed - Discussion

Post by zerobandwidth »

Sherm wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:05 pm
dhkendall wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:13 pm
Who’s the only first seed to not advance to the semis?
In 27 ToC's its happened three times. 24/27, gives you the 88.9%

Mehrun Etebari(2007)
Doug Lach(2001)
David Sampugnaro(1996)
You might say Lach's tournament record got… 8-) …trashed.
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