Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by mjhunt »

BobF wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:50 pm Serious FJ! overwager!
Are you joking? I fail to see how it can be called a serious overwager, since it did not allow to Sarah with a $0 wager or wrong answer and it did not resurrect third place.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by ParrotRob »

BobF wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:50 pm Serious FJ! overwager!
Martian, yes. Overwager? Nope. In fact there was still room for more with just as much safety.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by twelvefootboy »

ParrotRob wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:11 pm
BobF wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:50 pm Serious FJ! overwager!
Martian, yes. Overwager? Nope. In fact there was still room for more with just as much safety.
I think it might be a strong category for him, although Tom Hanks is worse than my default guess of Meryl Streep for every Oscar question. It may be Gambler's fallacy where he saw all that big pile of winnings as house money, when it was very much his own. Now his extra $5K of mad money is no longer his'n. He's a good player, but I'm not expecting him to be quite so Martian tomorrow.

I didn't even bother with Streep for my FJ guess. I need a 21st century Pavlov actor :lol: .
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by econgator »

MarkBarrett wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:04 am It was definitely a case of "it's easy if you know it."
And I didn't.

Heck, I've only seen 6 Best Picture nominees in the 10's (and only one winner -- The King's Speech), so I wasn't too high on my prospects.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Category 13 »

ParrotRob wrote:
BobF wrote: Serious FJ! overwager!
Martian, yes. Overwager? Nope. In fact there was still room for more with just as much safety.
Furthermore, if anyone's wager was was less than optimal, it was Sarah's.
She needed to get a correct response to reach Joshua's fallback amount, so why stop at $22,801? That left open the possibility for him to win with an underwager. Sarah could have wagered enough (11,599) to force Joshua to be correct and still not fall below a Zero wager from Ryan on a triple stumper.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by xxaaaxx »

alietr wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:36 pm Not that I was close, but why is everyone talking about spelling? Wouldn't "Ali" have been sufficient?
Definitely. I was just curious if anyone was brave enough to try it anyway, had they gotten it right, but we'll never know. I probably would have, just to show off. A name like Mahershala(lhashbaz) is hard to forget.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by seaborgium »

This FJ was more or less a question on HQ (it asked who received acting Oscars for both Best Pictures they appeared in) just a couple of weeks ago (in a game in which I won $18.52!), but I had to turn my gears before I remembered that. First I thought of Christoph Waltz's two wins, but I knew Inglourious Basterds didn't get Best Picture, and then I remembered the HQ quiz. But first I thought of Chiwetel Ejiofor, and had to recall that he was the correct answer to a question about not winning an Oscar before I got to Mahershala Ali (whose full first name I'd have been tempted to include).

(Incidentally, the HQ question's choices made it really easy, with the incorrect ones being Octavia Spencer and Ben Affleck, who have one and zero acting Oscars respectively.)
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Bamaman »

ParrotRob wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:11 pm
BobF wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:50 pm Serious FJ! overwager!
Martian, yes. Overwager? Nope. In fact there was still room for more with just as much safety.

While logic dictates that she bet big, she would not be the first person to ignore logic when wagering. Her personality also suggests she might not do things in a conventional manner.

If she bets $1,000 and gets it right, she wins the game.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by opusthepenguin »

Guessed Geoffrey Rush just to have something. My precall was a clue having to do with Daniel Day-Lewis becoming the only man to win a third best actor award.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Golf »

BobF wrote: Serious FJ! overwager!
ParrotRob wrote: Martian, yes. Overwager? Nope. In fact there was still room for more with just as much safety.
Category 13 wrote: Thu Jan 30, 2020 2:21 am Furthermore, if anyone's wager was was less than optimal, it was Sarah's.
She needed to get a correct response to reach Joshua's fallback amount, so why stop at $22,801? That left open the possibility for him to win with an underwager. Sarah could have wagered enough (11,599) to force Joshua to be correct and still not fall below a Zero wager from Ryan on a triple stumper.
Making the minimum cover wager from the lead always shows the highest winning percentage. Anything more always lessens winning chances. That being said, Joshua's wager reduced his winning chances by a tiny amount.

Sarah made a wager that would win the game while guaranteeing second. She wins more by wagering everything in the RW scenario but forfeits $1k on a wrong response. How often does the leader make a suicide wager where she would win on a WW? The GTO optimal play here is to wager everything, but like Joshua, her mistake was a small one.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by LucarioSnooperVixey »

57 R (University of Virginia was my only miss.)
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by floridagator »

Didn't anybody notice how mad Sarah looked for the last part of the double jeopardy round? She kept violently tossing her hair whenever she missed a buzz. On the confetti clue, she was really seriously working that buzzer with her right hand. And then when the round ended she went overboard straightening her hair.

At least a woman like that you always know where you stand with her.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by ParrotRob »

floridagator wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2020 12:17 am Didn't anybody notice how mad Sarah looked for the last part of the double jeopardy round? She kept violently tossing her hair whenever she missed a buzz. On the confetti clue, she was really seriously working that buzzer with her right hand. And then when the round ended she went overboard straightening her hair.

At least a woman like that you always know where you stand with her.
Yes! When Joshua got that last DD I told my wife "Oh my God, I think Sarah's going to leap over the podium and beat the snot out of poor Joshua".
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Foretopman »

opusthepenguin wrote: Thu Jan 30, 2020 8:05 pm Guessed Geoffrey Rush just to have something.
+1
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by ParrotRob »

Golf wrote: Thu Jan 30, 2020 9:16 pm
Sarah made a wager that would win the game while guaranteeing second. She wins more by wagering everything in the RW scenario but forfeits $1k on a wrong response.
I've been waiting a long time to say this...

I may be in the minority in this crowd, but if I have the opportunity to maximize winnings while only risking $1k if I'm wrong, I'll do it every time. I don't like how J! makes the difference between finishing second and third essentially inconsequential. I wonder how contestants' wagering strategies would change if there was a serious gap between second and third place winnings such that second place was actually worth fighting for?
As it stands, the only way I'm going to bother fighting to preserve second place is if I'm on the wrong end of a lock. I didn't come all this way (and wait years) to win $2000.

Bottom line: if the ONLY possible scenario where I can win is a correct answer from second coupled with a wrong answer by the leader, $1000 is not enough of a disincentive for me to NOT push all-in.
Last edited by ParrotRob on Fri Jan 31, 2020 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by VoluptuousLoser »

Vowela wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:35 pm That was the hardest FJ! in a spell. Even if you memorized all the Oscar winners, that's still a lot to think through in 30 seconds, and if you don't have every Oscar winner memorized, it's nigh impossible.
It all depends on how you approach the question. I started with "Green Book," for which Mahershala Ali won a Supporting Actor Oscar. Since he also won one for "Moonlight," which won Best Picture, that gave me the answer right away.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Bamaman »

Having never heard of Ali, this was a tough FJ.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by davey »

VoluptuousLoser wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2020 4:18 pm
Vowela wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:35 pm That was the hardest FJ! in a spell. Even if you memorized all the Oscar winners, that's still a lot to think through in 30 seconds, and if you don't have every Oscar winner memorized, it's nigh impossible.
It all depends on how you approach the question. I started with "Green Book," for which Mahershala Ali won a Supporting Actor Oscar. Since he also won one for "Moonlight," which won Best Picture, that gave me the answer right away.
Yes, Recent Oscar Winners would have been a more helpful category than one encompassing 20 years. That much time kind of paralyzed me, if only I'd started with most recent I might have pulled this one out. But then again, I don't have the lists memorized in any order...
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by Golf »

ParrotRob wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2020 9:12 am I've been waiting a long time to say this...

I may be in the minority in this crowd, but if I have the opportunity to maximize winnings while only risking $1k if I'm wrong, I'll do it every time. I don't like how J! makes the difference between finishing second and third essentially inconsequential. I wonder how contestants' wagering strategies would change if there was a serious gap between second and third place winnings such that second place was actually worth fighting for?
As it stands, the only way I'm going to bother fighting to preserve second place is if I'm on the wrong end of a lock. I didn't come all this way (and wait years) to win $2000.

Bottom line: if the ONLY possible scenario where I can win is a correct answer from second coupled with a wrong answer by the leader, $1000 is not enough of a disincentive for me to NOT push all-in.
If I'm not mistaken, in the original version of Jeopardy, all the contestants took home what they won. This led to plenty of people protecting their money and not trying to win the game.

Wagering strategies aren't going to change regardless of what is awarded for 2nd and 3rd because most contestants have no wagering strategy to begin with.

But the difference between 2nd and 3rd ($2k vs. $1k) is a big deal to some. It's not to you, it's not to me either, but in the end it is $1k. There's no reason to throw it away if there's no upside. There are quite a few people, including some on this board, that think the prizes for 2nd and 3rd should be upped dramatically. Some complain that the guarantee $1k doesn't even pay for making the trip. I don't agree with this thinking, TPTB are under no obligation to pay anything for 2nd and 3rd. It's their game their rules and contestants should be happy with whatever they get if they don't win.

In terms of pushing all in from 2nd when you need the leader to miss as well, there are times where it's GTO to do so, and there are times where it's not GTO. It's all about how much you gain from doing so and then comparing that to the possibility of falling into 3rd. So even though you say you'd always wager everything in this scenario, it's not always the proper thing to do.

In the end, there are player types that don't have confidence in their own abilities to wager everything. There are player types that do. And mostly there are player types that don't have a clue why they are wagering what they are. In this case, I don't consider protecting 2nd place a mistake. If it is a mistake, it's not a big one mathematically speaking.
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Re: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

Post by floridagator »

The guaranteed 1000 and 2000 seem to have the effect of creating a more National contestant pool than was the case before. In the early years of the syndicated Jeopardy!, it was not at all unusual for all three contestants to be from the west side of LA, and they would get introduced as being originally from such and such. Now it's quite rare to have three contestants from LA. So people who are applying to be contestants have taken the hint of the thousand dollar minimum for being on the show.
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