“Jeopardy!” play now will be a race to the $1,000 clues, the high-dollar stacking and higher bets on the Daily Doubles. There have been stabs at new “Jeopardy!” technique before — students of the game point to parallels between Mr. Holzhauer’s run and that of a 2014 contestant named Arthur Chu, who also leapfrogged around the board. I checked in with my friend and four-time “Jeopardy!” champion Jonathan Dinerstein about what sets Mr. Holzhauer apart. Jon said that preternatural buzzer speed and vast stores of knowledge, coupled with “a relentless pursuit of a mathematically optimized money-maximizing betting strategy,” put Mr. Holzhauer in control. Without the first two, “he couldn’t accomplish the third, or you wouldn’t really notice his attempts to do so as markedly,” Jon told me.

Source: New York Times May 20, 2019 22:52 UTC