If you are a regular Jeopardy! viewer, you probably know that a dreadful thing recently happened. Austin Rogers, bartender from New York, winner of 12 straight games and $411,000, fifth-place all-time regular-season Jeopardy! earner, and moon of Alex Trebek’s life, was finally defeated. He lost to Scarlett Sims, of Tennessee, by a margin of $51; Scarlett then, having beheaded our beautiful nerd Hydra, lost on the next episode. So Jeopardy! is up for grabs, and the tides of Trebek’s life are once again stagnant, and yet still nothing could have prepared us for Tuesday night: the worst game in Jeopardy! history.
That, my friends, is the moment that then–two-day winner Manny Abell became a three-day winner with a sum of one (1) dollar, besting his opponents’ combined total of zero (0) dollars.
In theory, you can win as much as $566,400 on a single episode of Jeopardy!, assuming you got every clue and maxed out every Daily Double. But even very good players don’t come close to that mark: The single-day record is $77,000, set by Roger Craig in 2010, while the average daily prize between October 4, 2004, and January 6, 2017, was $20,137; the dearly departed Austin made it to $69,000 (ahem) in one of his games.
A $1 victory has happened just once before, in 1993, when Darryl Scott entered Final Jeopardy with a one-dollar lead over the returning champion. The returning champ bet it all, while he bet everything but a dollar; they, plus a distantly trailing third-place contestant, all missed the Final Jeopardy clue, and so Darryl made off with a buck’s worth of winnings.
There has even been a three-way tie for $0, which came back in January 2016:
But at least Darryl came into Final Jeopardy leading the pack, and the 2016 losers bore the shame equally and were not permitted to compete on the next episode. Our boy Manny, who entered Final Jeopardy in third, is responsible for the greatest abomination in the long history of Jeopardy!dom. And he will get to come back for more.
Manny’s accomplishment is singularly awful. He entered Final Jeopardy with just $1,000. His opponents were tied at $12,300 going in. He did well enough in his first two shows, sure, but on Tuesday night, our friend—MANNY!! in his own styling—was clearly overmatched, sitting steadily in last place for almost the entirety of the game. And then: horror.
How did this happen?
1. If You’re Going to Hunt for Daily Doubles, You Had Better Be Here to Play
Fran and Carlos, bless their hearts, wanted to win a lot of money. I get it: I, too, would like to have more money. They attempted to accomplish this by intermittently pursuing the wretched-to-watch strategy of hunting for Daily Doubles, which typically lurk in the latter clues in a given category. This was successful, in that the pair found all three of the game’s double-or-nothing bonuses.
But here’s the thing. Jeopardy! heavily incentivizes winning, to the point that the difference between coming in second and coming in third is almost negligible. If you win, you get your prize and the chance to play again. If you come in second, you get $2,000. If you come in third, you get $1,000. And look, I would love to have whatever an extra $1,000 comes out to after taxes; there are so many cheeses I haven’t eaten yet. But given the massive gulf between first place and not first place, your exclusive goal on Jeopardy! should be to do whatever you can to get as far into first as possible. (If this sounds obvious, you probably have not spent a plurality of your 7 o’clock weeknight hours watching middle school teachers and rocket scientists conservatively wager a grand on Daily Doubles over and over and over and over.) The Daily Doubles represent the show’s biggest opportunity to leave your opponents in your dust; they reward people who bet big.
Carlos did it right: In his first attempt, he went for a true Daily Double that unfortunately brought his total to zero; in his second, he bet $5,100 and won. He played the right way. And yet, here’s what Fran, having successfully violated the laws of nature to skip the category’s first two clues in search of double-or-nothing, did when she was given the chance to extend her $1,800 lead and make the game hers:
FIFTEEN-HUNDRED DOLLARS? ARE YOU KIDDING?
Conservative Daily Double hunters deserve everything that comes to them.
2. The Prisoner’s Dilemma Is Alive and Well
Fran and Carlos, Carlos and Fran, our intrepid, better-at-trivia, and utterly doomed contestants, entered Final Jeopardy in a tie. Surely, they both thought as they prepared to wager, the other wouldn’t be so bold as to risk everything.
News flash, suckers: The person in last place—usually but not, as we learned, always a hopeless last place—is definitely going to do something dumb. They are going to write a note to their mother on their board. They are going to bet a silly amount that leaves them with their husband’s birthday in winnings. They are going to attempt to tell a joke as Trebek tiredly tries to hush them up and talk to someone more worthy of his time. Most of all, if they truly—rightfully!—believe that their paltry score has guaranteed that they will lose, they will at the very least leave themselves one dollar in their bet, so that they can walk away from Jeopardy! without being the person who lost everything.
The moral of the story, I guess, is to not underestimate losers.
3. Never Get Involved in a Land Quiz in Asia
None of this would have happened, of course, had any contestant gotten the correct answer to the Final Jeopardy clue: It’s the only country that borders both the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. The answer is Iran, which nobody knew; Carlos went for Azerbaijan, while Fran went for Tibet, which is approximately the landlockedest place on Earth. Manny—god damn it, Manny—chose Iraq, which is less wrong than the answers of his compatriots, but still wrong, and not enough to redeem his dismal performance.
This was a hard clue, certainly. But all three contestants should have known what they were signing up for when they saw the category “Asian Geography.” Important Jeopardy! lesson no. 978237: While geography is often among the show’s most straightforward categories, Trebek and his cronies are not going to mess around with the last question. Never, ever bet big on Final Geography.
And if you do … make sure you save a dollar.
