FJ wagering in these situations is basically just a solved thing, obviously sometimes 3rd has enough that their double-up throws a monkey wrench into things, but so often one player is totally out of it so it doesn’t apply. Yet it’s a total crapshoot whether 2nd will correctly make the small wager or not.
It feels like innumeracy is almost as prevalent among trivia experts as in the general population. My wife and I watch Jeopardy together regularly, and to this day she acts like my FJ bet recommendations are some arcane magic or something, and she’s not bad at math, just average.
She’s even asked me to explain the method, and I thought I explained the 2/3 thing concretely enough (“Say you have 15k and I have 10k, you have to bet 5001 to cover my double-up, so I can bet $0 and win anytime you get it wrong, I don’t have to be right. Any smaller lead I can just afford to bet a small amount, and any bigger lead, the trick doesn’t work anymore and I can only win when I’m right and you’re wrong”). She’s like “oh I get it now”, but come gametime, she’ll look at the pre-FJ scores dumbfounded and be like “no idea”.
It’s funny, fully half the (rare) times she randomly calls me at work from her work, it’s to say “don’t kill me but I forgot again, what’s the cross-multiplying thing I have to do to figure out what percentage this one number is of this other number?” Honestly just the fact that she remembers that such a method exists, and is able to solve it once I remind her, probably puts her in the 75th percentile of the general population lol.
My spouse (to avoid “genderification”of the subject) has improved math if there is $ sign involved. 20% off at the store she can do pretty fast, but not in other contexts. Marginal tax rates? Fuhgeditaboutit.
I’ve said many times, the lack of maths proficiency I see among scientists and engineers is staggering.
Man, Ike actually would have won the semi final game beating Ben Chan and made it to the finals if he just wagered properly in final jeopardy.
One 400 clue left on the board Ike 10000 Ben 15200. Ike gets the last clue right and I go holy shit, he is now in position to wager 0. But nope he wagers 10400 and its a triple stumper.
Basically for a spot in the next Jeopardy Masters. The next Jeopardy Masters is going to be top 3 of the last one (James, Matt, Mattea), most recent TOC champ (Yogesh), winner of this tournament, and a producer’s choice (I assume this has to be Brad if he wants it)
Yogesh read the hate mail, made a great adjustment to his persona, and is now one of my favorite players. He’s much better suited for The Chase villain role than most of the other TOC winners.
No else apparently caught that there was more than one correct answer to a clue from last week, in the “R” category, about a “Six letter word meaning a loud commotion” (or very similar wording).
Although the correct response was “racket,” I shouted out “rumpus,” which has the same definition as racket.
