Well ... at least Wolf got the aggressive buzzing part right.
Posted on 05/20/2019 11:34:06 AM PDT by llevrok
Like most people who are extremely cool, I'm a huge Jeopardy! fan and have been in awe of the recent dominant run by James Holzhauer. The 34-year-old professional sports gambler has piled up $1.7 million in just 22 games, through a combination of remarkable knowledge, fast buzzing, and lucrative betting.
He's averaging more than $76,000 per game. To give an idea of how impressive that is, when current winnings record-holder Ken Jennings set the one-day record in 2004, he won just over $75,000. Like former champ Arthur Chu, Holzhauer doesn't select dollar amount answers in neat rows, but rather he aggressively searches for "Daily Doubles" in order to maximize his chances. He's smart and ruthless. He's great to watch.
That is unless you're getting crushed by him on national television, as one salty runner-up named Robin Falco told CNN on Monday. (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
I kinda agree with her.
Holzhauer impresses me. He is smart, no doubt. But I sense a tension between him and Trebec.
He seems rude and curt to me. But still, he gets my respect.
There's a small blue light on the Big Board that is activated by an Assistant Producer when Alex is done with the question. It's not visible to the TV audience. The key is knowing the timing between the reading of the question and the activation of the blue light. Returning players have a distinct advantage in this regard through experience. One of the strategies that James employs is to take as many of the high-value questions off the board before the "new" contestants get the hang of the timing. By then, he has a huge lead.
See my comment at 20. There is a light that comes on (that viewers at home don’t see) right after Alex finishes reading the question. That is the official signal that it is time to buzz in. If you buzz in before that light, your buzzer won’t work for a fraction of a second.
Trebek has earned my respect.
Ever since it was disclosed that he has stage 4 cancer, he continues on as if nothing has happened.
The previous host of Jeopardy, Art Fleming died of pancreatic cancer in 1995 - the same disease Alex Trebek has been diagnosed with.
As I understand it - Alex does not read the answers.
Every answer on every category has been pre-read by Alex and when a player selects an answer, the Big Board as you call it plays back the answer.
I have not been on the show but I believe (I think I read it somewhere) that recently they have been giving new contestants more practice time than before to let them familiar with the buzzer timing.
“Every answer on every category has been pre-read by Alex”
Now that makes sense. I’ve always wondered how Alex could start reading so quickly especially when the contestant has jumped all over the board in selecting.
Another interesting tidbit,,thanks.
They don’t cheat. These people are just odd recepticals of information.
What is a bad coincidence?
She is one whiny bitch.
As a professional gambler, James doesn’t work 40 hours a week like the rest of us, in a constructed manner.
He most likely is a voracious reader when he isn’t studying the odds on his bets.
When asked on the interview portion of the show how he prepared, he said he went to the children's encyclopedia section of the library. The books gave the simple facts with out tons of elaboration to clog his mind.
My wife and I haven’t missed any shows. I believe Trebeck actually respects Holzhauer. He has said so on various occasions in various ways. He knows Holzhauer is head and shoulders above him in flat out knowledge. I like what Dennis Miller said a while back: “How much does Trebeck really KNOW if he didn’t have the answers there to look at?”
I have watched every episode as well. What is amazing is the breadth of his knowledge. I'm pretty good at Jeopardy, and I can often keep up with many of the contestants. James, however, seems to know something about everything and leaves me in the dust. The fact that he took time off to study for a long time does explain a lot. He mentioned once on the show that he read a lot of books in the childrens' section of the library. That way, he probably knows at least the one thing you need to know about something. He either has an eidetic memory or he studied those books like flash cards until he memorized them.
I've seen at least a few shows in which the other contestants just stand there. If the question is something simple like "he was known as Tom Sawyer's friend", I know they know the answer. In some cases, they don't even seem to try to push their buttons. It's like they are dazed by James and forget to play.
My sister, no slouch herself (a Fulbright Scholar), had a friend like that. She told me that one time they went to a party together, and when they got inside , she recited all the license plate numbers of the cars in the lot.
Amazing.
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