May 8-12, 2023: Consistencies
Regular play has Hannah and Masters has James: two models of consistent J play for the past week
This Week’s Champion: Hannah Wilson
Average buzz score: $19350 (7th out of 50 champions this period)
Average attempt value: $34959 (16th)
Average conversion value percent: 56.3% (5th)
Average buzz value percent: 67.5% (6th)
Average accuracy value percent: 83.3% (16th)
Average DD score: $4913 (7th)
Average DD+: +0.07 (25th)
Average end DJ score: $24263 (5th)
Hannah’s buzzing game metrics all improved over the last week, and her average buzz score rose by nearly $2000/game over that time. That may not sound like much — it could be just one DJ clue — but it’s about 10% of that average. It’s a significant number, and it moves her more comfortably into the higher tier of scorers this season.
At the same time, Hannah’s been finding fewer Daily Doubles than in her first three wins, dropping her DD+ closer to expectation and reducing her scoring on DDs due to fewer opportunities. If not for a three Daily Double game on Friday, she would be all the way into negative DD+. The monetary earnings on DDs have remained consistently moderate this week, as they’re either coming in the J round or in portions of DJ where the game is largely out of reach for her opponents.
The increased Buz$ and decreased DD$ have largely offset each other, and Hannah’s average earnings at the end of DJ have increased by only $200 over the last week, which isn’t even enough to change her rank among this season’s champions.
Although Hannah can and does tend to out-attempt her opponents, earning a large amount of solo value as she plays, her comparative advantage has been in buzzer rhythm. This makes for an interesting contrast with one of her next opponents, Ben Chan, who in his three wins leaned much more heavily on solo. When timing-oriented and solo-oriented play meet, generally the result seems to be timing getting more clues at lower values and solo getting fewer but at higher. The exact balance (and the DDs) determine the game. This is going to be on the knife’s edge.
Trending This Week
Total attempts rose from 101.2/game last week to 109.6/game this week. We had increases from all levels of player this week — leading, median, and trailing — but the increased was most pronounced in the leading position, driven by Hannah’s increased attempting. Scoring did not change significantly from last week.
Masters
I’ve been trying to find a toehold at understanding the interplay of factors in Masters, and the first toehold I’ve found is looking towards what statistics remain largely consistent and which change from game to game. In the “largely consistent” camp, we have attempt-based metrics.
There is not a lot of scattering among individual player’s performances, and their comparison with each other is generally stable. In a given episode, you can likely assume James is attempting the most, followed by Matt and Andrew. These three might switch up, but that’s the most likely order. Amy is probably next. Mattea and Sam will be fifth and sixth.
So how do we get from that stability to the moderate chaos of buzz scoring?
And the answer is that conversion rates are layered across each other, and some players have more variation.
Looking at which games fall where for each contestant, and the breakdown of conversion into buzzing and accuracy, I think the story of the buzzing game is something like this:
James is dominating it, both attempting more and having better timing
Andrew has found better rhythm but not as good as James’s
Mattea has retained their rhythm but isn’t attempting as much, but they have found Daily Doubles to make up for it
Matt is struggling to get in and it’s driving him to guess things at the edge of his knowledge, often to his detriment
Amy is also struggling to get in and is pushing for more solo at her edge as well, and it’s successful she’s not getting enough opportunity to make a difference
Sam might have the best buzzer rhythm in the pool but isn’t attempting enough for it to really help
The particular patterns of attempting and timing are probably hard to change in the second week of play, so Amy and Sam will need to hope for more variation through Daily Doubles — whether through their own positive gain or through others’ losses — in order to advance.
Programming Notes
There will likely not be a scheduled weekly wrap next week, or possibly any week for a while. I’ll be updating the j-ometry site with daily data as it fits into my schedule, but I actual commitment to thought is going to difficult for a while.