Jan 23-27, 2023: The Pivot Point
Jake DeArruda's Daily Double, the peaks and troughs of get rate over the last five years, and a preview of the Celebrity Jeopardy finale
Game Breakdown: Jan 27, 2023
We went over Troy’s gameplay last week, and we’ll get more data on Jake this week, so instead of doing Champion Highlights I’m going to go straight into a game breakdown for Friday’s game, where Jake DeArruda defeated Troy Meyer and (my friend) Dee Williams.
Overall this was a textbook example of how to beat a good champion. Troy out-attempted both Jake and Dee, but the challengers both had better buzzer timing statistics than the champion, which offset any solo play advantage Troy had. The two were strong enough together to deny him any Daily Doubles, with Dee taking the first two and Jake taking the last with the twenty-first selection of Double Jeopardy. At this reveal, the scores stood with Jake leading at $16600, Troy at $13200, and Dee at $6200. In the pivotal moment of the game, Jake went in with a $10000 wager on a second-row clue.
A successful Daily Double here puts Jake at $26600 with a lead ratio of 2.015, just $200 above Troy’s doubled score. An unsuccessful wager puts him at $6600, or exactly half of Troy’s score. My rule of thumb for DD3 is to always wager for the crush if possible, and then the runaway if you can without falling into the possibility of being locked out. Jake just rides the edge here in both directions. There’s $6400 left on the board, mostly scattered in small clues. It’s unlikely for Jake to retain his lock status on success. Troy only needs to get slightly more than half of whatever Jake makes on the remaining $6400 to break the lock. On the other hand, Jake’s unlikely to get locked out if he fails (since he only has to make half of whatever Troy makes), so it mostly works out either way. It might have been safer to play for a simple crush and not the runaway, but I think it’s a good wager, especially on a $800 face value clue.
Jake is successful with the Daily Double, but he doesn’t retain the runaway lead. He does, importantly, easily retain the crush, which lets him wager to keep the victory on most outcomes of Final, including the triple stumper that happens. Not a bad way to win.
Unconscious Uncoupling
I don’t fully know what to make of it yet, but as I’ve been looking at the possible ramifications of high-knowledge/high-attempt offense, I built some graphs locally to do moving averages of gameplay statistics, and I’ve got a pair that look interesting together.
First, there’s the 20-game moving average of total BuzC (correct answers on buzzing) across all three contestants.
Some champions’ peaks stand out here, with James Holzhauer, Matt Amodio, and Amy Schneider all driving the game to large numbers of correct responses. You can see the effects of this past month as well, approaching a similar peak more gradually.
But there’s something different. Here’s the 20-game moving average of median BuzC.
In this case, you can see James, Matt, and Amy cutting into their opponents’ response rates. You can also more clearly see Jason Zuffranieri (who we probably don’t talk about enough) and Mattea Roach doing the same, with sharp troughs against the background rate. Mattea’s statistics establish them as a timing-forward player to go with a strong attempt base (but not as strong as Amy’s, statistically). I would bet that if we had Jason’s statistics they would come out similarly given this pattern.
January 2023, in contrast, shows a continued rise instead. This period of high offense is different, and it’s more spread across competitors. High-attempt champions such as Ray Lalonde and Troy Meyer didn’t cut into their opponents’ opportunities in the same way — the board is seemingly opening up to competition. I don’t think it’s a matter of easier, as then we should just see fast players cut into the response shares again. I think it’s more likely a matter of diversity in knowledge, as different players come to the game with different strengths, creating a different interference pattern with each other on the board. Maybe this is just what I’d like it to be and I’m projecting.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the “professionalization” of Jeopardy, or the preparedness (or over-preparedness) of the contestants. In a Reddit comment thread with u/YangClaw, I noted that people seem to be showing up ready to buzz. The overall tone of the conversation was still one of preparedness or intensity, but the framing really made me wonder — what if people are just showing up ready to buzz? There have been more long streaks over the last couple years, and we have a better idea now that the best thing you can do in facing someone like that is to play. I’m really wondering if there’s not a difference in what people are actually doing to prepare so much as a difference in mindset in having thought through what might be needed for them to win, and then applying it. My instinct is that if that were to happen, it would look something like what we’re seeing.
The Stars
Celebrity Jeopardy wraps up this week with Wil Wheaton vs Patton Oswalt vs Ike Barinholtz on Thursday. I don’t think there’s a lot to separate these three ahead of time, although if I had to put down money I’d put it on Ike. With the celebrities, I start from the same place of Attempt Value and Conversion Value % — Ike and Wil both score well here, and Patton’s not far off even though he’s not great with the buzzer — but I want to give more credence to Attempt Value as a measure of confidence and Accuracy Value % as a measure of knowledge within that confidence. Both of these are also less susceptible to the fluctuating level of competition in this tournament.
So it’s easy to pick Ike if necessary just based on “hey he’s in the best position on the graph” but I don’t think anyone’s going to pull away with things unless they get great Daily Double selections in Triple Jeopardy and it’s going to be close and come down to who’s right on Final. Although…
…I’m not saying the celebrities should hunt for Daily Doubles. I’m just saying that maybe Ike could do worse than trying that. Hey, it is the finals.