Jeopardy! Masters 2024 is over, we have our champion in Victoria Groce—and here’s my final Masters Breakdown of the season.
James Would Still Have Lost Had He Gone All In In Game 1
A lot of James Holzhauer fans are on the Internet this morning claiming that James lost the tournament because he didn’t go all in in Final Jeopardy in Game 1. Unlike last year, however, when Mattea would have won had they gone all in in the opener, this was not the case for James in 2024.
Assume a situation where the only thing that has changed is James’s Final Jeopardy bet, changing to 27,200 points. That would put him at 54,400, to Victoria’s 21,400 and Yogesh’s 19,200.
Even if you hold everything else in Game 2 constant in terms of responses and Daily Double bets, James’s maximum possible total for the finals would have been 72,000. As I mentioned in my recap last night, Victoria’s maximum possible total was 89,400. Victoria would simply have bet 16,601 and her correct response on the Henrietta Lacks clue would have given her the victory.
That being said: Victoria faced the last Daily Double on clue #20 of Double Jeopardy, and, judging that she had a sufficiently large lead, bet just the clue’s value of 800 points. I can almost guarantee you that had she judged her lead to be insufficient—which she would have done at the time had James’s Game 1 score been 54,400—she would have bet significantly more points. In fact, had she bet 20,000—a not-unrealistic wager size considering it was a second-row Daily Double—she still would have had a runaway tournament over James.
While James’s conservative bet in Final Jeopardy in Game 1 certainly cost him second place over Yogesh, his conservative bet would have changed nothing in terms of the overall result.
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Is There A Player Right Now Who Can Challenge Victoria, James, & Yogesh?
Throughout the 2024 Masters season, it was clear that Victoria, James, and Yogesh were the clear top three players in the field. And, to that, I ask: is there a player in the Jeopiverse right now who can challenge our top three?
And I don’t know if there is. Every single player who has played in the last five years (this is a strict definition here, so dating back to May 2019) seems to have enough of a weakness—either when it comes to attempt counts or buzzer timing—that would put them at significant disadvantage to Victoria, James, or Yogesh. I would say, much like mens’ tennis of the recent past, that Jeopardy! has its Big Three—and anyone who isn’t in that Big Three right now will have to put in significant work in order to reach that top echelon.
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Should Promotion & Relegation Change?
With there being a “Big Three” who seem to be head and shoulders above the rest of the field, and only three players guaranteed to carry forward from each season of Masters, is it a good idea to expand the promotion zone to 4? That way, someone not in the Big Three can have a better chance of getting out of the inevitable yo-yo between the top two rungs on the Jeopardy! ladder.
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There’s very obviously someone who can challenge Victoria, Yogesh, and James: Troy Meyer. Troy played at or above Yogesh’s level throughout the TOC, leading 4 of the 6 Finals games going into FJ. And, given Troy’s trivia pedigree, there’s no reason to think he couldn’t replicate those results on even harder material.
With all due respect, I’d like to see Troy’s buzzer stats show a marked improvement before I’d put him on Victoria’s/James’s/Yogesh’s level right now.
Troy did strike me as the slightly more formidable player overall in that TOC finals though.
While Yogesh did have a bit of an advantage on the buzzer, Troy’s buzz-in success rate was a respectable 40% to Yogesh’s 46%. And I thought Troy’s huge advantage in finding the DDs (11 to Yogesh’s 3) more than made up for that buzzing gap. That is Yogesh’s biggest (and maybe only) flaw–he hasn’t quite perfected the art of DD hunting.
If we’re limiting ourselves to the last five years, here’s one option for a fourth member of the Big 3: Troy Meyer.
Setting aside his reputation in in other quizzing environments and just looking at his Jeopardy resume, in the eight games he played in this year’s TOC, he had 3 locks going into FJ and led 3 others. Including his regular season run, he has only trailed going in to FJ three times, and all three of the players who led a game against him either made or, in Yogesh’s case, won a TOC.
And this is without him being super-great on the buzzer, and only going 4-for-8 on tournament-level FJs. If he gets better at either phase of the game, watch out.
He probably won’t be a Producer’s Pick, but if he plays, to my mind he’d be a clear favorite in next year’s JIT. And if he does make the semifinals of Masters against James, Yogesh, and Victoria, that may well be the highest-level Jeopardy ever played.
I tend to agree with both of the above commenters concerning Troy Meyer. I would have much preferred seeing Troy as the Producers’ Pick this year rather than a rerun of Amy S. Troy could certainly have done as well as Amy S. did in the semi-finals, in my opinion.
I honestly would like to see the format reworked. What if there were more contestants, with Victoria getting a bye until the semis after her win this year? Or would that break while everyone else warms up be too great of a disadvantage for her? And then you can expand the promotion zone to 4 on top of that, so Victoria’s win not only guarantees her 2025, it also guarantees her 2026. Quite the prize for winning.
To all those talking about Troy Meyer… you do recall that Ben Chan finished ahead of him in the TOC finals this year, yes? I think Ben could have made the semis just the same.
I know that Amy, Matt, or Mattea has to win JIT next year to get back to Masters – because they’ve all been there twice already – but I expect there to be tough competition, with many players from the last one + Cris Panullo, Ben Chan, Troy Meyer, and Ray Lalonde + people who couldn’t make it this year like Brad Rutter, Julia Collins, and Emma Boettcher. Just talking about this reminds me how I love high-level Jeopardy play. I learn a lot, too.
Relegating three players seems like the correct move. More players need to be given a shot to find out who can hang with the big three. Besides, this is not a Premier League/Championship situation where relegated players are precluded from playing at the highest level for a whole season. They’ll have a chance to earn their way back in through the JIT.
Two things that need to be fixed: the “semifinals” should be modified or abolished. Either play a few more games in the opening round and send the top three through, or give the top one or two a bye into the final and have the next three play a two-game total-point round for the final one or two spots.
Second, do away with the producer’s pick and establish a definite procedure for the third spot. I would favor having the second place JIT finisher, second place ToC finisher, and top regular season earner not already qualified do a play-in for the last spot. This past season that would’ve been Amy, Ben and Chris, which would’ve been an amazing event in its own right.
I understand that it was a mistake on my part to visit the website, but I would appreciate if spoilers could at least be more ambiguous in the titles. As a next-day Hulu watcher, I did unfortunately get the finals spoiled by that (I only got around to commenting now but I saw it earlier in the day) 🙁