Ruttered

Well, this photo from Jeopardy!'s facebook feed pretty much sums up the 3rd quarterfinal:

Seems that Brad is pretty good at this game.  I felt bad for Dan...when he and I talked prior to the taping, we guessed that either he or I was going to have to play Brad, and he drew that straw.  (Not literally...I don't really know how they choose the matchups, but it doesn't involve drawing straws!  But we figured that they wouldn't put Ken or Roger or Colby against him in the first round, so that left us.)  Dan gave a valiant effort, and if just one of those Daily Doubles had gone a different way, the outcome could've been quite different.  [Dan's the person I spent the most time hanging out with at these tapings, and he's just a great guy all-around, funny and sharp.] But there's also a reason that Brad's never lost (to a human).

Dan is still technically in the running for a wild-card spot, though, and stranger things have happened before! 

Current wild-card standings:
Leszek $15,000
Pam $14,798
Tom N $2,400
Dan $399


The fourth quarterfinal features the other player that everybody knows: 74-time champion and twitter gadfly Ken Jennings.  He faces off against Tom Cubbage, the only player ever to win both the College Championship and the Tournament of Champions (and, as I found out at the taping, we're fraternity brothers), and Rachael Schwartz, winner of the 1994 ToC.  Will Ken dominate as he always seems to, or will one of the others pull off the upset?

WEATHER

I guess I'm establishing a tradition of starting off very slowly and coming back at the end.  Sorry for any heart attacks that were induced during this game. :)

Having Alex call Pam, Tom and I "impressive" at the end of the game was a great compliment.  And it makes watching a tournament like this so much fun: you know that all the contestants are excellent and so they aren't going to leave too many dollars on the board, even with difficult material. 

I think Pam and I felt like we were going to be primarily battling each other on the buzzer in this game, but Tom jumped out to a really quick start and was consistently getting in first.  He mowed through those "on the map" clues, got the DD on the Apollo 11 astronauts, and found himself with a big lead at the end of the first round.  (What is it with video clues where they show a map and point out one country in GIANT LETTERS and your brain just wants to make an association with those GIANT LETTERS?  Clearly the star was located at Caracas, but COLOMBIA was all I could focus on.)

Fortunately I know some TV and was able to build a little bit of cash at the end of the first round.  "Major Dad" was a favorite show of mine as a kid and I recalled that Gerald McRaney had also been in "Simon & Simon."  I hadn't seen this prior to the show, but my sensai Bill Schantz alerted me to it and it's amazing:



Just like in my preliminary round game, I was keeping in mind that there's a lot more money available on the board in the DJ round, and hoping for some good categories there.  And there it comes: "WEATHER."  (Flags and music are pretty good for me too.)  I actually wasn't all that thrilled to see the weather category pop up: I can only imagine the consequences if I crashed and burned on some clues there!  Plus, I'm very prone to overthinking in categories that I have deep knowledge in (see also: CALCULUS in my ToC finals.)

I didn't want to start right in on the weather category, so we went through some music and flags first (hopefully Big Audio Dynamite makes up for missing Devo last time).  Pam got the big DD in French Poets (translation: French novelists and philosophers who wrote a poem or two), which is a strong category for her, and she jumped into the lead.  Pam held a narrow lead through most of the round despite missing a really tough DD, and then we eventually came to WEATHER.  The clues ended up being pretty straightforward, including one on radiosondes/weather balloons!  (I spend a fair bit of my time working with data from radiosondes, and was involved in a field experiment last summer where we launched a lot of them.) Fortunately I got in first on the buzzer on that one, or I wouldn't have ever lived it down. I grabbed the lead very briefly but Pam quickly took it back, and went into the final with a $2000 lead.

With three 5-digit scores and the wild-card spots in play, the wagering strategy here wasn't that clear. (Even Keith seemed puzzled as to what to do.)  Pam and Tom clearly had the idea that the wild-card cutoff might be in the $20K range, but I didn't anticipate that it would be that high.  My $1300 wager was essentially a balance between staying above $14K if I missed (which I thought was a good target) and getting at least a little bit of a boost if I got it.  (I was tempted to bet $2001 to go ahead of Pam if she wagered zero and I was correct, but I decided it wasn't worth risking going below $14K.)

It's probably some kind of cliche to say that I listen to quite a bit of NPR, and they've been running all kinds of stories about the rise in the North Dakota economy due to oil and gas exploration and the problems associated with the boom.  So that came to mind very quickly...I also considered other smallish oil/gas states like Wyoming but figured North Dakota was the most likely to fit the clue.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was the only one to get it, and even more pleasantly surprised that I won the game as result.  I figured that with our scores, if Pam or I didn't win we'd have a good shot at a wild card, but it was certainly nice to be able to relax and watch the rest of the quarterfinal games knowing that I'd advanced.  I sat next to Pam for most of the rest of the day, and she was rather nervous about whether her score would hold up.  Will it?  You'll have to watch the rest of the week to see!

Current wild-card standings:
Leszek $15,000
Pam $14,798
Tom N $2,400
Robin $0  [yes, people have advanced with $0 in the past! It's very unusual though.]

Our little man's special quarterfinals onesie (even though I didn't actually find any DDs)

Panoramic of my students launching a weather balloon in May 2013

The third quarterfinal game is another powerhouse matchup.  There's Brad Rutter, the all-time winningest player in the show's history.  And Mark Lowenthal, who wrote the book "Secrets of the Jeopardy! Champions" (along with Chuck Forrest, who will appear Friday).  And my 2000s group pal Dan Pawson, 2009 ToC winner, who nicely summarizes the thoughts of the entire field going into today's match:

Today's the day: up against Mark Lowenthal, who literally wrote the book on Jeopardy, and @bradrutter. Can I keep up? pic.twitter.com/MBteKY7LY7
— Dan Pawson (@Daniel_Pawson) May 7, 2014

Enjoy!

The quarterfinals - it's time!

The Battle of the Decades got off to a swift start last night with a great game between Roger Craig, Robin Carroll, and Leszek Pawlowicz.  Leszek jumped out to a big lead, but Roger worked his way back in typical Roger fashion with a couple big Daily Double bets.  He earned the first semifinal spot, but Leszek's $15K is also a strong total for a potential wild card.  Robin played very well also, but she was just getting outbuzzed by the other two.  It was fun to see three greats play the game at such a high level!

When the contestant coordinator (the wonderful Robert James) comes back into the green room to announce the players in the next game, it's a feeling of both eager anticipation and dread -- you both want him and really don't want him to call your name for that name.  He asks everyone to play a drum roll on the couches and tables and shouts out the players, and this time it was: Tom Nosek, Pam Mueller, and Russ Schumacher!  So, into the makeup chair for a touch-up, get some caffeine in the system, and off we go...

The 2nd day of #BattleoftheDecades quarter-finals pits 3 great #Jeopardy! minds against each other. Who will move on? pic.twitter.com/vQICOJkzQp
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) May 6, 2014

You already know that Pam and Tom are incredible Jeopardy! players, so I'll share a couple non-J! tidbits about them.  Tom has spent a long career in the aerospace industry, and it turns out that he worked on some weather/climate satellite missions.  Specifically, he had a role in the Aqua satellite, which I don't use directly in my research but I work with many people who do. 

Pam has been involved a little bit of everything: law, choreography, political campaigns, and now she's getting her PhD in psychology.  Just recently, she received some attention for a really interesting article showing that people tend to retain more information from a lecture or presentation when they take notes with pen/paper than when they take notes on an iPad or laptop. (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/take-notes-by-hand-for-better-long-term-comprehension.html)  Something important for me to consider in the classroom!  Really, the best part of the whole Jeopardy! experience has been meeting such friendly, interesting, and smart people, and Tom and Pam are no exception.

The show's on at 6 pm on channel 7 here in Colorado; check your local listings elsewhere, and enjoy the show. And since I know you've been anxiously wondering what I look like whilst carrying a suit through a hotel lobby...(hi Dan and Colby!):

Russ, Dan & Colby make their way to the #Jeopardy! set. They might look relaxed, but in a few hours, it's game on. pic.twitter.com/PQcEc0abuB
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) May 5, 2014

Battle of the Decades tournament: preview

This post is primarily going to point you to a few items that will get you into a good, informed mood for watching the Battle of the Decades the next two weeks.

First, if for some reason you weren't able to see my first-round game, the SportsCenter highlights version is included in this video, along with an interview they did after I won:


I'm glad Keith Williams started his site "The Final Wager," as it saves me some explaining.  He has a nice summary of how Jeopardy!'s tournament structure works, so if you haven't followed one of the tournaments before, check it out: http://thefinalwager.co/2013/11/07/jeopardy-tournaments-structure-and-wild-cards/
The most important thing to keep in mind for this quarterfinal round is that you don't have to win to move on: there are also 4 wild card spots.

Also, as Keith notes, the contestants aren't allowed to watch the games prior to the one they play in, so are sequestered in the green room.  During my ToC, I was in there until the Thursday game, and it wasn't all that much fun just sitting back there being nervous.  This time I was fortunate to get called for the Tuesday game, so I only had to watch the first 45 minutes or so of "Sixteen Candles."  (They give a small selection of DVDs to watch, and I don't recall why we chose this movie...I think I voted for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" but this won.)

I had conducted a similar analysis of the wild-card cutoffs prior to this tournament, but I was only considering ToCs (since the final clues seem to often be much easier in the college and teen tournaments, and especially the teen tournament) and I only considered the post-doubled dollar value era.  The median cutoff in these tournaments was $9900 and the max was $13000.  In contrast, the Million Dollar Masters tournament in 2002 (probably the closest analog to this one) had a cutoff of $17,400.  These are numbers I certainly had in mind going into the tournament, but there's a lot of variation in where the cut falls that can be affected by a single really hard (or really easy) FJ.

You can check out the matchups for the quarterfinal round here: http://www.jeopardy.com/minisites/battleofthedecades/finals/.  Going along with the "Battle of the Decades" theme, each game has one representative from each of the three decades.

Keith has some predictions for the quarterfinal round on his site as well: http://thefinalwager.co/2014/05/04/jeopardy-battle-of-the-decades-quarterfinal-match-ups/  We'll see soon enough how good they were!  As you can see, my opponents are Tom Nosek and Pam Mueller -- more about them on Tuesday.  And as you can also see, there are no easy matchups in this tournament: what an incredible collection of the best J! players in the show's history.

During the taping of the tournament, there were other camera-people following us around almost all the time: in the hotel lobby, on the bus ride to the studio, in the green room, and so forth.  We all wondered what the result of all that filming might be, and it turned out to be this documentary-style YouTube video, which is really, really cool.  I feel very lucky and honored to have been a part of this!


(A little even-farther-behind-the-scenes tidbit: I lost badly in that poker game in the green room. Fortunately we weren't playing for real money.)

The first game in the quarterfinals features Leszek Pawlowicz (80s), Robin Carroll (90s), and Roger Craig (00s).  Three ToC winners.  Leszek was once referred to as the "Michael Jordan of game shows".  Robin won the International Championship in addition to the ToC.  And Roger holds the one-day winnings record and the record for highest average winnings per game.  I haven't seen this game (I was watching "Sixteen Candles," you'll recall) and am really looking forward to watching it!



 

The quarterfinals!

More details forthcoming, but my game in the quarterfinals of the Battle of the Decades will appear on Tuesday, May 6.  The tournament resumes on Monday the 5th!

Battle of the Decades: 2000s, Friday

Thursday's game was just Ken Jennings being Ken Jennings: he clearly dominated the buzzer, hit a couple of big Daily Doubles, and ended up with an insurmountable lead going into the final.  Michael had a chance to get back in the game with a true Daily Double, but a tough chemistry clue did him in.

To finish out the week, Friday's competitors are Dan Pawson, Maria Wenglinsky, and Keith Whitener.  I didn't have any connections to any of them prior to the taping, and only Dan was in our subgroup on the day of the promo taping, so I didn't get as much chance to interact with Keith or Maria.  I wrote a little bit about them below, but then I saw Stephanie Jass's preview which is much more compelling (especially if you're a Hunger Games fan), so you probably just want to check that out here: https://www.facebook.com/StephanieJassJeopardyChampion/posts/636352503102244

Dan was a big champ in 2008 (9 games) and won the Tournament of Champions in 2009 over Larissa Kelly.  He's just an all-around strong player and nice guy, lives in New York, and does interesting and important work consulting for health-related global nonprofits.  He's another one with a smart family...his wife Andrea also was a J! champion a few years ago.

Maria is a teacher who also lives in New York, she won 5 games in 2005 and was narrowly defeated by Michael Falk in the semifinals of the 2006 ToC.  She has a great, very dry sense of humor that will come through during Friday's game. 

Keith Whitener was one of the very recent players in the group, having won 7 games in 2012 (honestly, a time when I wasn't watching the show very regularly).  He's a chemist who now lives in DC.  He finished second to Colby in the 2013 ToC.  Right after the day of taping, he and his wife headed straight to the airport for their honeymoon!

The games have been exciting all week, and I promise that this one won't disappoint either.

Battle of the Decades: 2000s, Thursday

Thursday's show marks the return of the most famous (infamous?) champ in the show's history, Ken Jennings.  He plays against Michael Falk and Vinita Kailasanath.

Michael and I made some small contribution to meteorological history, as he won the 2006 Tournament of Champions, the next one after mine.  At the time, he was working as a research meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, after getting degrees from Iowa State and UWM.  So to have two consecutive ToC winners be from such a small field as ours was quite the coincidence and achievement!  He's now a math teacher and quiz bowl coach in Milwaukee.  We first met at a trivia competition in the mid-2000s, and it was great to see him again (and to have a fellow weather nerd to commiserate with at the taping).

I've also known Vinita for a while: she was the only other representative from our 2004 ToC, and I beat her in a close game in the semifinals of that tournament.  She was the college tournament champion in 2001 (as a student at Stanford), but she couldn't rearrange her final exams to play in the next ToC, so the show was nice enough to let her defer and play in the 2004 ToC.  It was also great catching up with her -- she's a smart, fun, and friendly person.    

And then there's Ken, who doesn't really need much introduction.  74-time champ, 2nd most total winnings in the history of the show, and now writes books and for venues like Slate and Parade magazine.  This was the first time I met Ken in person.  I got the sense that he wasn't really an extrovert, in the sense that he didn't seem to be having as much fun in our big group of contestants as everyone else was.  But I had the chance to talk with him one-on-one a couple times, and he was really nice and interesting to talk to.

Me with Ken and Vinita at the "after-party."  Ken is not a crook.