Final Jeopardy scenarios

[jnala]

Another friend of mine is on Jeopardy! today, which seems like an appropriate occasion to post some other thoughts on J! strategy I've had recently.
Everyone knows that it's important to enter Final Jeopardy with the lead - if you have the lead, and you wager enough, and you get it right, you win. Almost everyone knows that it's very good to be in

Comments

[dmorr]

I haven't watched Jeopardy recently, but when I did I was astounded at the number of times people not in first place made incorrect bets during FJ. I used to pause it and tell Katy what the right bets were in interesting (usually 3-way) situations. She hated it.

I think one of the advantages Jennings had, aside from being good at trivia and well-practiced with the tricky buzzer, is that he was much more willing to make big DD bets than other people. He would routinely bet big chunks of his stack, aiming to be a lock come DJ time.

Iirc, he never went into FJ without the lead, and often (mostly?) he was a lock.

The time he lost, had he won either of his DD's or FJ or his opponent had missed FJ, he would have won. That's actually a heck of a parlay, though of course if you play enough game it'll happen eventually.

[jnala]

I should note, in case I wasn't clear, that

a) the "locks are more important than leads" bit also applies to *avoiding* locks, and
b) two-thirds thresholds are also more important than leads.

These both being relevant to tonight's game.