![]() At your age, 23, I had the advantage of living in L.A. At her age I could not have gone onto national TV competing for tens of thousands of dollars without cracking up and embarrassing myself-I could barely get through a job interview without cracking up and embarrassing myself. Brad Rutter got to be the winningest contestant in game show history-a combined total of $4,455,102-just like most other superstars in most other fields did, by achieving mastery incredibly young and then maintaining it through his prime.Īt last year’s tournament I complimented Terry O’Shea for showing the grace under fire she did at the age of 20. Some people manage to get that knowledge, life experience and discipline earlier than that, and those people get a leg up over the rest of us. For most people it seems like 30 is the sweet spot, when your reflexes are still fast enough to be competitive but you’ve had enough time to accumulate knowledge, life experience and discipline to not totally fall apart on TV. You’re in an elite club of people who made it big on Jeopardy! in their 20s, along with Dave Madden (24 on his first appearance) and Brad Rutter (22 on his). Ken Jennings was 30 when he had his epic run. My observations have been that most Jeopardy! champs do best around the age of 30. Here’s what I would say if I were in your shoes: The ability to have your shit together enough to get on national TV at the age of 23 and win Jeopardy! with the reflexes of a 23-year-old is the most impressive thing about your run. ![]() A lot of the haters say your success comes down to having quicker reflexes than your opponents due to your youth. I’ve read other people’s analysis of your games and a lot of people fall back on saying that speed is the key to your success, pointing out times Alex Trebek has asked you to slow down for his sake and the sake of the unseen humans operating the board. The people who did better than me-Dave Madden, Julia Collins, Ken Jennings-found their stride after tough first games. I didn’t develop that level of consistency until my second week on the show. You’ve had locked games (with one exception, a near-lock) this whole time. Look at Ken Jennings’ first ever game, a nailbiter where he only held first place by $1,300 going into Final Jeopardy! and squeaked through on a judgment call, the judges deciding there weren’t enough famous track and field stars with the last name “Jones” to disqualify him for not giving Marion Jones’ first name. Only you and the higher-ups at Sony Pictures Entertainment and your fellow contestants sworn to secrecy know whether you beat my streak tonight, or whether you go on to beat Dave Madden’s streak, Julia Collins’ or even Ken Jennings’.īut if you don’t, it won’t be for lack of skill, it will be because Jeopardy!, like most other games on TV, is at heart a game of chance. You’ve already beaten my winnings total and tied my streak length, at 11 consecutive games. As a big fan of Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the two titans of Jeopardy!, I’m quite comfortable saying you’re in their league. In any case, you’re certainly a better player than I was. It’s my opinion that you are a better player than all of us from 2014. It’s an unambiguous and obvious fact that you, Matt Jackson, are the best player we’ve seen yet in 2015. So I’m going to be, I think, the first Jeopardy! champion to set the record straight about your record: I can’t shake the feeling that my name and Ben’s would have asterisks next to them for that tournament victory.Įven so, the outcome of that year’s tournament left the question of whether Ben, Julia or I was the best player in 2014 ambiguous. Of course, for a lot of reasons, including my inability to keep my mouth shut on social media and the way people insisted on talking about Julia’s gender before anything else about her run, Julia didn’t get the attention relative to me that she really deserved.Īnd while I did in fact end up beating out Julia in our match in the 2014 Tournament of Champions-with both of us losing in the end to dark horse Ben Ingram, whom I’m told you studied to prepare for your run-I should mention that I personally witnessed Julia being so overcome with the flu during those games that she had to lie down to rest during the commercial breaks. 3 in streak length and total money won in Jeopardy! history, I lost both of those distinctions to Julia Collins a few months later. As much as I enjoyed being the first contestant to break double digits since Dave Madden’s run in 2005 and hitting No. I write this while currently staying in a country (Taiwan, visiting relatives) where people generally haven’t heard of Jeopardy! It’s a relief in some ways, because it means I get to get used to no longer being “the Jeopardy! guy.”īy rights that title should already have been stripped from me multiple times. Whose 10-Day Cash Winnings Total $289,411: Dear Matt Jackson, a Paralegal From Washington, D.C.
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