Jeopardy!: Tournament of Champions 2022
October 31, 2022 10:30 AM - Season 39, Episode 36 - Subscribe

Jeopardy! gears up for what may be the biggest slugfest in TOC history, with superchampions Amy Schneider (40 games won), Matt Amodio (38), and Mattea Roach (23) skipping the first round.

Joining the rest of the five-plus-game winners in the first round are five four-game winners, the College Championship Tournament winner, the first-ever Professors Tournament winner, and the two Second Chance Tournament winners (Jessica Stephens' inclusion means that this will be the first-ever TOC with three people whi played against each other in the same game in the regular season, as she was the third person in the match where Jonathan Fisher ended Matt Amodio's streak (Stephens actually outscored Amodio as well) before Fisher went on to win 11.

The new format means we'll have six first-round games, and then on November 8th (Election Day in the US), the three supersuperchamps will face off in a warmup game to help them get their deadly rhythm back before the second round (and also maybe because the show often gets pre-empted on election days).
posted by Etrigan (11 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Deadly rhythm" pretty much describes those three to a tee. I bet Vegas is seeing some action over this tournament.
posted by Ber at 2:04 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Two fairly big upsets of superchamps in two days, with Ryan Long (16 games won) losing to Maureen O'Neil (4) and Jonathan Fisher (11) losing to Andrew He (5). I genuinely cannot figure out how the quarterfinals are going to be seeded -- it seems like maybe these two are slated against Amy Schneider (poor bastards), but I can't find any proof of that, and even the J! official site doesn't have them seeded into the QF anywhere yet.

The first day didn't seem any more difficult than usual, but the second one definitely did.
posted by Etrigan at 7:53 AM on November 2, 2022


I was really hoping the "wrong but excellent" category would have a clue about Ken's infamous rake/hoe mixup
posted by Banknote of the year at 8:13 AM on November 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


The practice game had a weird energy. Like, it might have been fun in person, but it didn't really come off that way, even with the loosey-goosey attempts to joke around like on Celebrity Jeopardy. It ended up being more like the Pro Bowl, which should be fun, but no one's really trying that hard, and you don't really even get any good clips from it, and some people try to draw conclusions from it but they all end up being totally wrong just often enough that you can't even usefully counter them. It was a good idea to get Amy and Matt and Mattea some reps in (and it didn't get pre-empted here in the Detroit market, at least), but eminently skippable. Maybe they can put up a prize if they do it again in the future, at least have some stakes to make people want to play harder.
posted by Etrigan at 8:40 AM on November 9, 2022


The practice game had the gem of Ken accidentally spoiling a category's answer and being bleeped out when he realized his mistake.

Also, I'd forgotten that Matt had outlasted so many hosts, but had never had Ken as his host until the practice game.

Anyway, I am really excited for the final rounds (yay, Amy!), since I just assume it will be these three again but with their game faces on for at least three games (but hopefully for more than that!).
posted by paisley sheep at 9:33 PM on November 9, 2022


Well, if you’d told me that two of the top champs wouldn’t win a (regulation) game, I probably would have bet on Amy being the survivor, but I still would have laughed at the very idea.

I’m still betting on her taking the whole thing, but I could see Sam sneaking one.
posted by Etrigan at 6:15 AM on November 12, 2022


I'm surprised Matt and Mattea didn't make it, but I'm really looking forward to this week! I love Amy, my mum really likes Sam, and Andrew fought for his life with the second chance tournament and then the semi-final so I could see him being just as strategic in the finals. But I'm still rooting for Amy.
posted by paisley sheep at 9:56 PM on November 13, 2022


Who wrote Hebrews?
posted by Etrigan at 9:08 AM on November 18, 2022


Well, I was right in that it ended up 3-1 Amy over Sam. I just didn't see Andrew taking two in the middle.

This means that Amy and Andrew have faced each other seven times. That's the most single-game meetings of any pair in history by far, and it's pretty close to how many times Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter faced off in various tournament settings over the course of 15 years.
posted by Etrigan at 9:27 AM on November 22, 2022


Amy explains why she didn't bet to win on Friday -- she had to keep from losing to Andrew; giving Sam a win was the better outcome.
posted by Etrigan at 9:48 AM on November 22, 2022


Sam panicked once he started getting ahead in the Double Jeopardy round, giving wrong quick answers that he might have gotten right if he'd taken an extra second to think about it. Even my mum, who's his fan, was annoyed by that.

But I'm super happy that Amy won!
posted by paisley sheep at 10:24 AM on November 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


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