J! 30th anniversary tournament

[CoachP]

Very cool photos, thanks for posting!

[MarkBarrett]

This was at the outdoor reception after the taping a short walk from the J! studio. All of the good photo angles filled up quickly, so I was off to the side. It was getting dark, so lighting was not terrific. All 15 players plus the alternate are there. Really.

[Dr. J]

Thanks for those, Bill/Rex! It was so great to meet many of you in person, and put faces with avatars/usernames. The J!verse really is the best, and I hope that many more boardies get to experience it. It was an amazing couple of days

[MarkBarrett]

Thanks for those, Bill/Rex! It was so great to meet many of you in person, and put faces with avatars/usernames. The J!verse really is the best, and I hope that many more boardies get to experience it. It was an amazing couple of days

A bunch of yeses. Next to me in Bill's panorama shot are two J! players, Dan Avila and Ian Manka:

http://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=1086

http://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=1659

Chris Ngoon (Siege of Malta & Resident Evil) from "The Experts" plus $25,000 on Millionaire with Cedric was not seated at the time of the picture, but was on the team as well. Ed Toutant was on a neighboring team and can be seen next to Ian.

AP: It was noisy in there of course, so I must have misunderstand what Dan told me about talking with you on the phone. The mention of your name must have come up for some other reason related to the phone conversation.

[georgespelvin]

I was thrilled to have been at the taping of the third decade competition last Wednesday. I had never seen a Jeopardy taping in the Sony studio before and it was very exciting (and informative if I ever get on). I won't talk about anything else concerning the taping until each game airs.

I actually got to attend the taping through a combination of luck and design (note to future Jeopardy contestants and pub quizzers: "luck is the residue of design" Branch Rickey). I had been planning a trip to visit family near Laguna Beach in January for many months because I hate wintertime (of course, I picked a great week to go to California for that reason too). I had decided that I wanted to see a Jeopardy taping if possible when I was there even before the Decades Tournament was announced, but when I heard that two of the Decades competitions would be recorded in January, I hoped that it would be the week that I was there and that I could get tickets. I kept checking the Jeopardy website for ticket availability. Eventually, they posted ticket availability for tapings on January 21 and 22--without specifying anything else except for the dates. If I could only see one day, I wanted to see the third decade because of all the boardies I knew, so I leaped in to get the tickets for both sessions for Wednesday January 22 before they were gone, assuming that if they were taping the latter two Decades tourney first rounds in the same week, the latter day would be the '00s. I then went on Facebook to verify quickly (through PMs to contestants) as to whether that was the day of the taping of the '00s tourney and was ECSTATIC when I found out that I was right. I wanted to get tickets for the 21st as well, but I did not have transportation so I had to reluctantly pass. (Rex Kramer had offered me a ride for Wednesday, but he could not take off work Tuesday. In any event, my cousin attended with my wife and I on the 22nd but he did not want to go on the 21st).

After the taping, Michael Falk and Bill MacDonald (who, as he noted, was a guest of Vijay Balse) vouched to get my group of three into the contestant/family/friends party. Bill actually pointed me out to Maggie, which made me a bit nervous--as you know I am very paranoid about whether she doesn't like me--but she just agreed to let us in. As a result, I got to talk with Boardies that I had met before (e.g. Roger Craig), Boardies that I had corresponded with but had not met before (e.g. Dan Pawson and his lovely wife) and met Boardies that I had not met before (e.g., irrepressible Dr. J, who was the favorite of my cousin and his wife). I was also thrilled to finally meet Vijay, who I had met online in 2005 in the old interactive CV days, and had played several times before he became "famous" (I never beat him). I did not get to meet everyone but it was a fantastic time.

Rex did play a trick on me at the party. He called Maggie over to me after having told her to say to me in a nasty tone "oh, I remember YOU!" Fortunately, Maggie didn't really do that and quickly admitted that Bill had put her up to it. I actually did talk with Maggie for about a minute and she was very friendly, so perhaps my fears over all these years have been for naught (but we'll see if I get an audition, no we did not talk about that obviously).

The spectacular day ended at O'Brien's in Santa Monica where I attended "Jeopardy Valhalla" as a whole group of players from the tapings and the area played pub trivia. Rex Kramer foolishly put together a hybrid team which contained my wife, my cousin and I. Of course the other half of the team was better qualified--it consisted of three of the 2006 ToC semifinalists (Rex, MFalk and Maria Wenglinsky), including two of the finalists. Dragged down by the three interlopers (not the ToCers of course), we did not do well, although we avoided the cellar with a strong second round. One of the highlights of the evening for me was finally getting to meet Stefan. The lowlight of the evening was that, apparently, the packed room resulted in my getting a bad cold, which has reached nasty proportions today.

Of course, there were many, many other people that I was thrilled to either meet or see again, so if I did not mention you above, please don't consider yourself "chopped liver". It really probably was the greatest day since my wedding.

P.S. I appreciate Rex not posting any pictures that included me (such as the team photo). Still paranoid about showing up to tape a game someday and finding out that I know a boardie there. Doesn't help either me or the other boardie (btw, this actually happened to Gnash and Dave Simpson several years back).

[Dr. J]

Don't worry about knowing boardies; if you get the call, just disclose that you're a member of this forum and you'll be fine. Pleasure meeting you!!

[Rex Kramer]

The spectacular day ended at O'Brien's in Santa Monica where I attended "Jeopardy Valhalla" as a whole group of players from the tapings and the area played pub trivia. Rex Kramer foolishly . . .

"Valhalla"? Did the studio blow up that day? If it did, then I must have snuck into Valhalla, since I would not have died in battle as the Fearsome Fifteen would have. (Featuring glassysquid as Brunhilde.)

Rex

[dhkendall]

Don't worry about knowing boardies; if you get the call, just disclose that you're a member of this forum and you'll be fine. Pleasure meeting you!!

This goes double if the boardie you would otherwise be facing is AP or Schliemann. In fact, even if you're not a boardie, I would suggest saying you are, save you the misery later.

[georgespelvin]

The spectacular day ended at O'Brien's in Santa Monica where I attended "Jeopardy Valhalla" as a whole group of players from the tapings and the area played pub trivia. Rex Kramer foolishly . . .

"Valhalla"? Did the studio blow up that day? If it did, then I must have snuck into Valhalla, since I would not have died in battle as the Fearsome Fifteen would have. (Featuring glassysquid as Brunhilde.)

Rex

Actually, my sinuses felt like they were blowing up yesterday when my flights descended. My comment above referred to the fact that there were a lot of past Jeopardy champions at O'Brien's, even though some who were at O'Brien's MIGHT be still alive in the Decades tournament. That's not meant to be a cryptic spoiler by the way, there were folks there from the first two Decade rounds who I have no idea how their games played out. EDITED TO ADD: I just realized that my construct could indeed be interpreted as a spoiler which was not my intention as I did not think of it that way. This shows that a) I am awful at word and logic puzzles and b) I should never post when my head is all fogged up. The point I was trying to make was that I only know the results of the games I saw and not the games that I didn't see so I don't know the fates of all of those at the pub.

I forgot to mention last Wednesday Rex that, despite your getting insulted when I referred to "former Jeopardy champions" in another post around here a few weeks ago, that's EXCACTLY how Johnny Gilbert and Alex referred to the players in the games that we saw.

Dhkendall, I don't think that I want to play you either if flags or anthems are on the line. I'm sorry that I did not respond to your PM from this morning, I've been sleeping off the cold I mentioned above.

[teapot37]

You're all lucky bastards. The lot of you.

[MDaunt]

You're all lucky bastards. The lot of you.

And they're all fat, too.

[alietr]

And they smell of elderberries!

[ahirbhairav]

Talk of '00s decades tapings and no mention AT ALL of the ruthless Ken. Too afraid to mention him or what?

[NYCScribbler]

And they smell of elderberries!

Who brought the hamsters into this?

[Johnblue]

Watching the interviews has been interesting. Reminds me how, "back in the day," how button downed the show was... and maybe how "bookish" the show was... and how the show wasn't afraid to have someone REALLY GOOD on and just do his or her thing. Lots of white guys in ties wearing thick glasses. I wonder if the "sky's the limit" rule led to the show changing its approach. Stylistically, the show feels very different these days.

Perhaps a difference in what the CCs want? Susanne Thurber and Grant Loud may have had different ideas than Maggie & Co. do now?

It was fun to watch all the videos. Some not only have great game skills, but camera skills as well. Others are better suited to play the 61 clues and have a short chat with Alex only.

I mean, the answer is the online test, right? Seems obvious. Has massively expanded the pool of people trying out. I'm sure they were just as willing to cast young attractive females back in the day.

Perhaps, but have the numbers of people coming to auditions changed? I don't sense that; they can only audition so many people. Additionally, I sense the change happened before the online test began. The online test only goes back seven years, I think.

Who cares about the number of people coming to auditions? There's a massively expanded pool of people taking the test and naturally more different types of people are going to pass. When it was a big hassle to take the test, there was probably a lot higher proportion of "white guys with thick glasses" taking the test. At least that's my instinct, I'm obviously not staring at data.

The problem with how they select contestants now is that most shows seem to have one or two or (very occasionally) three cruddy contestants. I think they're going for too many young contestants. It's tough too watch ten TSs every other night.

[georgespelvin]

I'm surprised that you didn't add "get off of my lawn" at the end of your post.

Whether a contestant that is chosen to be on the show is young or old is irrelevant. Everyone that appears has to pass a similar 50 question general knowledge test and have broad based knowledge skills. Quiz bowl players have a built-in advantage because they've been playing competitive quizzing for years, including buzzing. Youth can be an advantage when it comes to reflexes and (less generally) a disadvantage when it comes to what I will call "real memory" (i.e., I find that I got a lot of TS clues over younger players because I remember when the incident in a clue happened).

Removing "the sky's the limit" rule almost certainly has impacted contestant selection because Jeopardy is a for-profit television show that needs to be concerned with its ratings and reputation. In the old days, a contestant that might be considered to be unpopular to the audience at large would not be too much of a risk to have on because the most he or she could win would be five games of regular play. I'm sure that when Ken Jennings came on the scene ten years ago, the entire Jeopardy production team held its collective breath to see what the reaction of the public would be--positive or negative. It turned out to be both. Some found Ken's winning streak compelling, some found it boring (it's a shame that the old Sony boards are gone, reading the comments about Ken's streak as it was happening was fascinating reading). Fortunately, more people found the streak compelling and Ken to be an engaging personality.

I suspect, however, that TPTB, while thrilled with all the attention that Ken brought to the show, were relieved that he did not turn out to be a ratings millstone. Moreover, they probably realized that they might not be so lucky during the next incredibly long streak. I wonder if the negative comments about David Madden in his early games (mostly unfair I think in retrospect) were more widespread than the Sony board and if the ratings slid as David appeared to be the next Ken for awhile. In any event, I do suspect that nowadays, to potentially guard against an unpopular runaway winner, TPTB probably do consciously try to exclude the outliers from the show. If you score 50 or close to 50 on the online test, you probably won't get on the show although you might get invited to an audition. Now, I'm not saying that Jeopardy will never invite someone with a super high online test score onto the program--Dr. J would have been a dream contestant to have played for 50 or so games (I'm sure that it would have been a good dream for her too ). However, unless the contestant was super-telegenic, it won't happen.

Not that this leads to a dearth of qualified contestants of course. A look at the contestants playing in the most recent Battle of the Decades competition certainly shows that. Moreover, in regular play, one sees the same ebbs and flows, fortune and misfortune, and trends that have always been seen in the game. If Ken Jennings does not think to write down "Jones" in his first FJ, he's still an unknown software engineer in Utah and there is no UToC (kind of alliterative there). I've been looking at the JArchive lately at the games of notable Jeopardy champions, and many of them include close calls and narrow escapes. The best players don't always win on Jeopardy--sometimes out of misfortune, sometimes because they are playing another of the best players. Folks like Rex Kramer and Tom Kavanagh are lucky that when they lost to a player that turned out to be another eventual ToCer, they already had enough wins to come back later.

Some people get nervous being on TV and some people find that being in the maelstrom of gameplay is overwhelming. Some people don't know wagering strategy (although as we now know that is not necessarily an indicator of success). This does not mean that they don't deserve to be on the show. We may think that we could do a better job, but until you are actually up there, you don't know if you will do a better job. One former boardie got on the show about eight years ago and we all thought that he would rip off a long streak--he flamed out in game 1. Another boardie who had talked boldly about DD wagering got on the show and made timid DD wagers.

OK, enough rambling although I guess I'm old enough to ramble. I'll still stay off your lawn.

[StevenH]

Removing "the sky's the limit" rule almost certainly has impacted contestant selection because Jeopardy is a for-profit television show that needs to be concerned with its ratings and reputation. In the old days, a contestant that might be considered to be unpopular to the audience at large would not be too much of a risk to have on because the most he or she could win would be five games of regular play.

Are you sure about this? It doesn't seem to me that the number of dud contestants has changed from the days when contestants retired after five wins. It's possible that the not as fun to watch contestants are picked because TPTB don't think that they will do well on the show, but that seems far fetched to me. After all, the audition process is more about picking contestants who are television material than who will or won't do well on the show. Yes, contestants have to pass the test, but is test score really that good of a predictor of who will do well on the show?

If you score 50 or close to 50 on the online test, you probably won't get on the show although you might get invited to an audition.

Once again, I am not so sure about this. Based on reading the threads on this board where people report their online test scores, it doesn't seem like it takes a Roger Craig to score in the high 40s or get a perfect score. It is possible though TPTB aren't aware of that.

[georgespelvin]

Obviously, I have no idea how TPTB select contestants. I was just speculating. I do think that it is likely that the selection process has always been tilted to pick contestants that will do well and look well on TV. The point I was really trying to make was that back when a contestant could only play five regular games at best, there would not have been a concern that an unpopular contestant could be around forever. Once the win limit was removed, that could have become a factor.

I also think that TPTB don't want to see another Ken Jennings type streak and will, obviously through guesswork because there is no way to be sure, try to eliminate contestants that they think would run off a string of uncompetitive lock games like Ken did. Obviously the show has had some of the best players on since Ken, but they all proved to be vulnerable to the usual vagaries of the game (most notably that if you don't have a lock game going into FJ, you can lose if you miss that one clue).

[Johnblue]

They're DYING for another Jennings-like streak. I get the feeling you're older than me & I've always been okay with kids running on the lawn. Don't make dumb assumptions. I'd say that maybe the older shows weren't as good as I remember except when I moved last year, I came across a bunch of old VHS tapes & the contestants were much more impressive than they are today. Maybe they need to change the material to more Usher and Justin Timberlake questions so there aren't all those dead air moments. It's embarrassing.

[Coelacanth]

Obviously, I have no idea how TPTB select contestants.

Having just spent two days with TPTB...I asked about this.

There are 3 things that they look for. 1) you have to pass the test, obviously. Not sure how they determine who gets an audition invite. 2) You need to at least be reasonable at ringing in. If you get to play for awhile and still can't master the timing, "maybe this is not for you". (That's a direct quote). 3) You need to look comfortable at the podium and give the appearance of having fun. People who look nervous, intimidated, stressed, overwhelmed...not getting on the show.

There is still some random element involved, because even with all of these filters, they will still have more people than they can use.