Indeed, I think the old sports cliche that "you create your own luck" is appropriate here. By having a large, diverse knowledge base, by being better on the buzzer, and/or by having a sense of how smart wagering can help, J! players can "create their own luck" by putting themselves in better positions to "get lucky" by having clues they know come up (especially DD+FJ! ones), or by winning key buzzer races (if one considers luck to be a factor in those).alietr wrote:I like to think of it as a distribution. The likelihood of each person winning follows a normal distribution. That curve is defined by their knowledge base, the categories they get, how they feel, etc., etc. Those curves slide back and forth depending on conditions and overlap with their competitors'. Luck plays a part in what part of the curve they find themselves in.
But, even if things should be in a strong player's favour, they still may have to be "lucky" enough to have things go their way. An extremely Jeopardy!-knowledgable, buzzer-strong player like Ken or Brad is just in a position where he has more "margin for error", and it's unlikely that "bad luck" (e.g. having a FJ! that he doesn't know come up) is going to result in a loss.