FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

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Category 13
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FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by Category 13 »

I've come up with a different way to compare how J! champions fair over a specific number of games. It concerns how much their score changes on the FJ clue itself.
Simply put, it's the difference between money gained vs money lost on accumulative FJ wagers. Winning or losing the game is not relevant.

Since Matt Jackson has currently played six games, I decided to go back to the beginning of Season 31 and find all the six+ game winners and tabulate their six game 'plus/minus score'

____________________ AFTER SIX GAMES ____________ END OF ORIGINAL RUN
Vaughn Winchell ___________6102 __________________________ 6102 _______________ 4-2

John Schultz _______________7501 __________________________ 7501 _______________ 3-3

Kristen Sausville __________14,800 ________________________ 14,800 _______________ 4-2

Kerry Greene _____________59,498 ________________________ 44,099 _______________ 6-1

Alex Jacob _________________ 802 __________________________-9599 _______________ 2-5

Greg Seroka _______________9600 ________________________ 17,908 ________________ 4-4

Andrew Haringer _________ 33,999 ________________________ 33,999 ________________ 4-2

Dan Feitel ______________ 34,399 _________________________ 34,399 ________________ 5-1

Brennan Bushee _________ 35,404 _________________________ 35,404 ________________ 6-0

Scott Lord ______________ 20,402 _________________________ 20,402 ________________ 5-1

Matt Jackson ___________-16,599 ____________________________________________ 3-3

<edited to display FJ right/wrong record>
Last edited by Category 13 on Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by Category 13 »

Here's how a few notable past champions faired.


__________________AFTER SIX GAMES_____________________ END OF ORIGINAL RUN

Ken Jennings _____________ 20,400 _______________________ 194,300 ____________ 51-24

David Madden _____________14,895 _______________________38,895 ______________14-6

Dan Pawson _______________25,101 ________________________ 9902 ______________ 5-5

Larissa Kelly ______________ 76,597 _______________________76,597 ______________ 7-0

Ben Ingram _______________ 31,232 _______________________ 39,734 _____________ 9-0

Arthur Chu ________________ 10,800 ______________________ 19,200 ______________ 6-6

Julia Collins _______________ 25,710 ______________________ 18,300 ______________ 13-8

<edited to display FJ right/wrong record>
Last edited by Category 13 on Fri Oct 09, 2015 3:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by dhkendall »

Category 13 wrote:I've come up with a different way to compare how J! champions fair over a specific number of games. It concerns how much their score changes on the FJ clue itself.
Simply put, it's the difference between money gained vs money lost on accumulative FJ wagers. Winning or losing the game is not relevant.

Since Matt Jackson has currently played six games, I decided to go back to the beginning of Season 31 and find all the six+ game winners and tabulate their six game 'plus/minus score'

____________________ AFTER SIX GAMES ____________ END OF ORIGINAL RUN
Vaughn Winchell ___________6102 __________________________ 6102

John Schultz _______________7501 __________________________ 7501

Kristen Sausville __________14,800 ________________________ 14,800

Kerry Greene _____________59,498 ________________________ 44,099

Alex Jacob _________________ 802 __________________________-9599

Greg Seroka _______________9600 ________________________ 17,908

Andrew Haringer _________ 33,999 ________________________ 33,999

Dan Feitel ______________ 34,399 _________________________ 34,399

Brennan Bushee _________ 35,404 _________________________ 35,404

Scott Lord ______________ 20,402 _________________________ 20,402

Matt Jackson ___________-16,599
I don't quite see how this is relevant, as FJ wagers don't really mean anything outside of the game they were played in. A good player (which pretty much all these people listed are) base their FJ wager based on the scores of their opponents rather than any aptitude of their own, Keith Williams has built an entire career on that. This is why I hate on my daily Jeopardy! desk calendar it has a "Final Jeopardy!" clue every Sunday where you are to wager all or part of your "winnings" based on your get rate of clues over the week, how am I supposed to wager without a context? (This is why Keith didn't have any math this day).

I'd like to know if others agree that this statistic isn't useful at all or not. Show your work.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by Category 13 »

dhkendall wrote: I don't quite see how this is relevant, as FJ wagers don't really mean anything outside of the game they were played in.
It is not meant to be relevant to anything. It's just something I found interesting to compare.
It does illustrate (somewhat) how some players are willing to take bigger risks than others, and how a player's get-rate can have a dramatic effect on the figure.

It is NOT my intention to make Matt look bad by posting these stats BTW. It's strictly for fun.
It will be interesting to see how these players do when pitted against each other in the upcoming ToC.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by seaborgium »

Category 13 wrote:It does illustrate (somewhat) how some players are willing to take bigger risks than others
In my fourth game, I bet $20,065 on FJ. In Doug Hicton's fourth game, he bet $19,801 on FJ. Though only $264 apart, our wagers were very different. I'll leave it as your exercise to figure out why.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by Category 13 »

seaborgium wrote:
Category 13 wrote:It does illustrate (somewhat) how some players are willing to take bigger risks than others
In my fourth game, I bet $20,065 on FJ. In Doug Hicton's fourth game, he bet $19,801 on FJ. Though only $264 apart, our wagers were very different. I'll leave it as your exercise to figure out why.
I'd venture to guess you may have been way behind the leader and needed a hefty wager to have a chance to win; Doug was in a crush in which he had to cover a close second place opponant's doubled score.
<edit> I see you had a humungous lead over both of your opponants so you could afford to wager a wad.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by mujason »

A really interesting FJ plus/minus statistic would be a contestant's FJ get % compared to the get % of his or her opponents as well as compared to the get % of the JBoard poll (which would give a much larger sample size).
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by triviawayne »

I would think the best way to compare any contestants is their scores on their first five games, without DD or FJ wagers; doubling the amounts for those there before the amounts were doubled.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by boson »

mujason wrote:A really interesting FJ plus/minus statistic would be a contestant's FJ get % compared to the get % of his or her opponents as well as compared to the get % of the JBoard poll (which would give a much larger sample size).
Yeah - I think that would be a valuable statistic. How well contestants do on hard FJ could be measured by mean of [(1 if FJ correct, 0 if not)/(FJ get rate on this board)].

Of course, there would be a huge amount of noise on this statistic - contestants can't choose whether or not their questions are hard or easy, but it might be interesting for superchamps and those with lots of games behind them. Getting final/DD correct is a different skill from the rest of the game, and it would be interesting to see how contestants compare.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by mfc248 »

triviawayne wrote:I would think the best way to compare any contestants is their scores on their first five games, without DD or FJ wagers; doubling the amounts for those there before the amounts were doubled.
A smattering of average Coryats through five games (doubling those who played with original clue values); for players who appeared in Season 20 or later, in parentheses is the average Coryat over their entire run.

Chuck Forrest: $22,440
Frank Spangenberg: $21,080
Jerome Vered: $27,480
Dan Melia: $19,640
Robin Carroll: $22,760
Brad Rutter: $21,960
Brian Weikle: $26,520

Ken Jennings: $27,000 ($27,861)
David Madden: $23,240 ($19,300)
Tom Kavanaugh: $14,760 ($14,089)
Dan Pawson: $14,680 ($14,340)
Larissa Kelly: $20,560 ($19,429)
Roger Craig: $24,440 ($23,657)
Tom Nissley: $16,840 ($16,800)
Jason Keller: $21,280 ($19,000)
Stephanie Jass: $22,080 ($21,250)

Drew Horwood: $11,960 ($13,644)
Ben Ingram: $16,800 ($16,733)
Arthur Chu: $20,960 ($21,117)
Julia Collins: $16,480 ($19,400)

Alex Jacob: $21,840 ($20,286)
Greg Seroka: $19,560 ($17,925)

Matt Jackson: $24,000 ($24,371 through seven games)
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by triviawayne »

mfc248 wrote:
triviawayne wrote:I would think the best way to compare any contestants is their scores on their first five games, without DD or FJ wagers; doubling the amounts for those there before the amounts were doubled.
A smattering of average Coryats through five games (doubling those who played with original clue values); for players who appeared in Season 20 or later, in parentheses is the average Coryat over their entire run.

Chuck Forrest: $22,440
Frank Spangenberg: $21,080
Jerome Vered: $27,480
Dan Melia: $19,640
Robin Carroll: $22,760
Brad Rutter: $21,960
Brian Weikle: $26,520

Ken Jennings: $27,000 ($27,861)
David Madden: $23,240 ($19,300)
Tom Kavanaugh: $14,760 ($14,089)
Dan Pawson: $14,680 ($14,340)
Larissa Kelly: $20,560 ($19,429)
Roger Craig: $24,440 ($23,657)
Tom Nissley: $16,840 ($16,800)
Jason Keller: $21,280 ($19,000)
Stephanie Jass: $22,080 ($21,250)

Drew Horwood: $11,960 ($13,644)
Ben Ingram: $16,800 ($16,733)
Arthur Chu: $20,960 ($21,117)
Julia Collins: $16,480 ($19,400)

Alex Jacob: $21,840 ($20,286)
Greg Seroka: $19,560 ($17,925)

Matt Jackson: $24,000 ($24,371 through seven games)
Wow, thank you for putting this together!

For years I figured $200,000 in 5 days was a good benchmark since Frank Spangenburg got $100,000 in his run. Since it has never been done, I just thought he was the best; but this really puts it in perspective, he's 12th on this list.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by JyV92 »

I LOVE this statistic.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by triviawayne »

JyV92 wrote:I LOVE this statistic.
Which one, there's two here.
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by econgator »

triviawayne wrote:
JyV92 wrote:I LOVE this statistic.
Which one, there's two here.
The one that puts him #1. ;)
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by triviawayne »

Just for some James Holzhauer perspective, this is an average coryat for the first five games, with values doubled for those who played prior to the doubling (the original list came from 2015 during the Matt Jackson run, I checked Buzzy, Alan, and Austin, but there might be others I should have checked and didn't think of at this time; and hoping I didn't mess up the calculations):

1. James Holzhauer: $27,800
2. Jerome Vered: $27,480
3. Ken Jennings: $27,000
4. Brian Weikle: $26,520
5. Roger Craig: $24,440
6. Matt Jackson: $24,000
7. David Madden: $23,240
8. Robin Carroll: $22,760
9. Chuck Forrest: $22,440
10. Stephanie Jass: $22,080
11. Brad Rutter: $21,960
12. Alex Jacob: $21,840
13. Jason Keller: $21,280
14. Frank Spangenberg: $21,080
15. Arthur Chu: $20,960
16. Larissa Kelly: $20,560
17. Dan Melia: $19,640
18. Greg Seroka: $19,560
19. Alan Lin: $18,240
20. Austin Rogers: $17,760
Total game show career losings = $171,522
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Re: FJ Wager Plus/Minus scoring: an alternate statistic

Post by RKane »

triviawayne wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:39 am
For years I figured $200,000 in 5 days was a good benchmark since Frank Spangenburg got $100,000 in his run. Since it has never been done, I just thought he was the best; but this really puts it in perspective, he's 12th on this list.
Same.

Really goes to show the advantages of Martianing wagers and getting them right. Quick math shows that both Jerome and Roger could have topped Frank's 5-day score by wagering the MSB, and yes this includes the fact that both got one of their first five FJs wrong.
Spoiler
In fact, in one of Jerome's non-locks he overwagered and was wrong, and even with this he still would have had a five-day of $103 699 by my calculations, including a one-day total of $41 199 on his fourth day.* Roger would have had a five-day of $217 799 including a one-day total of $83 199 on his second day. As an aside, if they had achieved these numbers, James would only have the top nine all times scores right now, rather than the top 12. In fact, and this getting even more hypothetical but it is interesting, on the day Ken got $75k he could safely had gotten to a little over $90k, and if Jerome's record at that time was $41 119 (=$82 238), I imagine Ken would have gone for an even $90k (he likes his round numbers), in which case James would only have the top eight scores of all time. THEN AGAIN, if Ken had hit $90k, Roger could not have safely topped him, so who knows if he would have gone for anything.
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