The Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament
One. Last. Tournament!
We’ll start with what the show told us in a press release yesterday, and then get into Monday’s “Inside Jeopardy!” episode and that’ll be it.1
We have the JIT field, and more
Yesterday, the show released the field of twenty-seven for the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament; taped two weeks ago, it begins airing immediately after the Tournament of Champions final concludes.
This event will use a scaled-down version of the ToC final format — first to two wins, meaning anywhere from two to four games. As a result of this, it can now be stated definitively that Season 40 regular play will commence no later than Friday, April 12. To all those beset by tournament fatigue, rejoice!
In addition to the three non-finalists relegated from last year’s Jeopardy! Masters, the twenty-four other players can be broadly grouped into five categories, in terms of when they last appeared:
Post All-Star Games — 5. Sam Kavanaugh, Jennifer Quail, Jason Zuffranieri, MacKenzie Jones, Dhruv Gaur. The first four appeared in the 2021 ToC (winner, first runner-up, semifinalist, and quarterfinalist respectively), while Gaur was a semifinalist in the 2019 ToC.
All-Star Games — 11. Larissa Kelly and David Madden, from the victorious Team Brad; Matt Jackson and Monica Thieu, from first runner-up Team Ken; the whole of second runner-up Team Colby (Colby Burnett, Alan Lin, and Pam Mueller); Austin Rogers and his teammate Leonard Cooper; Alex Jacob, from Team Buzzy; and Team Julia’s Ben Ingram.
Between the Battle of the Decades and the All-Star Games — 3. 2017 ToC semifinalist Lilly Chin returns, as do two players from the 2014 ToC, namely semifinalist Terry O’Shea and first runner-up Arthur Chu.
Battle of the Decades — 3. Each of them a ToC winner; Chuck Forrest, Celeste DiNucci, and Dan Pawson, in 1986, 2007, and 2009, respectively. In BotD, Forrest made it to the semifinals and ran Ken Jennings closely there, Pawson exited in the quarterfinals, and DiNucci bowed out in the first round.
Pre-Battle of the Decades — 2. Brandon Blackwell, semifinalist in the 2008 Teen Tournament, and Victoria Groce, 1-game winner in 2005.
Let’s start at the end — as in, with that last group
The résumés of those last two players included are looking awfully thin. Kind of like in Blazing Saddles when Bart and Jim infiltrate Hedley Lamarr’s line, and give the qualification of “stampeding cattle” — and Lamarr replies “that’s not much of a crime.”
Most of you probably already know what the “through the Vatican?” equivalent is for Blackwell and Groce. They’re Chasers on ABC’s The Chase. That connotes a level of trivia/quizzing prowess worthy of inclusion in this field. While their presence has been largely welcomed and celebrated, it’s not a universal feeling. Here’s “cf1140” on JBoard:
And with Brandon and Victoria that means we now have case(s) of contestants being brought back for reasons outside of Jeopardy. Call me a luddite, but I don't like it. Where does this lead? Should Guy Jordan and Raj Dhuwalia and Andy Kravis be back for their success on other quizzing shows? Are Dino and Jerry Vinokurov and Brian Fodera and Scott Blish coming back due to their quizzing bona fides? Why not forget the one-game requirement and just stick Hess and Kreitzer in these supertournaments?
Another perspective is enunciated by u/Lil_Klondike_Bar on r/Jeopardy:
The addition of the Chasers will take the JIT in new ways. Will the JIT include trivia whizzes who fell short of greatness like Patrick Friel, Raj Dhuwalia, Johnathan Corbblah, Chris Fleitas, and Muffy Marracco (who had one of Jeopardy's best wrong answers)? Also it would be cool to see O'Brien's resident celebrity Dileep Rao (who won civilian Jeopardy before he was famous), and Puck journalist Tina Nguyen (who did a Second Chance-worthy performance during her only appearance) get a future JIT invitation.
I tend toward LKB’s view. If the point of the JIT is to qualify a player into Masters – the highest level of the game currently being contested – I think it’s entirely appropriate to take into account success in other fora of quizzing since previously gracing the Alex Trebek Stage. This is particularly so in the cases of Blackwell and Groce, whose Jeopardy! appearances were sixteen and nineteen years ago, respectively. And we’re only talking about two of the players in the field here. Everyone else did at least one of the following: (a) won a tournament; (b) reached a ToC final; (c) won at least eight regular games. While some allowance is being made for non-Jeopardy! accomplishments, it’s not very much overall — and I trust the producers to strike the right balance in that respect going forward.
The Masters “sixth spot”
Looking at the list of who’s here, and discerning who’s not, leads fans to one particular talking point — along with the finalists from the last Masters, the ToC winner, and the JIT winner, who gets the sixth and final spot in the next Masters? It will be awarded at the producers’ discretion.
The name that came first to my mind, and to that of many others, was Brad Rutter. The all-time leading money winner in show history, he’s less than $50,000 from surpassing $5 million in total bank made on Jeopardy! — meaning, if he were to play in Masters, he’d surpass that milestone even if he finished dead last.2 That said, it was recalled yesterday that after The Greatest of All Time, he’d said things to the effect that he was done playing Jeopardy! after that event. That call is entirely up to Rutter; it would be completely understandable to me if he feels he no longer has the chops to be competitive at the necessary level. But if so, I hope that’s a decision he made, and not the show. If he does still want to get out there and take his best shot, he should be afforded that opportunity. And back in June, on “Inside Jeopardy!,” the show absolutely seemed open to it.
, who writes Living in Jeopardy and outstandingly maintains the all-time leaderboard, floated out a great short list of choices for that producers’ pick: Rutter, Julia Collins, Emma Boettcher, and Roger Craig. Collins struggled at the All-Star Games, missing Final in Game 1 of her team’s match, and only getting in twice on the buzzer in Double Jeopardy! in Game 2. But in the latter instance, she was going up against Ken Jennings and Austin Rogers. I don’t think a sample size that small decisively works against her inclusion. The big question surrounding Collins would be how her game would adapt to the post-Holzhauer era; even All-Stars pre-dates that, and Julia was very “traditional” in her clue selection during her original run. Boettcher defeated James Holzhauer in regular play, of course, and played him close again over two games in the 2019 ToC final. We therefore know she has the chops to hang not only with him, but with Mattea Roach, Matt Amodio, and whoever comes out of the ToC and JIT. Same goes for Roger Craig; third in the Battle of the Decades, he finished there largely because his penchant for big swings on Daily Doubles didn’t pan out in his favor against Jennings and Rutter, as it did in the 2011 ToC final. Craig seems like the easiest of these four to translate performance from previous appearances to a current one. He, along with Rogers and Cooper, acquitted themselves well in the All-Star Games, and like Boettcher, I’d expect could more than hold his own in the pressure cooker that is Masters.Regarding speculation on non-invitees
I think it’s inevitable. It’s already begun, and it has already been taken and run with. One of the tabloids already has a headline calling Rutter’s non-inclusion a “shocking snub.” Over the weekend, there was some chatter concerning whether Jeopardy! should make statements with respect to players not appearing in JIT.3
We’ll have to wait for Monday and the next episode of “Inside Jeopardy!” to see exactly how the show’s public relations and social teams decide to handle that. But personally, I think the situation compels no action from either. For one, it may end up “feeding the beast,” so to speak, if Jeopardy! publicly comments on these matters. And for two, and much more importantly: potential contestants not in the JIT are adults. They are full human beings with the requisite agency. They are each free to speak on the subject, or not to, as they see fit. I trust them all to deal with the matter in their own way, and accord the show no duty to “protect” them in any fashion.
Jeopardy! by Grucci
Because we have fireworks so far in this ToC final. If you haven’t been tuning in for whatever reason, catch up via J! Archive, and start watching!
Suggestions for who should have been in this JIT or should be in a future one? Questions? Concerns? The comments below are open. Follow me on Twitter [at]mfc248 for live Jeopardy! Tweets in the 7:00 pm Eastern half-hour most nights. For those on Bluesky, mfc248.bsky.social. I’m also [at]mattcarberry on Instagram and Threads, though I don’t use the latter much.
The JIT stuff went so long that the schedule changes announced on Monday will be addressed in a separate post.
Assuming the payout structure of the upcoming Masters is at least as lucrative as the 2023 edition.
Participant Jennifer Quail did note on Reddit that the lead time for the players, aside from the three relegated from Masters, was 3-4 weeks.
Hi Matt, not sure where else to share an erratum, but I noticed your reunion tournaments page lists Alan Lin as a QF finisher in his Tournament of Champions when he actually finished in second place. Thanks for maintaining all of these stats.