20 Years After Ken Jennings Debuted on Jeopardy, Another Super-Champion Has Entered The Ranks of The Greats
As Adriana Havermeyer Makes History, Comparing How She Stands Up Against The Best Of The Super Champs
Twenty years ago this past June, Ken Jennings competed on Jeopardy for the first time. And both the show and game shows have never been the same since.
After the five game limit was removed at the start of Season 20 the rules of fans had known Jeopardy worked for the previous nineteen seasons would change forever with the coming of Ken Jennings. Even though he retired still behind Brad Rutter for most money won all-time and James Holzhauer has taken the title of greatest Jeopardy champions since he retired in 2020, Jennings is still the gold standard for all Jeopardy champions. And deservedly so, even though several of his individual records have fallen, no one has come remotely close to winning 74 games since his streak ended in December of 2004.
The players who have come closest to Jennings’ mark over the next fifteen years all seemed, fittingly enough, to grace the Jeopardy stage not long after Jennings would make a return. A little more than a month after Brad Rutter defeated Ken in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, David Madden began a 19 games streak that would stand as the second place total for the next eight seasons. His $430,400 would stand as the second place mark in money won in a contestants original run for even longer.
For the next eight and a half seasons, no one came close to approaching David Madden’s 19 game total. Indeed only two players, Dan Pawson in Season 24 and Jason Keller in Season 28, were able to win as many nine games.
During Season 30 all of Jeopardy waited for the Battle of the Decades and the return of some of the greatest players in Jeopardy history. Fittingly, while the preliminary rounds were being played another form of Jeopardy history would be made when Arthur Chu won eleven games and $297,200.
Two weeks prior to the Battle of the Decades final round, Julia Collins began to make history when she won ten games, more than any female contestant in the show’s history to that point. After Ken lost to Brad Rutter in the finals, Julia would win another 10 games to bring her total to 20, the new second place total and managed to win $428,100.
Five years later Jennings returned to Jeopardy along with such talents as Julia and David to compete in the Jeopardy All-Star Games. Among the competitors in the All-Star Games were three other champions, each of whom had managed to win at least twelve games or more: Matt Jackson, who’d won 13 games and $411,612 in 2015, Seth Wilson who’d won 12 games and $265,000 in 2016 and the legendary Austin Rogers, who’d also won 12 games and $411,000.
The Jeopardy super-champion, which had been largely dormant in the decade after Ken’s initial run was beginning to emerge — and less than a month after the All-Star Games ended, James Holzhauer absolutely redefined it. If there was a sign that the goalposts were beginning to be shifted, it was confirmed when at the end of the season Jason Zuffranieri would begin a nineteen game winning streak that netted him $532,496.
In the last two years the Jeopardy super-champion has become almost a common occurrence on the show. But with the endless postseason that took up the majority of Season 40, many wondered how long it would be before the next Jeopardy super-champion would rise. And almost twenty years to the day Ken made his debut as a Jeopardy champion, the next one has.
Adriana Harmeyer is an archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana and yesterday she entered hollowed ground as she became the sixteenth player in Jeopardy history to win eleven games. She did so with her biggest win to date, winning $33,000 in the third straight close game she’s won, but it put her total in winnings at $258,700.
Adriana has not had the same level of dominance that so many super-champions in recent years have when it comes to big paydays. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been as dominant to win: five of her matches were runaway games. Adriana has had a certain amount of luck in her wins: in many of her matches her opponents will find the Daily Double before she does, wager big and inevitably get it wrong. There has been more luck in her victories then those of Amy Schneider or Cris Panullo.
But take nothing away from her as a player. In her first eleven appearance on Jeopardy, Adriana has gotten Final Jeopardy right on nine occasions. On the tenth, no one could so it didn’t cost her and on the eleventh, she already had a runaway victory. And every time she needs to get Final Jeopardy right to win, she does it. In all six of the matches where she was in a close game, she got it right.
To date Adriana has never trailed going into Final Jeopardy. That’s not odd, most superchampions are usually ahead and ahead by a sizable margin at the end of Double Jeopardy. That’s how they get to be super-champions in the first place. And its clear that her knowledge as an archivist has given her a distinct advantage in so many Jeopardy categories so far. If you study history for a living, that will be an edge on Jeopardy perhaps nearly as much as being a teacher or student will.
Adriana’s totals in her wins have not been awe-inspiring the way that so many other recent super-champions have been. That is in part because Adriana has mostly been conservative in her wagering on Daily Doubles usually betting just enough to make sure her lead is either insurmountable at the end of Double Jeopardy or, taking the reverse note, making sure she doesn’t lose the lead if she gets the Daily Double wrong. This may not be as much fun as watching James Holzhauer go all in on every Daily Double, but it is often just as critical to a long run. (David Madden and Julia Collins made this method work for them throughout their original runs.) Perhaps most interestingly Adriana is the first successful super-champion — indeed the first successful champion of any kind — who doesn’t hunt for the Daily Double the way that so many other Jeopardy winners have been doing since Holzhauer made this his plan of attack in 2019. Her plan of attack is more traditional, starting at the top of categories in the Jeopardy round and every so often going to the second clue in a category first.
Adriana’s approach represents a sea change since the era of Holzhauer. For the last five years, Jeopardy champions and tournament participants have started rounds hunting the Daily Double down, taking a slingshot approach around the board, usually at the bottom of the category first. When they find the Daily Double they bet big and frequently everything, hoping for an insurmountable lead early. This method, which one might classify as ‘search and destroy’, predates Holzhauer by a good margin. It was first done by Roger Craig and other Jeopardy greats such as Alex Jacob used it to great success over their runs before Holzhauer used it to such success that everyone’s done it for the last five years. Adriana is the first super-champion to have immense success with this method in the post-Trebek era and it represents an interesting change — and a welcome one to those purists who wondered if the method caused whiplash for the average fan. (We’ll see if she keeps doing whenever she gets to the Tournament of Champions.)
Obviously this approach doesn’t put Adriana at the same level of the super-champions we’ve gotten used to over the past couple of years. However when you take away the most recent group of Jeopardy Masters as well as Jennings, she compares rather favorably after eleven games:
David Madden: $269,101
Arthur Chu: $297,200
Julia Collins: $231,310
Matt Jackson: $339,411
Seth Wilson: $245,002
Austin Rogers: $394,700
Jason Zuffranieri: $332, 243
Jonathan Fisher: $246,100
Ryan Long: $209,300
Ray LaLonde: $311,500
Adriana Harmeyer: $258,700
I didn’t compare her to the five biggest winners in money won in their original run because it’s not remotely fair. That said, Adriana is running quite a bit ahead of Mattea Roach, who after eleven wins ‘only’ had $244,882.
As it is, it’s clear that, even if Adriana’s streak were to end tomorrow, she would still rank favorably with many of the ‘second wave’ of Jeopardy super-champions. She’s already ahead of Jonathan Fisher (whose streak ended the next day) and Seth Wilson, significantly ahead of both Julia Collins and Ryan Long, each of whom won considerably more games and basically even with David Madden. That’s impressive company to be among by any Jeopardy fan’s standards. In addition with her win on Wednesday she now ranks third all-time for most money won by a female contestant in their original run, behind only Julia Collins and Amy Schneider. That’s even headier company.
On a personal level Adriana is extremely modest and likable — which doesn’t make her that different from the vast majority of all Jeopardy champions, past and present. What I have found enjoyable is how Adriana has no difficulty letting her nerd flag fly proudly. This isn’t remarkable; all Jeopardy players have a bit of the nerd by definition. But it is the rare Jeopardy champion is so willing to admit how deep that runs. Earlier this week Adriana proudly admitted how much she loved reading the World Book Encyclopedia as a child, perhaps a factor into her taking a career as an archivist. She was, however, very clear that she didn’t use as her first resource when studying for the show — the edition she had growing up was from the 1970s which can only take you so far. (I wonder if her edition is one that lists Jimmy Hoffa’s birth and death as 1913–1975?)
At this point in Season 40 Adriana is one of four female contestants who have qualified for the next Tournament of Champions, along with Alison Betts, Amy Hummel and Celebrity Jeopardy Winner Lisa Ann Walter. Just prior to Adriana’s run starting Jeopardy had two four game winners appearing right after the other: Grant DeYoung, who won $81,203 and Amar Kakirde who won $55,899. (Abby Mann, the contestant who defeated him, then lost to Adriana and Chris D’Amico, who defeated Grant, immediately lost to Amar. Both players might qualify for the next Second Chance Tournament if there is one, which has yet to be determined.) We have also had, to date, three 3-Game winners who might have an easier time being admitted: Weckiai Rannilla, who won $35,200, Allison Gross who won $44,598 and Will Stewart who won $70,501 before Grant defeated him. Considering that Will won more money in his three games than Amar did in four, he would have the best argument of that group to being invited back to the Tournament of Champions.
Regardless of that fact it is promising that, even in what will be the truncated regular play of Season 40 that the four locked in participants for the Tournament of Champions are all women and that two more might very well end up being invited as well based on the same qualifications that were in play for this year’s. As I mentioned in my article summarizing Amy Hummel’s run last month, I find it extremely promising for a show that has spent much of its history struggling to find a balance of female representation in most of its tournaments has in the last two months managed to have more women qualify than all of Season 39. It’s a promising stretch for Jeopardy as it enters the final stretch of Season 40.
As for Adriana, I don’t know how much longer her streak will go. It might end tonight; it might go on another couple of weeks. What I do know is that after so much controversy throughout Season 40 and all of the shadows that seem to have lingered over even the joyous moments of it, Adriana has once again demonstrated what really matters to all Jeopardy fans — the game play and the great champions. Adriana is the super-champion Jeopardy needs right now and I look forward to seeing her keep coming back on the Alex Trebek stage for years to come, even after her run ends. Twenty years after Ken Jennings first appeared on Jeopardy, players like Adriana remind us that the show still has the potential to surprise, delight and reward us,