Although James Holzhauer couldn’t quite beat Ken Jennings as the all time moneymaker on “Jeopardy!” he will always be affectionately known as Jeopardy James.
To give you context, it took Ken Jennings 74 episodes to accumulate $2,520,700 while it only took Holzhauer 32 episodes to rack up $2,462,216 — he was only $58,484 shy of dethroning the all-time leader which would’ve likely taken just one more episode.
On Monday Jeopardy James’ luck came to a screeching halt but one crazy thing happened right before that “Jeopardy!” episode aired that has spawned a full investigation.
On Monday’s episode, it was all but decided before that night’s Final Jeopardy! Round.
It looked like newcomer Emma Boettcher was going to win. Jeopardy James was trailing Boettcher by about $3,000. To win, Holzhauer needed his opponent to answer incorrectly. However, Emma Boettcher successfully answered the question about 16th-century English playwright Christopher “Kit” Marlowe.
He’s out. It was shocking. Jeopardy James was likely only one episode away from becoming the all-time money leader.
But before that episode aired on Monday night, the Internet already knew about it; consequently meaning it was leaked on YouTube.
A spokesperson for “Jeopardy!” said they will take, “very, very, very appropriate” action, which means consequences will incur for that person who leaked it.
Executive producer Harry Friedman told the Washington Post, “Somebody alerted us that they had seen it on YouTube. By the time we saw it, it already had 2,000 views. I feel bad for the viewers. It’s not fair. I’m not sure what’s gained by doing something like that, other than some malicious intent. It doesn’t really benefit anybody.”
Upon losing, in an act of great sportsmanship, Holzhauer went to Boettcher’s podium and gave her a congratulatory high-five. In a press conference he admitted, “I never really believed I could win 75 shows, but I definitely thought I had a great shot at Ken’s cash winnings record.”
Jeopardy James also joked about it on Twitter saying, “Knew I shouldn’t have invited Drake to the Jeopardy taping.”
He’s of course referencing the Drake curse where the superstar Canadian rapper is notoriously known for being bad luck. When he takes a picture or wears a jersey in support of a team or individual; they lose. It just happened most recently when the Heavy Weight boxing champion of the world, Anthony Joshua, lost his title to a pudgy Andy Ruiz Jr. Several weeks before Joshua posted a picture on Instagram where he said the Drake curse “was about to be broken.”
It wasn’t. Now, Drake is in the midst of the NBA Finals where he’s an enormous fan of the Toronto Raptors. At the time of this article, the Warriors/Raptors are currently 1-1.
He had an extraordinary run.