Of course, this means that it's time for a new odds update:
| Competitor | # of Wins | Money Won | ToC Chance | Error Range |
| Tom Nissley | 8 Wins | $235,405 | 100.0% | 100.0%-100.0% |
| Roger Craig | 6 Wins | $230,200 | 100.0% | 100.0%-100.0% |
| Christopher Short | 6 Wins | $94,752 | 100.0% | 100.0%-100.0% |
| Tom Kunzen | 5 Wins | $133,402 | 100.0% | 100.0%-100.0% |
| Paul Kursky | 5 Wins | $109,411 | 100.0% | 100.0%-100.0% |
| Jay Rhee | 5 Wins | $107,203 | 100.0% | 100.0%-100.0% |
| Kara Spak | 5 Wins | $83,401 | 100.0% | 100.0%-99.8% |
| Mark Runsvold | 4 Wins | $153,800 | 99.7% | 100.0%-98.8% |
| John Krizel | 4 Wins | $105,204 | 98.4% | 99.7%-95.0% |
| Brian Meacham | 4 Wins | $90,500 | 89.4% | 96.6%-78.7% |
| Buddy Wright | 4 Wins | $88,804 | 71.0% | 89.3%-54.1% |
| Sara Heard | 4 Wins | $85,601 | 42.7% | 61.9%-28.3% |
| Paul Wampler | 4 Wins | $72,001 | 12.1% | 22.7%-6.5% |
For most of the folks on the table, very little has changed. The 5+ win crowd still have nothing to worry about, and the odds of the four 4-timers below Mark haven't moved much at all; it's clear that the appearance player at about Mark's ranking was sort of "priced in" to the odds. The only two people to suffer much in this most recent calculation are Paul Wampler, who now needs a complete drought of 4-timers above him to make the tournament, and Anthony Fox, who has been pushed off the bottom of the board entirely. Sorry, Anthony; I was rooting for you.
The most likely field right now is Buddy Wright and up, along with two yet-to-play contestants and Sara Heard as the alternate. Almost as likely is a field of Sara and up, with one yet-to-play and Paul as the alternate.
Any idea when the next TOC will be filmed?
ReplyDeleteThere are 230 episodes in a typical Jeopardy! season, so this is the last week of the current season. History suggests that the next season will start airing sometime in mid-September. Given the calendar for this year, I expect the season premiere on 12 September. J! always likes to air a tournament of some sort during the November Sweeps, so I expect the ToC to start airing in the first full week of November. This is 8 weeks after the start of the new season, which is very much in keeping with the historical trend of the November tournaments starting 7-9 weeks after the season premiere; my model assumes this value. (Historical precedent says that someone can qualify for the ToC right up to the last episode before it starts, so folks playing in these weeks will be eligible for this year's Tournament.)
ReplyDeleteI feel pretty good about all of the foregoing, though it is based on guesswork. As for when the ToC will actually be recorded, that requires a less well-founded guess. If we assume that the producers will want a two-week lead between filming the first episode of the season and airing it, then the season premiere will tape on 30 August (assuming that they stick with Tuesday and Wednesday as their taping days). Eight weeks of aired episodes requires four weeks of filming, so I'd guess that the ToC will record on 27 and 28 September.
I strongly suspect that the likliest candidates (like all of the 5+-time winners) have already been contacted with this information, but putting that question directly to a couple of Unnamed Parties got nothing back but a suspicious silence.
Wheel of Fortune premieres on September 19th, and I imagine Jeopardy will follow suit.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I think have to take you at your word, rafferbee. That means I should probably clip 5 games off the number remaining before the ToC, since think a 7 November start date is a lot more likely than a 14 November one; the latter date would push the finals of the Tournament into Thanksgiving weekend.
ReplyDeleteI'll publish another set of odds over the weekend to celebrate the end of the season that incorporates this change.
...And another correction to my date estimates. Scuttlebut has it that the new season starts taping next week, which is a full four weeks earlier than I had guessed. So, that would put the ToC taping in the first week of September.
ReplyDeleteNick, I looked up at the j-archive, and I don't know if you watched the recent episodes on jeopardy!, but, did you notice that Charles Temple (Teacher's tournament) and Erin McLean (College Championship) were going to be in the tournament? If so, then that makes 15 people to be in the 2011 tournament of champions. BTW, if you look up at the j-archive site, have you noticed that any of the champions have made a lock game? If you look at some of them, they might have made a lock game, or not, but you can never be to surprised to know who will be in the tournament. I was glad that you did great in your appearances, but I was kind of disappointed that you didn't make it in the tournament. I was hoping that you would have made it in, especially with the scores that you got.
ReplyDeleteYep, I know that there are 15 in the ToC, but because the College and Teacher's champs are not decided by the usual win-ranking method, I haven't included them here.
ReplyDeleteAs for the lock games, they can be sort of a disadvantage in total winnings, since they tend to make for small wagers. (There are exceptions to this, of course; I didn't do so badly on my third game, and Roger demonstrated the value of locking by a preposterous enough margin that one is free to make an even more preposterous FJ! wager...) I'm not sure that locks are always predictive of ToC success, though. A big part of locking a game is buzzer dominance, and the very high level of the competition in the ToC will make buzzer dominance much harder to achieve. If I ever get enough free time to look at the issue in more detail, I can look to see if there's any correlation between locks and ToC wins.
And thanks for the kind words; I hoped I would make the Tournament, too!