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After Thursday’s match, we’ll know the identities of six semifinalists: the four winners and two of the wild cards, since the two highest scores can’t be eliminated on Friday. How many of tonight’s candidates – 8-timer Drew Horwood, College Champ Terry O’Shea, and 5-timer Sarah McNitt – will punch a semifinal ticket?

Each of our three players had peculiar wagering tendencies.

Drew Horwood

8 wins, $138,100

Had I been doing The Final Wager in Season 29, Drew’s games would have given me quite a bit of work. He had a roller-coaster ride in his streak – he didn’t have a single lock until his eighth(!) victory, which is surely a record. It’s tough to string together multiple wins when each game comes down to that crapshoot known as Final Jeopardy!.

Drew went for the win +$1 in crush situations in Games 5 and 6.

(Complete list on J! Archive)

Game 1 (March 5, 2013)

Dylan	Drew	Ilene
16,200	8,500	11,800
7,400	8,498	3,000
8,800	16,998	14,800

Properly going for (almost) everything… and reaping the benefit of a too-small wager out of Ilene.

Game 2 (March 6, 2013)

Drew	Jon	Lorraine
9,800	9,600	9,300
9,401	9,001	8,500
19,201	18,601	17,800

A tight game in which I would have been ecstatic over all three players’ wagers.

Game 3 (March 7, 2013)

Drew	Lloyd	Jennifer
14,800	15,400	11,800
13,000	14,201	5,000
27,800	1,199	16,800

Another good wager here out of Drew.

Given the scores and wagers, and assuming coin-flip probabilities of getting Final Jeopardy! correct, his odds of winning these three games were .25 * .5 * .25, or 3.125%.

Game 4 (March 8, 2013)

Drew	Mike	Yellowlees
15,200	11,800	10,200
8,401	8,601	7,000
6,799	3,199	3,200

Bad wager out of third.

Game 7 (March 13, 2013)

Drew	Jillian	David
16,300	5,200	15,600
2	1,000	10,399
16,298	6,200	5,201

Here’s where things get interesting. This is not quite a Brakhagesque wager – I would have preferred 699 or 700 – but Drew was anticipating David would wager to cover him by a dollar.

Game 9 (March 15, 2013)

Drew	Kathleen	Rob
2,400	11,200	18,000
0	6,801	4,500
2,400	4,399	22,500

Not much to do here; I suppose 2,001 would have been better, but Kathleen should have bet the farm.

Terry O’Shea

2014 College Champion, $100,000

Terry is the other College Champ to appear in this year’s Tournament of Champions, hot on the heels of Jim Coury in Wednesday’s match.

A bit of controversy surrounded her win in February, after she admitted that her smaller-than-necessary wager in the Final match was the result of “not feeling that I really deserved to win, or be in the finals at all.”

(Complete list on The Final Wager and J! Archive)

Quarterfinal (February 12, 2014)

Kenesha	Terry	Kevin
2,200	15,400	10,800
2,200	2,000	4,601
4,400	17,400	15,401

A conservative wager for the wild card – and the right one, in the end.

Semifinal (February 18, 2014)

Terry	Ben	Eric
12,000	19,800	7,200
7,900	4,201	7,200
19,900	15,599	0

The sole get on this Final gave Terry the win. No reason not to go for everything, of course…

Sarah McNitt

5 wins, $89,398

Sarah McNitt needs no introduction, at least to fans of The Final Wager: she was the subject of my favorite analysis of Season 30.

I’m thankful that she’s been quite cool about the “4,000” meme; it even got a mention in this article celebrating her return.

Sarah had only one lock, in her fifth game.

(Complete list on The Final Wager and J! Archive)

Game 1 (January 14, 2014)

Michelle	Sarah	Osei
8,400	11,800	2,400
5,002	4,000	2,300
13,402	15,800	4,700

I’m just going to let my brother, Cory, do all of the talking…

Game 2 (January 15, 2014)

Sarah	Emily	Danny
16,600	7,000	13,900
4,000	6,912	11,000
12,600	88	2,900

Weird – this one actually worked out for her!

Game 3 (January 16, 2014)

Sarah	Gudrun	Stacy
13,600	1,200	10,400
4,000	1,100	7,600
17,600	2,300	2,800

By game 3, Stacy had caught on to Sarah’s tendencies, and wagered accordingly.

Game 4 (January 17, 2014)

Sarah	Jen	Geoff
13,200	1,600	24,500
9,999	1,599	2,500
23,199	3,199	22,000

Hey now!

Game 6 (January 21, 2014)

Sarah	Priscilla	Emily
11,400	11,000	9,400
302	7,000	9,000
11,098	18,000	400

Sarah must have known this would be a weak category for her, so she pinned her hopes on both opponents missing (or making far-too-small wagers).