ToC2015: Who’s the bounciest of them all?

In early 2014, Arthur Chu made headlines for his Jeopardy! play. Some viewers complained that he made the show “unwatchable” because of his use of a technique known as the Forrest Bounce.

In the Forrest Bounce, a player hops around the board from category to category, often starting with the high-values clues rather than working from top to bottom. Proponents of the strategy use it for two reasons.

First is to throw their opponents off their game. By going from BIOLOGY to SHAKESPEARE to CROSSWORD CLUES “W”, the other players – including those on the couch at home – often have trouble keeping up with the current category, and get confused as a result.

This board has been the victim of the Forrest Bounce.

Second is to find the Daily Doubles. Even if a player doesn’t like the category and wagers small, he’s taking those wild cards out of play for his foes. It’s a way to neutralize those random occurrences where a weaker opponent bets the farm on a single clue and gets lucky.

Of course, the Forrest Bounce often backfires; even for the one doing the bouncing, it can be hard to keep up. Starting at the top of a category usually lets players get into a rhythm and figure out what the category’s really about, information that’s denied to players who start at the bottom.

To be successful, a player also needs the knowledge to back it up; those high-level clues aren’t going to answer themselves. (Alex Trebek, while on The Howard Stern Show a few months ago, referred to weak bouncers as “dickweeds.”)

So who among this year’s Tournament of Champions field tends to do the most bouncing? You probably already know the answer.

To gauge the propensity for jumping around the board, I looked at the number of times players changed categories in each game. (The bare minimum for a single round, assuming all categories are played, is 5.)

As usual, a special thanks to Robert K S and the J! Archive for providing me with the data I could manipulate to derive these stats.

Jeopardy! round

Double Jeopardy! round

Daily Double hunting

Finally, I looked at the clue number on which the three Daily Doubles were found. Players in Alex Jacob’s games found them much, much earlier than with any other opponent. For comparison, the average of Seasons 31 and 32 (through last week) are included.