Battle of the Decades preview: 1990s, game 7
| Battle of the Decades – preliminary round | ||||||||||||||
| 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | ||||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| knockout rounds | ||||||||||||||
To see what happened, click here.
Our second game should be a treat to watch: two TOC champs and a College Champ who nearly broke into the final round of the UTOC.
Ryan “Fritz” Holznagel won four games before taking down the 1995 Tournament of Champions. He was then invited to the first Olympic Tournament in 1996. He is a strong player who is known for wagering strange amounts with his Daily Doubles and in Final, which made things a bit tricky for me in calculating his proper wagers below.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ryan in the UTOC, in which he defeated the crowd favorite, Barbara-Anne Eddy before falling in a tight match to eventual semifinalist Chris Miller.
Dan Melia won five games in 1997 – many by the hair of his chin – before cruising to victory in the following TOC. His final match there was a classic with Bob Harris and Kim Worth; the second day is often cited as the most amusing episode of Jeopardy! ever recorded.
Dan seems to get stronger as the questions get harder, which makes sense, as he’s not as quick on the buzzer as he’d need to be against competitors in regular play.
Pam Mueller won the November 2000 College Championship. But don’t let that charming smile fool you – she nearly made the finals of the UTOC, tripped up by a Latin term against Jerome Vered and Frank Spangenberg. If she gets out of this first-round game, she could be dangerous.
Prediction:
I can see this going in any direction. If the board happens to be tougher, Dan will have the edge, but I’ll be pulling for Pam as a fellow College Champ.
Ryan “Fritz” Holznagel
Ryan had a lock in his second game; he was locked out in the 1996 Olympic semifinals.
Game 1 (11/03/94)
| Ryan | Russ | Yung-Chang |
| 8,400 | 6,000 | -200 |
Proper wager: 3,600
Alternate wager: 0 – 1,200
Actual wager: 3,773
Verdict: the first of many strange wagers.
Game 4 (11/29/94)
| Steve | Ryan | Brendie |
| 10,000 | 7,000 | 1,900 |
Proper wager: 0 – 1,000
Alternate wager: 7,000
Actual wager: 888
Verdict: playing lowball works out
Game 5 (11/30/94)
| David | Kevin | Ryan |
| 8,000 | 6,000 | 2,400 |
Proper wager: 2,400
Actual wager: 2,400
Verdict: did the best he could
TOC SF (11/20/95)
| Bruce | Ryan | Paul |
| 10,000 | 7,300 | 5,100 |
Proper wager: 7,300
Actual wager: 7,117
Verdict: leaving some points on the table
UTOC Rd 1 (03/07/05)
| Ryan | Barbara-Anne | John |
| 16,111 | 11,800 | 7,000 |
Proper wager: 7,490
Alternate wager: 0 – 1,132
Actual wager: 7,887
Verdict: going for the win
UTOC Rd 2 (04/26/05)
| Chris | Ryan | David |
| 11,600 | 11,022 | 9,000 |
Proper wager: 6,979 – 9,866
Actual wager: 7,117
Verdict: the strange numbers continue
Dan Melia
Dan had a lock in his fifth game and was locked out of UTOC Round 3 by Jerome Vered.
Game 1 (07/18/97)
| Patrick | Dan | Brian |
| 9,100 | 8,800 | 3,600 |
Proper wager: 600 – 1,600
Alternate wager: 1,601 – 5,200
Actual wager: 4,000
Verdict: risks falling below Brian, but it worked out
Game 2 (09/01/97)
| Dan | Atish | Janet |
| 8,400 | 8,400 | 3,800 |
Proper wager: 8,400
Alternate wager: 0
Actual wager: 8,400
Verdict: tied for first and makes the right play
Game 3 (09/02/97)
| Atish | Dan | Karen |
| 8,100 | 7,500 | 4,900 |
Proper wager: 2,300 – 2,600
Alternate wager: 6,300
Actual wager: 7,400
Verdict: a bit much, forcing him to answer correctly
Game 4 (09/03/97)
| Dan | Wayne | Beth |
| 10,100 | 6,500 | 3,200 |
Proper wager: 2,900
Actual wager: 3,000
Verdict: safe enough, since Wayne has to be right
TOC SF (02/04/98)
| Dan | Fred | Claudia |
| 11,000 | 5,900 | 4,500 |
Proper wager: 801
Actual wager: 801
Verdict: good
UTOC Rd 1 (02/18/05)
| Dan | Jeremy | Brian |
| 17,000 | 9,800 | 0 |
Proper wager: 2,601 – 11,599
Actual wager: 2,601
Verdict: the bare minimum
Pam Mueller
College Championship semifinal (11/16/00)
| Suzanne | Pam | Mitali |
| 10,400 | 6,700 | 600 |
Proper wager: 6,700
Actual wager: 6,699
Verdict: needs to get it right; that dollar’s worth nothing
UTOC Rd 1 (03/10/05)
| Pam | Michael | Jay |
| 30,600 | 16,100 | 2,200 |
Proper wager: 1,601 – 27,399
Actual wager: 1,601
Verdict: preserving her cash
UTOC Rd 2 (05/02/05)
| Arthur | Pam | Eric |
| 12,100 | 12,000 | 9,400 |
Proper wager: 6,801
Alternate wager: 2,601
Actual wager: 6,699
Verdict: I’m unsure what Pam was going for here
UTOC Rd 3 (05/10/05)
| Pam | Brian | Phil |
| 14,800 | 12,600 | 11,000 |
Proper wager: 10,401
Actual wager: 10,401
Verdict: capping off a great game
Question about Dan’s first game – you capped his maximum “proper” wager as 1,200 – but the difference between his pre-Final score (8,800) and a double-up from Brian (7.200) is 1,600 (so shouldn’t that be the maximum for that range – or am I missing something else)?
Nope, just tried to blow through the math too quickly.
Side note here: I looked at everyone else’s past betting habits before we taped in January, just in case a situation like this came up. Of course you can’t recreate/anticipate all possible scenarios… but as you show here, I didn’t see anything in Pam’s past games to indicate that she might bet very conservatively. On the other hand, I had won from this position before, and I used the same kind of bet in this game. So it made my bet maybe a little more predictable, but it makes Pam’s bet that much more impressive as she went for a new kind of bet in the right situation.
In her UTOC round 2, Eric would wager a maximum of 9200 to stay above Arthur, so Pam’s wager is safe (just covering by 99 instead of 1).