Final Jeopardy! wagering analysis:
Monday, May 2, 2016 (Teachers QF #1)
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Wild cards are back – how will this year’s batch of Teachers Tournament competitors navigate them?
They might come into play tonight…
|
Lauren Gilmore |
Dianne Lee |
Chris Tempro |
| 9,200 | 2,600 | 12,400 |
…with this Final Jeopardy! category:
| WORD ORIGINS |
Now, what do you think the wild-card cutoff will be? I ran four simulations and got four wildly different results: $15,700, $10,600, $11,800, and $4,100.
My guess is $10,600; the meta-cutoff over the past five tournaments is $11,700. More on all of this methodology later.
Suggested wagers
These are based on (an admittedly small amount of) data from past non-winners in Teachers Tournament quarterfinals:
| Lauren | Dianne | Chris | |
| 9,200 | 2,600 | 12,400 | |
| 20% confidence | 0 | 500 | 400 |
| 30% confidence | 0 | 500 | 400 |
| 40% confidence | 0 | 500 | 400 |
| 50% confidence | 3,600 | 2,500 | 400 |
| 60% confidence | 7,400 | 2,500 | 4,900 |
| 70% confidence | 8,900 | 2,500 | 6,001 |
| 80% confidence | 8,900 | 2,500 | 6,001 |
What actually happened
| Lauren | Dianne | Chris | |||
| 9,200 | 2,600 | 12,400 | |||
| 1,800 | 2,500 | 6,001 | |||
| 11,000 | 100 | 18,401 | |||
Chris goes for the lockout, and Lauren plays it safe. We’ll see if her total is good enough for a wild card later this week; right now she looks good against historical numbers.
Quarterfinal winners:
- Chris Tempro
Wild-card race:
- Lauren Gilmore – 11,000 (74%)
- Dianne Lee – 100 (<1%)
Percentage represents probability of advancing based on past Teachers Tournament data.
The Final Jeopardy! clue
| WORD ORIGINS |
| FROM THE GREEK FOR “ALL VIEWS”, THIS WORD WAS FIRST USED TO DESCRIBE A LARGE 1787 PAINTING OF EDINBURGH BY ARTIST ROBERT BARKER |
[spoiler]What is panorama?[/spoiler]
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I think each day for this tournament I’ll post what I would’ve done from each player’s position:
Chris – If he likes the category go for the lockout – if not then bet 399 or less in case Lauren makes a “small” wager as described below.
Lauren – I see three options – smallest one is the usual 2/3 wager of no more than 2,800 to beat Chris if he wagers to cover, medium one is 3,601 to 4,000* to cover Chris’s “small” wager while still keeping Dianne at bay, large one is to go for it all or almost all for an almost guaranteed advance if right.
Dianne – Pretty much no choice but to put most or all of it on line unless the category is really not her cup of tea (regardless the odds are slim).
*Given the rule for breaking wildcard ties, and that a score on the downside with that won’t be an automatic win (unless Chris makes a really bad wager), exactly 4,000 is acceptable.
Another point about this game – normally the “weak form” of Shore’s Conjecture shouldn’t have any effect on 1st and 2nd’s wager, but in a QF like this one it could. In this game, Lauren could wager the maximum that she could while keeping Dianne locked out (in a regular game if she didn’t want to follow the 2/3 rule then she should just bet it all, but since there is the race for the wildcards Lauren has that middle range I described in my last post).