I love it when I get to the gym around 7PM. It means I get to watch Jeopardy! (Seriously, I get excited). But this evening was extra fun, for the following reason:
Tonight, as I was watching Double Jeopardy (you know, round two, when all the dollar amounts are doubled), all three players got the same $2,000 question wrong. Trebek remarked, "No harm done. You all got it wrong and lost the same amount of money." But, sir, I object! This is not necessarily the case, especially late in the Double Jeopardy round.
Do you see why Trebek is in fact wrong that no harm was done? Let me pose a simple example. Let's say there are only two players, Sean Connery and Burt Reynolds. They have come to the very last question in Double Jeopardy, which is worth $2,000. Sean Connery has $20,000 and Burt Reynolds has $10,500. If both players answer this question incorrectly and each lose $2,000, Connery will have $18,000, and Reynolds will have $8,500.
If neither player had answered the question, Connery would have had to bet $1,001 in Final Jeopardy to guarantee that he would win, earning a total of $21,001. This is because, if Connery bet nothing, and Reynolds bet everything, Reynolds would win with $21,000. But after both players got the final $2,000 question wrong, even if Reynolds bets everything and gets Final Jeopardy right, he will only have $17,000, which is short of the $18,000 Connery has. In other words, Connery can simply bet nothing and win the game straight up.
So, Trebek, what you have claimed is in fact erroneous. Losing the $2,000 can have a different impact on each player and can in fact completely change the dynamic of the game. I think a fictionalized Sean Connery said it best.
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