Audience Jeers Contestant Who Uses Game Theory To Win At 'Jeopardy' 412
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "USA Today reports that Arthur Chu, an insurance compliance analyst and aspiring actor, has won $102,800 in four Jeopardy! appearances using a strategy — jumping around the board instead of running categories straight down, betting odd amounts on Daily Doubles and doing a final wager to tie — that has fans calling him a 'villain' and 'smug.' It's Arthur's in-game strategy of searching for the Daily Double that has made him such a target. Typically, contestants choose a single category and progressively move from the lowest amount up to the highest, giving viewers an easy-to-understand escalation of difficulty. But Arthur has his sights solely set on finding those hidden Daily Doubles, which are usually located on the three highest-paying rungs in the categories (the category itself is random). That means, rather than building up in difficulty, he begins at the most difficult questions. Once the two most difficult questions have been taken off the board in one column, he quickly jumps to another category. It's a grating experience for the viewer, who isn't given enough to time to get in a rhythm or fully comprehend the new subject area. 'The more unpredictable you are, the more you put your opponents off-balance, the longer you can keep an initial advantage,' says Chu. 'It greatly increases your chance of winning the game if you can pull it off, and I saw no reason not to do it.' Another contra-intuitive move Chu has made is playing for a tie rather than to win in 'Final Jeopardy' because that allows you advance to the next round which is the most important thing, not the amount of money you win in one game. 'In terms of influence on the game,Arthur looks like a trendsetter of things to come,' says Eric Levenson. 'Hopefully that has more to do with his game theory than with his aggressive button-pressing.'"
They'll stop him (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:3 Day Old News (Score:5, Interesting)
USA Today reports that Arthur Chu, an insurance compliance analyst and aspiring actor, has won $102,800 in four Jeopardy! appearances using a strategy — jumping around the board instead of running categories straight down, betting odd amounts on Daily Doubles and doing a final wager to tie — that has fans calling him a 'villain' and 'smug.'
How to be called "smug" in American culture: be successful and have a method to your success that is more than a matter of opinion or belief.
The number of ignorant, envious people in America who think their articles of faith are equal to demonstrated facts is just staggering. "I have intensely strong feelings about something so it JUST HAS TO BE right!"
Re:"Looks like we got ourselves a thinker!" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Looks like we got ourselves a thinker!" (Score:2, Interesting)
Jeopardy is not about being smart. It is about memorizing a lot of stuff. The sad thing is that so few Americans seem to know the difference.
From a young age, they've been trained for at least twelve years to believe that rote memorization is the be-all and end-all of knowledge and education, and exactly the same thing as having the courage to be a thinking individual.
The pop-culture questions in Jeopardy seem to be an attempt to throw a bone to the majority who don't like thinking and only do it to the extent that it's necessary for getting what they want. They also ensure that some of the very most intelligent contestants can still be defeated, simply because those who have extensive knowledge of science or history tend not to care too much about meaningless things like how many spouses an actress has had.
This kind of reminds me of that show Battlebots (Score:5, Interesting)
On Comedy Central. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]. One of the most effective designs, the wedge was also the most painfully uninteresting to watch.
Re:He doesn't have to know the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
He's also quickly buzzing for questions that he knows he can't answer, just to deprive someone else from being able to answer them, lol. He's what the RPG community calls a "power gamer." It's actually kind of awesome to watch.
Re:He's Playing To Win (Score:4, Interesting)
Just make the Daily Doubles appear anywhere on the board then, not predominantly in the bottom. Assign all of them the same difficulty level (regardless of if it's a $200 question or a $1000 question).
As you say, the Daily Doubles are the wildcards. But instead of distributing the wildcards randomly to spice up the game, they've distributed them systematically, giving someone who picks questions based on that system an advantage (better chance to get wildcards). It's the game's design that's flawed, not the player's strategy.