Yesterday completely got away from me as I am trying to take care of a number of things before I leave on my trip. We always watch Jeopardy and before the show started, Hubby said a rumor was going around that the reigning, record-breaking champ would be beaten. I’m not sure who leaked the news, but it validates the concept of, “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”. There are things that are difficult to keep to oneself.

Anyway, if there happens to be someone who didn’t know, the guy as champ had won for 30+ days, racking up more than $2 million. He was short of beating the highest winning record by $60,000; however, he achieved his amount in half the time of the record holder and he broke the record at least once of the highest single day amount. The guy created quite a controversy because he is a professional sports gambler. He also has an incredible body of knowledge and made few errors. He knew some really obscure things. He bet aggressively and often hit all the “doubles”. That was his actual undoing last night as he got the first “double” so early in the game, he couldn’t bet much extra. His female opponent got both in Double Jeopardy and answered them correctly. Both opponents basically matched his pattern of going after the high dollar clues first and in the entire game, there was only one wrong answer. That is not something you see often.

Quite simply, he usually outplayed his opponents by a factor of about 10:1. You had to feel a bit sorry for people who finally get their shot at Jeopardy and came up against someone like him. One of his habits was to bet odd numbers for final jeopardy, and Alex of course asked about that after several days. Each number he bet was done to add to his total to give an ending number that had some personal significance to him. It will be interesting to see if the new champ continues to play in this pattern or if she will follow the more traditional method of going through the clues without deliberately seeking out the “doubles”.