And we’re off to the races. Jeopardy! Masters‘ second season premiered Wednesday night, and the studio was brimming with excitement… and a whole lotta personality.
James Holzhauer, for example, declared himself the “main event” of the tournament without any hint of jest (even when he was trailing well behind his competitors in the game). And Victoria Groce clarified that she’s still the “queen” of The Chase — no past tense references allowed, even by Ken Jennings.
Conversely, Amy Schneider was a bit more reserved as she grappled with being the one person in the competition who hadn’t technically earned their way into it (she was the producers’ pick aka the wild card for this season, which miffed some fans).
Let’s revisit all the major highlights from Games 1 and 2 of Jeopardy! Masters Season 2 from the top:
Game One
This set saw Victoria Groce, Matt Amodio, and Mattea Roach in competition with one another… and by competition, we mean Groce ran away with it, while the other two fought for that second-place prize of one match point.
In the first round, Groce had a modest lead of $5,000 to Amodio’s $3,300 and Roach’s $3,400. Roach may have actually had the lead for this round if the Daily Double went her way (alas, she did not correctly guess that “dragon boat ceremony” was the name of the Chinese festival celebrating poet Qu Yuan, who drowned in the Yangtze tributary).
For the second round, Groce barely allowed anyone to chime in as she answered question after question after question correctly, nudging her score up to $31,600, with Roach chasing (pardon the obvious pun) way behind at $7,400 and Amodio even further back at a mere $800.
Luckily for Groce, Final Jeopardy was irrelevant when it came to who’d be getting those coveted match points because only one person got it right, and it wasn’t her.
In the category “Latin Science Terms,” the clue was, “In 1694 the latest in bio-knowledge was Tournefort’s ‘Elements of Botany’ listing 698 of these, like ambrosia and chrysanthemum.” Amodio correctly guessed, “What is genus?” but bet zero (not that any sum could help him at this point), while Groce and Roach both got it wrong (guessing species and flora respectively). They both made small bets, though, leaving the final scores like so:
Victoria Groce: $29,867
Mattea Roach: $7,089
Matt Amodio: $800
Game Two
The second game featured Yogesh Raut, Amy Schneider, and James Holzhauer, who declared himself to be “the final boss of Jeopardy!” and used wingding-type font to spell out his name. He also turgidly warned his fellow contestants, “You’ve beaten the goombahs. Now you have to face Bowser.”
While Holzhauer hardly has to prove anything to anyone at this point, since he’s the third-highest earner in all of game show history, it was Raut who got the last laugh in this round.
From the start of the game, Raut routed everyone. After a missed Daily Double set Holzhauer back to zero, Raut slid away ahead in the first round with $7,800 to Schneider’s $3,400 and Holzhauer’s $3,000.
It became double domination in Double Jeopardy, as Raut found both of the Daily Doubles and made some very wise bets on both. In the first, he bet all $9,400 of his winnings and correctly guessed that John Updike was the author responsible for the fictional town of Eastwick, RI. Then, he bet just $5 of his inevitable runaway sum on the second Daily Double, which was smart because he did not get it right (in the category “Kernal of the Clue” they had to tie a 1954 Sinatra song to the clue, “It’s a bad idea to leave a frozen embryo unguarded, would be my major takeaway” – the answer being a head-scratching, “Young at Heart”). Raut finished round two with $26,395, while Holzhauer chewed on his “final boss” declaration words a little bit with $10,200, and Schneider trailed with $7,000.
At that, it was yet another runaway, and Final Jeopardy was both unnecessary and of low point value (again). Interestingly, they all got it right … just with three different spellings of the answer! In the category “World Heritage Sites,” the clue was, “This entire world capital is a world heritage site “linked to the history of the military & charitable order of St. John of Jerusalem.”
They all three guessed “Valletta” (minus a couple of consonants), but it didn’t matter. The only person to bet was Holzhauer, who added $3,010 to his score to ensure his second place in the case that Schneider had decided to bet.
Yogesh Raut: $26,395
James Holzhauer: $13,210
Amy Schneider: $7,000
Leaderboard
- 1st – Victoria Groce – 3
- 2nd – Yogesh Raut – 3*
- 3rd – James Holzhauer – 1
- 4th – Mattea Roach – 1
- 5th – Matt Amodio – 0
- 6th – Amy Schneider – 0
*Tiebreaker is the number of correct responses.
On a final note, Schneider did address the elephant in the room with a rather lengthy speech, commenting on her selection as the sixth contestant by saying, ” I came into the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament not even thinking about Masters because I just came away disappointed with myself last year at Masters, and I was just there to get my confidence back. But then I didn’t win, and I didn’t qualify to get into this. And I do think I belong here, and I’m grateful for the opportunity and excited to be here. But it also feels like it gives me a little bit something more to prove, that I didn’t earn my way back in the same way that the other contestants did.”
Jeopardy! Masters, Episode 2 airs May 6, 8/7c, ABC