Jeopardy GOAT Tournament Game 2 Recap Superblog

Jeopardy GOAT Tournament Episode II: The Holzhauer Strikes Back

Don't call it a comeback, James has been doing this for months and has knotted things up with Kohl's Cash Ken Jennings. Not only that, James even called his shot before Game 2!

It's crazy how much a game of Jeopardy changes when Brainless Brad isn't snagging all of the Daily Doubles from Big Brain James and getting them wrong. I said it after Game 1 and I'll say it again. James' game is predicated on not only having a bigger brain than everyone else and getting all the answers right, but for also having bigger nuts than everyone else and betting big on himself. Taking away the Daily Doubles from him is like taking away the three point line from Steph Curry. He can still be great but it changes his entire game. But when he does get them, he puts up NUMBERS.

I'll give Ken Jennings credit for sticking around last night. He may be the oldest contestant in this tournament and on the record saying that playing Jeopardy for an hour straight wears him out. But at least Old Man Jennings COMPETED and was step-for-step with James until he got Final Jeopardy wrong. The same cannot be said for Brad, who once again a beautiful disaster on stage that nobody could look away from. He got roasted by Trebek face-to-face yet again

Got ethered by James online.

And was such a mess in the 2nd game that he didn't even qualify for Final Jeopardy.

Hit the sound bite!

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Look, I know Brad is leads the universe in all-time winnings from Jeopardy, has won multiple tournaments against Ken Jennings and other champions as recently as a few months ago, and may have had a winning streak longer than Ken or James if Jeopardy didn't cap contestants at 5 wins like they did to Brad back when he played. But this is just getting embarrassing. Watching him flop around like a fish out of water is like watching a car accident happen in slow motion every night on my TV. I can't stomach to watch it but I also can't turn away. KFC compared it to watching Rick Ankiel losing any semblance of the strike zone in the 2000 NLCS and almost hoping he'd throw a strike even though it was against the Mets because it was so tough to watch. Then taking hitting Vanilla Ice with an unchecked ricochet shot just seemed wrong.

Rob Van Winkle didn't (allegedly) get hung upside down outside a hotel window by Suge Knight after conquering the Billboard charts to have his good name slandered by a geek getting his shit pushed in during a big boy game of Jeopardy.

I don't think Brad lost his ability to answer trivia or anything like that. I just think that James changed the way the game is played with his massive bets and Brad simply cannot handle that kind of pressure like a quiz show Lois Einhorn Ray Finkle. 

Actually you know what? James hasn't changed the game. I'll let another classic quote tell the tale of what James Holzhauer has done to Jeopardy.

Now lets use one last quote to see how Brad is feeling before Game 3 tonight.

Ken has been able to hang the first few nights, but I honestly don't know if he is going to be able to survive swimming with the Holzhauer Shark for at least two more nights considering he looked like he had done a funnel of tequila and had the thin spits coming out of his ears after he bet like James one time.

I am officially worried for the health of Ken and Brad after these first two nights because I'm honestly not sure if they have the heart to hang with a professional gambler on trivia's biggest stage. I am also worried for my own health because I know my heart won't be able to handle much more of those Daily Doubles either as a fan. The one guy I'm not worried about is James, who I discovered may be an actual robot based on his Wikipedia page.

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Who the fuck doesn't have an actual birthday? Robots, that's who. I mean think about it. Is a robot's birthday when you bought the parts for them, when you started building them, when you finished building them, when you actually hit the On button for the first time or do robots actually have a birthday if they weren't actually birthed? It's almost like people trying to figure out when they started dating. Was it the first time they met, the first time they hooked up, the first time they banged, the first time they said I love you, or the first time they referred to each other as boyfriend or girlfriend. As always with James, there are more questions than answers. But my hypothesis that he is a robot built to conquer Jeopardy and give monster ratings before Trebek calls it quits gets another checkmark, especially after disposing of his two human opponents last night.

Some other thoughts from Game 2:

- Seahawks by a billion Sunday.

- Tough look for the #KenKrew after Ken was wayyyyy off with his Final Jeopardy answer of James Monroe being the other short person in the clue with Napoleon considering James Monroe was essentially a living, breathing giant back in the 1800s (shout out to James for knowing James Madison was the answer).

(For the record I realize me callling Ken a fucking idiot is completely outlandish considering I am in the running for the dumbest human in the galaxy at any given moment)

- Shout out to the Jeopardy producers for mixing in that movie quotes category so I didn't feel like a complete blockhead the entire night because I still don't understand some of the questions that were asked 12 hours later. However, the fact none of those trivia robots could finish the last three words of this quote had me feeling good about myself.

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- I didn't know Ken was a communist until tonight.

If you root for Ken, you root for communism, which actually makes you a communist. You know where it says that? The Communist Manifesto (I've never read it because I'm not a fucking communist, but I feel like it definitely says that).

- You know what else Ken is? The worst All-In guy on the stage and a straight up gimmick thief (I no longer acknowledge Brad's existence, so he doesn't factor into these rankings. Trebek's motion was as smooth as you'd expect though).

- You know what Mrs. Ken Jennings is? A rule-breaker, maybe law breaker, and potentially even a no good scallywag.

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- You know what James Holzhauer is other than a Jeopardy savant? A low-down dirty ruthless vato on social media. Forget about him gutting Brad like a fish with those tweets. Look at his Twitter avi.

And look at the only people he follows.

You know what they call someone that only follows the people he is looking to destroy? An apex predator. 

Alright, in case getting nervous every time a contestant chose a question because I was scared of hearing the Daily Double sound didn't make me a complete loser, writing an 8 zillion word blog about Game 2 of the Jeopardy GOAT Tournament certainly did the trick. Tonight may essentially be the pivotal Game 5 of the tourney because it looks like Brad may just put up a goose egg, so it's as close to Must Win as you can get for a non-elimination game.

For more thoughts about Game 2 and everything else moving forward, here are last night's post-show reactions from myself and KFC from Instagram Live: