Yesterday, Sports Illustrated’s Jack Dickey made his Jeopardy! debut, and did so in impressive fashion:
That’s a hell of a one-day total! As with every champion, Dickey got to return to defend, and once you’ve won one game, the strategy changes a bit. With second and third place locked into $2,000 and $1,000 prizes respectively, making sure you win once is the key to the bigger payday, and after you’ve cashed you can be a bit more aggressive, and as Jeopardy! tends to reward aggressive play (not to mention a familiarity with the buzzer) Dickey had a slight advantage.
And that’s how it played out, with Dickey taking a lead heading into both Double Jeopardy that he’d maintain heading into Final. With a $6,000 cushion and a slightly opaque category (19th Century Classical Musicians), Dickey bet the minimum required to cover the gap, and he pulled it off:
That’s a very impressive $46,802 in two games for Dickey, and he’ll continue defending. The win wasn’t without a misstep, though:
The face when you miss a question and then realize it was about weed. pic.twitter.com/4FswtkjJOG
— Jack Dickey (@jackdickey) April 4, 2018
These shows were all taped a while ago, so it’s not quite accurate to hope he keeps the run going tomorrow. But however you want to say it, hopefully he wins the next game, too.