Making Jeopardy! Predictions: A Methodology

Current Champion

Nikolas Polsinelli, career statistics:
44 correct, 6 incorrect
2/2 on rebound attempts (on 5 rebound opportunities)
35.96% in first on buzzer (41/114)
4/5 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $10,600)
1/2 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $17,500

To win:
3 games: 64.111%
4: 41.102%
5: 26.351%
6: 16.894%
7: 10.831%
Avg. streak: 3.786 games.
(Click Here for Methodology)

Upcoming Encore Presentations

September 26-27: S42 E174 (May 7, 2026)
October 3-4: S42 E175 (May 8, 2026)
October 10-11: S42 E176 (May 11, 2026)
(Source: Bell Fibe TV program guide)

All Time Winnings

All Time Jeopardy! Winnings, Regular Play Only:

1. Ken Jennings $2,520,700
2. James Holzhauer $2,462,216
3. Matt Amodio $1,518,601
4. Amy Schneider $1,382,800
5. Jamie Ding $882,605
6. Cris Pannullo $748,286
7. Mattea Roach $560,983
8. Jason Zuffranieri $532,496
9. Scott Riccardi $455,000
10. David Madden $430,400
11. Julia Collins $428,100
12. Matt Jackson $411,612
13. Austin Rogers $411,000
14. Ray Lalonde $386,400
15. Harrison Whitaker $373,999
16. Adriana Harmeyer $349,600
17. Caleb Groen $346,968
18. Adam Remsen $306,415
19. Ryan Long $299,400
20. Arthur Chu $297,200

All Time Jeopardy! Winnings, Including Tournaments (and Consolation Prizes):

1. Brad Rutter $4,968,436
2. Ken Jennings $4,372,700
3. James Holzhauer $3,614,216
4. Matt Amodio $1,964,601
5. Amy Schneider $1,864,800
6. Yogesh Raut $1,598,403
7. Victoria Groce $1,023,801
8. Mattea Roach $897,983
9. Jamie Ding $885,605
10. David Madden $785,733
11. Cris Pannullo $754,286
12. Roger Craig $706,200
13. Andrew He $684,365
14. Larissa Kelly $671,930
15. Matt Jackson $623,612
16. Jason Zuffranieri $549,496
17. Paolo Pasco $548,717
18. Scott Riccardi $533,000
19. Jerome Vered $499,102
20. Julia Collins $495,767
21. Austin Rogers $493,000
22. Juveria Zaheer $491,000
23. Ben Ingram $449,201
24. Adriana Harmeyer $446,600
25. Buzzy Cohen $441,603

Note: This methodology has been updated.

So, you’ve probably seen recently – either here on the sidebar, or on Twitter – my quoting the chances a player has of winning a certain number of games on the show.

As a note: this article will rely heavily on discussion of a Coryat score. Here’s the definition, via J! Archive:

In other words: give a player credit (or neg) for the clue value of any clue they get correct (or incorrect). Negs on Daily Doubles don’t count as they are considered a “forced guess”. Coryat scoring tracks “unforced errors”, not “forced ones”.

This project started out when I asked myself “I wonder what someone’s chances of winning a game was, given their specific Coryat score?”

For this, I took a look at every single regular-play game in J! Archive from October 4, 2004 through to March 30, 2016 – a period of over 2,000 games. I then sorted each game’s Coryat scores into “winning” and “non-winning” and took the winning percentage at each level.

Why October 4, 2004? For the beginning of Season 21’s tapings, Jeopardy! realized that their challengers might not be getting enough rehearsal time on the buzzer; Ken Jennings’ streak made this very apparent. October 4, 2004 was the first episode of the “extra rehearsal time”.

The below graph has the plot of Coryat vs winning percentage, along with the trend line that fits the data.

Figure 1: Winning percentages for each Coryat score in regular play games from October 4, 2004 – March 30, 2016

That trend line thus gives us a corresponding win percentage for each Coryat score.

To account for certain improbable occurrences that have yet to actually happen, any Coryat lower than $3,200 is assigned a 1% chance of winning, and a Coryat higher than $28,000 is assigned a 99% chance of winning.)

I’ll be updating my data and making small adjustments to the trend line about four times a season.

To run my simulations, I have a Python script to generate 1,000,000 normally distributed Coryats (given the mean and standard deviation of the player’s Coryats thus far) and from there, generate the mean winning percentage to determine both the player’s chances of winning their next game as well as a predicted length of their streak (in this case, r / (1 – r), where r is a player’s chances of winning one game).

For runs that have yet to reach 5 games, I will be adding an extra game, with the mean Coryat, into the calculation, to account for the possible case that a player had an outlying performance.