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Making Jeopardy! Predictions: An Updated Methodology

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Current Champion

Matthew Riggle, career statistics:
47 correct, 6 incorrect
1/1 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
41.23% in first on buzzer (47/114)
3/3 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $7,600)
1/2 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $21,300

To win:
3 games: 68.027%
4: 46.277%
5: 31.481%
6: 21.415%
7: 14.568%
Avg. streak: 4.128 games.
(Next game: September 14)
(Click Here for Methodology)

Jeopardy! Masters Standings

(through 4 episodes)

1) Victoria Groce, 9 points, 3 wins, 109 correct responses, $76,800 Coryat Score, $72,600 earned before Final Jeopardy
2) Yogesh Raut, 8 points, 2 wins, 75 correct responses, $52,200 Coryat Score, $53,400 earned before Final Jeopardy
3) Paolo Pasco, 6 points, 1 win, 61 correct responses, $39,200 Coryat Score, $46,700 earned before Final Jeopardy
4) Long Nguyen, 5 points, 1 win, 54 correct responses, $36,600 Coryat Score, $41,200 earned before Final Jeopardy
5) Juveria Zaheer, 3 points, 1 win, 53 correct responses, $40,000 Coryat Score, $44,800 earned before Final Jeopardy
6) Andrew He, 1 point, 0 wins, 50 correct responses, $22,400 Coryat Score, $18,600 earned before Final Jeopardy

Upcoming Encore Presentations

September 1: S42 E112 (February 10, 2026)
September 2: S42 E113 (February 11, 2026)
September 3: S42 E114 (February 12, 2026)
September 4: S42 E115 (February 13, 2026)
September 5-6: S41 E144 (March 27, 2025)
September 7: S42 E116 (February 16, 2026)
September 8: S42 E117 (February 17, 2026)
September 9: S42 E118 (February 18, 2026)
September 10: S42 E119 (February 19, 2026)
September 11: S42 E120 (February 20, 2026)
September 12-13: S41 E145 (March 28, 2025)
(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 $1,098,403
7. Mattea Roach $897,983
8. Jamie Ding $885,605
9. David Madden $785,733
10. Victoria Groce $773,801
11. Cris Pannullo $754,286
12. Roger Craig $706,200
13. Larissa Kelly $671,930
14. Matt Jackson $623,612
15. Jason Zuffranieri $549,496
16. Andrew He $534,365
17. Scott Riccardi $533,000
18. Jerome Vered $499,102
19. Julia Collins $495,767
20. Austin Rogers $493,000
21. Ben Ingram $449,201
22. Paolo Pasco $448,717
23. Adriana Harmeyer $446,600
24. Buzzy Cohen $441,603
25. Juveria Zaheer $441,000

It’s time for a change.

Since 2016, I have been predicting how long Jeopardy! champion’s runs will last, using a Coryat score and its correlation between that and winning percentage.

However, the play styles of Austin Rogers and James Holzhauer have caused me to update and revisit the model. For one, Austin had a slightly-above-average Coryat, but he was able to harness Daily Doubles to larger scores going into Final Jeopardy! than would otherwise be predicted by the model. Thus, I have created Version 2, which takes into account score going into Final Jeopardy as opposed to Coryat score:

Figure 1: The correlation between pre-Final Jeopardy! score and win percentage (October 4, 2004 – April 19, 2019.)
Figure 1: The correlation between pre-Final Jeopardy! score and win percentage (October 4, 2004 – April 19, 2019.)

As with Version 1, the trend line (now a logistic sigmoid curve) corresponds to a percentage chance of winning the game.

As with Version 1, to run my simulations, I will still use a Python script to generate 1,000,000 normally distributed scores (given the mean and standard deviation of the player’s scores going into Final Jeopardy 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 11 games, the model will adjust the standard deviation when generating scores. A 1-game champion will use the standard deviation of a player score ($6,509); A 2-game champion will use a weighted average of 10% their standard deviation and 90% the population standard deviation (the $6,509), and so on through to the 11th game.

Hopefully this update to the model will allow for even better accuracy going forward, especially when it comes to outlying data. The new model will be used starting with the April 22, 2019 game.


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