Welcome to Masters Breakdown #7, where I talk about the first two semifinal games!
Game 1: Stratton’s Dilemma—And Victoria’s Final Jeopardy Bet
As I explained in the recap to Game #1, Victoria was in what is known as Stratton’s Dilemma—she couldn’t both cover James in third place and stay ahead of Yogesh if both Victoria and Yogesh missed Final.
(In case you’ve forgotten, the scores going into Final Jeopardy were Yogesh 24,400 Victoria 18,000 James 13,000).
Victoria elected to make the cover bet against James, betting 8,001, falling to third place with 9,999. While Victoria’s bet is one way of resolving Stratton’s Dilemma, I would posit that it is best resolved by looking at what third place is most likely to do. In this case, because James had occasion to bet small (less than 200, staying ahead of Yogesh if Yogesh gets Final Jeopardy incorrect), I would say that it might have been better to bet 4,799 or less in order to stay ahead of James’s range of bets.
(On the flip side, had James’s score been between 11,601 and 12,798 instead of the 13,000 that he was at, the best play for Victoria would have been to make the cover bet—because James would have had good reason to go all in himself, having to be correct to have any chance of winning.)
It’s certainly a good “what if?” situation to analyze.
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Game 2: Is Amy Schneider In Trouble?
As Amy Schneider said on Twitter overnight Friday, “Listen, I cannot recommend ending a game of Jeopardy in the red. It feels awful! But if you insist on doing it anyway, I would strongly encourage you to win, say, 40 or 50 games of Jeopardy first? Maybe throw in a ToC win if you can? That really helps take the edge off.” Obviously, Amy had her worst performance ever—by far—in Game 2 of the semifinals. But is she in trouble?
Certainly, her path to the finals is a difficult one: generally, she’ll need at least a point in Game 3 to have any chances of advancing. But—especially if Victoria’s struggles in Final Jeopardy continue—it’s certainly within the realm of possibility!
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Previewing Game 3
Here’s how the prediction model breaks down Game 3:
| Player | Win % | Second % | Third % |
| Victoria Groce (11-4) | 32.933% | 34.955% | 32.112% |
| James Holzhauer (48-10) | 42.756% | 28.114% | 29.130% |
| Amy Schneider (48-19) | 24.311% | 36.931% | 38.758% |
The prediction model is still generally bullish on James—mostly because James is 77% lifetime in Final Jeopardy, compared to just 47% for Victoria. It would not surprise me to see another situation where Victoria misses Final Jeopardy; I hope that the 61st clue is not going to be her Achilles heel during this event. Meanwhile, as I said above, Amy is very likely going to need at least a point to have any chance whatsoever of advancing. Things will definitely be very interesting on Monday!
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From what I can gather…
The point standings are 3 for Victoria, 1 for James, and 0 for Amy. A second-place finish from James would force Amy to win the last game to have any hope of displacing him, and a win from James would make the fourth semifinal basically moot, unless Amy can somehow overtake him on the correct response tiebreaker.
While James will likely just stick to “make the cover bet” if he’s leading going into Final, I wonder if he’ll start doing what Amy did in the closing stages of the 2022 ToC – that being, deliberately bet small from the lead in order to keep Amy from sneaking in, since an Amy win would not be good for his chances Realistically, he likely will not do this, but it’s still something that came to mind.
I’ll go through the various Game 1 scenarios and how they set up Game 2.
Victoria-James-Amy: Amy needs to win Game 2 to advance, which would eliminate James.
Victoria-Amy-James: Whoever of James and Amy finishes lower in Game 2 will be eliminated.
James-Victoria-Amy: Amy is eliminated before Game 2 even starts.
James-Amy-Victoria: Amy needs to win Game 2 to advance, which would eliminate Victoria.
Amy-James-Victoria: James needs to win to advance. If he did, Amy would advance by placing second in Game 2 (eliminating Victoria); if Yogesh placed second, fewer correct responses between Victoria and Amy is eliminated.
Amy-Victoria-James: James needs to win to advance. If he did, Amy would be eliminated by placing third. If Amy placed second, you’d have all four players tied with four match points and one win, so the player with the fewest correct responses would be eliminated. (This is the only possible scenario that could eliminate Yogesh, and even that’s very unlikely.)
My thanks to Andy, MasterDoge, and Matt Carberry for all these analyses.
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Commenting a day late to add – I believe an argument can be made for Victoria going both ways in Stratton’s Dilemma.
On one hand, James’ strategic knowledge is amongst the strongest the show has ever seen. Knowing this, and the situation, he’s almost guaranteed to make a small bet. So this means that Victoria’s best play would be the small bet herself. At least, that’s how it is on paper.
On the other hand, James has deliberately (I think it’s deliberate, anyway) overbet/underbet Final a couple of times in Masters (semifinal #2 last year comes to mind), probably with the goal of making it more difficult to bet against him. So he could sense that Victoria might bet small, which would, in theory, encourage him to go against the strategically optimal wager and bet anything from 202 to 12,999. In this instance, a bet of 4,799 wouldn’t work for Victoria, but a bet of 8,001 would. Not only would James going unnecessarily large cause that, but it could also push someone in the finals into a full cover bet if they’re leading him going into the second Final Jeopardy. That’s exactly what happened last year, and it worked out perfectly for James.
Of course, this matchup has already happened and nothing said can change the outcome, but it’s still fun to mull over.