We’re nearly at the end of Season 40—here are my weekly thoughts for this week!
The Season 40 Encore Presentations Schedule
Some cable systems are beginning to show the list of encore presentations this summer. Judging by those sources, and what Sarah said this week on Inside Jeopardy, it appears as though the 30 encore presentations this summer will be the Tournament of Champions, starting with quarterfinal #4, followed by the three-week entirety of the Jeopardy Invitational Tournament. These will be episodes 9048–9077, the ones that aired between February 28 and April 9.
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Something To Keep In Mind Regarding The 2025 Postseason
Thus far, in Season 40, there have been 68 regular-play games. Including Lucas Partridge, who carried over from Season 39, there have been 22 players that have potentially qualified for some sort of postseason return (that being either Champions Wildcard or the Tournament of Champions.) Normally, through this much regular play, there would be 36—this number includes both Lucas Partridge as well as Lisa Ann Walter. (Historically, an average champion wins their next game 50% of the time—from this it can be extrapolated mathematically that the total number of champions is half the number of games played.)
The fact that our current numbers are 14 lower than expected is actually a very good thing for those players angling for a spot in Champions Wildcard—the fewer total champions, the more champions that will be able to have another televised game. (The show has already made it clear on Inside Jeopardy that they intend for this postseason cycle to be signficantly shorter than the last; I would expect that the postseason will be no longer than 53 episodes—and that would include Second Chance, Champions Wildcard, Tournament of Champions, and potentially even the second JIT.
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I Really Hope A Streaming Service Steps Up
Honestly, the best solution, in my opinion, would be for a streaming service to step up and bankroll the production of preliminary rounds for both Champions Wildcard and the JIT. This would allow for more regular play while also giving those who like the full postseason structure to have those episodes.
Hopefully, Amazon Prime is happy enough with the new Pop Culture Jeopardy that it might be willing to expand further into the Jeop-iverse.
Just 10 Episodes Left This Season…
Have a great week, everyone!
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Regarding the encore presentations, these are excellent choices by the show. They also obviate the problem introduced last year during the last week of the hiatus and the first week of Season 40 — confusion about whether new episodes have resumed or not. In 2024, we’ll get a clean break between the tournament reruns and the new regular games, as was the case in the Harry Friedman era.
As far as the number of champs and the average streak of each: yes, the former is down and the latter is up this season. Right now, bringing in Lucas Partridge’s three wins at the end of last season, that average length is 3.380 games; higher than Season 39’s 2.474, but lower than the 3.823 from Season 38. For the entire period post-James Holzhauer, that average is 2.440 games; that compares to 1.949 for the period from the elimination of ties after the 2014 Tournament of Champions until Holzhauer’s run began. I presume that your time horizon for “historically” is from 2004-10-04 to the present, but I wonder if it might be worthwhile to consider others.
As an aside — with the postseason now being a part of the calendar, the need and/or desire to manage the number of champions (and thus the number of qualifiers into it) is a further point in favor of the elimination of ties, in addition to those you’ve made over the years about logistics (both travel and show website-related) and collusion potential.
Andy!
Thanks for the informed and informative comments.