The postseason format leading into the 32nd Tournament of Champions has been announced.
In a drastic cutback from the 31st ToC, fans will only get 2 weeks of Second Chance, feeding into a 2-week Champions Wildcard tournament.
This format was confirmed today on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast by Executive Producer Michael Davies.
The 2-week Champions Wildcard tournament will contain the 2 Second Chance advancees with 13 other non-qualifiers for the Tournament, playing in a “traditional” 15-player format with wild cards with the winner taking the last spot in the Tournament of Champions. How those 13 players will get selected was not announced.
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The tournament cut-off will also be the December 6 episode, which is scheduled to tape October 2.
In terms of the schedule for the Tournament, while one was not officially announced, I would still expect the postseason to begin in very late December (or early January), with 3-4 weeks of regular play feeding into the 33rd Tournament of Champions between the cutoff and the start of postseason play.
Additionally, due to the fact that the show has also said it is aiming for 10-11 weeks of postseason play, it can be extrapolated further that we will be seeing a 27-player Tournament of Champions and a 27-player Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament, both of which will feed players in to Season 3 of Jeopardy! Masters.
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Editorially, I fully expect to see hypocrisy from some corners of the Internet, who will have conveniently forgotten about how they spent too many minutes upset at the previous postseason format where all champions got to play again in Champions Wildcard when their personal favorite player does not get selected. I also expect that this is the general postseason format that we’ll see going forward. This format should also appease those who hope for more regular play, as this will mean we see somewhere around 175 to 180 regular play games a season. On a personal note, I am happy to see wild cards returning, especially as it will result in a potential uptick in interest in some of my statistical analysis.
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Thanks for the info Andy! Could you explain a “traditional” 15 player format? Since I’ve been watching from February 2022 to now, I have yet to see that format.
As a side note, I was at today’s morning tapings of 2 shows and they will be seen on November 4th and 5th. The latter being Election Night here in the States. That might be shown in the middle of the night here in LA.
“Traditional” format: 15 players. Five quarterfinal games. The five winners advance to the semifinals, along with the four highest scoring non-winners. (Players who haven’t yet played are sequestered in the green room, so they have no idea what prior non-winners have scored in their games.)
Three single-elimination semifinals, and a two-game, total-point final.
Matt!
Thanks so much for the explanation!!
Thank you so much for that response Matt! 🙂
In a traditional format, there’s fifteen players split up into five quarterfinals. Each episode will produce one winner, much like tournaments nowadays, and the five winners move onto the semifinals.
Much unlike tournaments nowadays, though, losing doesn’t mean the player is out. Each player’s non-winning score is tracked through the entire quarterfinal round, and at the end of the quarterfinal round, the four non-winners with the highest scores also move onto the semifinals.
Then, the semifinals and finals are exactly the same as they are now 🙂
MasterDoge!
Thanks so much for the explanation!!
And a big thank you to you as well MasterDoge! 😉 were you at any tapings today by chance?
In all the years a “Second chance” tournament has been played, has the critieria for which those selected to play ever been revealed?
I presume the 13 players in the “Champions Wild Card” tournment will the 13 highest money winners who didn’t automatically qualify for the “Tournament of Champions.”
The criteria for Second Chance is deliberately subjective as there is no singular objective criteria to determine who “deserves” a second chance. (There are many different ways and to say that one way is more deserving than another might affect how people choose to play the game.)
I would not guarantee “13 highest money winners who didn’t automatically qualify”; the show did mention that it might choose some other gameplay-type criteria.
I see that according to your reply Jeopardy, in choosing players for Champions Wild Card, is reserving the option to forgo objective criteria, and, select “fan favorites” who might give us entertaining, as well as (hopefully) competitive ones.
I have no objections, I just want to be entertained by informed people playing a great game show.
The other thing is is that we don’t know how many more 3,4 or 5+ time champions Jeopardy! might have between now and the end of December.
I have no idea whether this was a deliberate choice or purely coincidental, but all Second Chance players from season 39 had two statistics in common: 1) at least $10,000 in Coryat, and 2) at least 16 correct responses over the course of their game (inclusive of Final Jeopardy!). These statistics do track with the producers’ statements that they look at the # of correct responses first when gauging how well someone played. FWIW, there were many season 39 players who hit these baselines but were not selected for Second Chance. And a huge caveat: these same baselines did not apply to all Second Chance players selected from seasons 37 and 38. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see if these baselines hold.
With Jeopardy!’s Champions Wildcard tournament going to the traditional 15-player format (mercifully) does that mean that Jeopardy!’s Tournament of Champions and Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament will be going back to that traditional 15-player format keeping the “First to win 3” Finals in the TofC and “First to win 2” Finals in the JIT?
The show has said that the only tournament with the old Trebek format will be Champions Wildcard.