The field for the 2nd Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament, set to begin immediately following the 32nd Tournament of Champions, has been unveiled. The field was announced on today’s Inside Jeopardy! podcast.
Headlining the field are two of the three players relegated from Season 2 of Jeopardy! Masters, Amy Schneider and Matt Amodio.
According to a press release from the show, the field of 27 will be competing for a first prize of $150,000 and a spot in the next Jeopardy! Masters.
This field, with players representing all eras of the show, includes Doug Molitor, who appeared on five episodes of the 1978-79 Art Fleming rebooted version of the series and then went on to reach the semifinals of the 1987 Tournament of Champions, representing Season 3 at the 1993 10th Anniversary Tournament.
Fans are also reminded that any top players not appearing on this list who weren’t a part of last year’s event are very likely not here due to their own turning down of the show’s invitation. While it obviously would be nice if we could see many of those players on the Alex Trebek Stage again, those players are certainly never obligated to participate; many of them may have decided that they want to focus on other aspects of their life, and participating in trivia competitions might just not be a priority for them right now.
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Here is the field, ordered alphabetically by first name:
- Amy Schneider, 40-game winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions winner; 5th place, 2023 Jeopardy! Masters; 4th place, 2024 Jeopardy! Masters.
- Avi Gupta, 2019 Teen Tournament winner; 2023 High School Reunion Tournament semifinalist.
- Ben Chan, 9-game winner; 2nd place, 2024 Tournament of Champions.
- Claire Sattler, 2018 Teen Tournament winner; 2023 High School Reunion Tournament semifinalist.
- Doug Molitor, appeared on 5 episodes of the 1978-79 Jeopardy! revival with Art Fleming; 4-game winner, 1987; 1987 Tournament of Champions semifinalist; 10th Anniversary Tournament semifinalist.
- Emily Sands, 3-game winner; Season 40 Champions Wildcard winner; 2024 Tournament of Champions semifinalist.
- Hannah Wilson, 8-game winner; 2024 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist.
- Jackie Kelly, 4-game winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions quarterfialist.
- Jackson Jones, 2019 Teen Tournament semifinalist; 2nd place, 2023 High School Reunion Tournament.
- Jaskaran Singh, 2022 Jeopardy! National College Championship winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist.
- John Focht, 4-game winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions semifinalist.
- Jonathan Fisher, 11-game winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist.
- Juveria Zaheer, Season 40 Second Chance & Champions Wildcard winner; 2024 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist.
- Luigi de Guzman, 5-game winner; 2024 Tournament of Champions semifinalist.
- Margaret Shelton, 4-game winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist.
- Matt Amodio, 38-game winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions semifinalist; 3rd place, 2023 Jeopardy! Masters; 6th place, 2024 Jeopardy! Masters.
- Maya Wright, 2018 Teen Tournament, 3rd place; 2023 High School Reunion Tournament, 3rd place.
- Rachael Schwartz, 4-game winner; 1994 Tournament of Champions winner; 2002 Million Dollar Masters quarterfinalist; 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions invitee; 2014 Battle of the Decades quarterfinalist.
- Ray Lalonde, 13-game winner; 2024 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist.
- Raymond Goslow, 2nd place, 2022 Jeopardy! National College Championship.
- Robin Carroll, 5-game winner; 2000 Tournament of Champions winner; 2001 International Championship winner; 2002 Million Dollar Masters quarterfinalist; member of 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions’s “Nifty Nine”; 2014 Battle of the Decades quarterfinalist.
- Roger Craig, 6-game winner; holder of the 1-day record between 2010 and 2019; 2011 Tournament of Champions winner; 2014 Battle of the Decades, 3rd place; 2019 All-Star Games, 4th place.
- Ryan Long, 16-game winner; 2022 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist.
- Seth Wilson, 12-game winner; 2017 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist; 2019 All-Star Games participant.
- Shane Whitlock, 1996 College Championship winner; 1996 Tournament of Champions semifinalist; 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist; 2014 Battle of the Decades participant.
- Skyler Hornback, 2013 Kids Week winner, winning $66,600 in a single game.
- Troy Meyer, 6-game winner; 3rd place, 2024 Tournament of Champions.
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The Unified Prediction Model, released this past weekend here at The Jeopardy! Fan, is currently indicating that Troy Meyer is the favorite to win this event and take an automatic spot in Jeopardy! Masters. The Unified Prediction Model also believes that Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, Ben Chan, and Roger Craig also have a better-than-15% chance of making the first-to-2-wins finals.
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What a great group! Lots of my favorites from recent seasons, along with people I have never seen play. Can’t wait!
Wow, a lot of thoughts regarding this field, and I’m sure there will be a good discussion to be had on it.
My first one is basically that this field seems just much weaker than last year’s. I think Michael Davies has pointed out that he wants Jeopardy! to be more like a sport, and the whole idea about relegation, etc. Well, it’s hard to see how that jibes with this field tbh. Namely, I think anyone who won a match in the prior year’s JIT should be automatically invited to the next JIT, which still leaves 18 spots for others. Of the nine semifinalists in last year’s field, a whopping ONE is back this year: Amy Schneider. I recognize that two (Victoria and Sam Buttrey) are not eligible, but what about the others? There’s no way that they were all invited, but declined imo. To name names, there are three glaring omissions that I’ll discuss more below, but also some less glaring but still surprising ones that would have made for a more competitive, more interesting tournament. They include but are not limited to: Andrew He, Alex Jacob, Brandon Blackwell, and David Madden.
But to me, the most shocking omissions are definitely Mattea Roach, Matt Jackson and Larissa Kelly.
Mattea: have to assume invited, but declined.
Matt Jackson: have to assume not invited, or…theory below.
Larissa: ditto as Matt Jackson.
The bottom line is that I think this show in some respects needs to figure out its modus operandi in terms of these tournaments, and the whole “treat it like a sport” ethos that Michael Davies claims to want to implement. Andy’s latest quantitative analysis was fantastic, and I think publishing the results for all 524 (?) players would be informative. Even before seeing his post, I thought there was one person in this entire JIT field who could hold his own, if not do better than that, in Masters. And that was Troy Meyer. I was very pleased to see that the tweaked prediction model has Troy right up there, as I suspected.
To dovetail back to Matt Jackson and Larissa’s omissions from the field, my long shot theory is that the producers might just be holding the last spot for one of them, or even one of the other formidable former champions I mentioned. I kind of doubt it. I think their default in terms of what’s seen as “fairest” will be to just give that spot to the JIT runner-up again. But I hope they would be more creative than that. Either by giving it to a Jeopardy! whiz who didn’t compete in the JIT, or if they really wanted to think outside the box, to somebody like Andrew Yaphe…never competed on the show, but is arguably the quiz bowl GOAT. There are others like him that perhaps haven’t been on the show, but would easily hold their own against Victoria, James and Yogesh.
The bottom line is this should be a fun tournament to watch, as most are. But I think Masters right now is operating on this very kind of transparent/the best get rewarded approach. This tournament feels more like the old school approach, invite back some fan favorites back, etc. The end result is that outside of Troy winning, or getting a producers pick, neither the TOC nor JIT winner will have much of a fighting chance in Masters. And with players like Matt Jackson or Larissa Kelly not even having a shot to qualify for Masters, unless either of them get the producer’s pick, it will again be a less competitive Masters tournament, and thus less entertaining TV in the process.
Andy, if there’s any shot you could release the full results of your updated prediction model(s), that would be so cool. I recognize there are probably reasons not to, but please let us know either way.
Larissa and Matt Jackson both competed in last year’s invitational.
I don’t think it’s that long of a shot that a number of past champions declined. Most of them have “day jobs” that they would have been required to use paid vacation time, or even an LoA, to step away from so that they could compete in the tournament. The tolerance for that (on the employer’s part for an LoA, on the family’s part for using vacation time to compete on Jeopardy! rather than, say, taking the kids to Disney World) only extends so far. We don’t know every competitor’s personal circumstances to know the why of their declining a spot in the JIT, but it’s fair to assume that for some of the more popular contestants that they did decline. Be it because they couldn’t get the time away from other obligations, didn’t feel their performance would equate to the time sunk into taking part, or even the idea that in winning they would be expected to commit to at least another week of filming for the Masters Tournament, their reasons for declining are theirs alone to reveal.
For example, I know that Mattea started a podcast in the last year, and they probably felt that committing to, and competing in, the JIT and potentially in the Masters Tournament, would detract from their ability to grow the podcast. Were they asked to come back? We would probably assume that they had been, but we don’t know that for certain. Do we have a right to know if they were, if they declined, and why? Absolutely not.
Where’s Mattea Roach? Does her CTV radio/ podcast prevent her from competing?
I believe Mattea decided themselves not to compete this year.