A Jeopardy four-day champ’s reign is over after a big final bet didn’t pay off. The player bet so highly, he ended his fifth game with just $1.
Playing in the May 28, 2024 game was returning champ Amar Kakirde, a graduate student from Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, with a total winnings of $55,899; Abby Mann, a digital scholarship librarian from Normal, Illinois; and Steve Miller, a retired medical transcriptionist from Eugene, Oregon.
Miller staged an impressive comeback throughout the game, bringing himself back from -200 at the first break to a first-place lead heading into Final Jeopardy. This was made possible in part by two successful Daily Double answers, but just like Kakirde, Miller was foiled by a risky wager in the final round.
Mann was in third place for most of the game, but she proved to have made the best bet of the night when gambling only $3,000 on the “European Scientists” Final Jeopardy clue. The scores heading into the final were Miller with $15,400, Kakirde with $14,200, and Mann with $8,200. The clue read, “On the 2022 bicentennial of his birth, the body of this man was exhumed & DNA used to determine his genetic afflictions.”
The correct answer was, “Who was Gregor Mendel?,” but it was a triple-stumper. Kakirde nearly bet it all with his $14,199 gamble, leaving him with $1, and Miller was left with $2,399. Mann’s $3,000 bet dropped her down to $5,200, but that ended up being the winning score.
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Fans on the Jeopardy Reddit discussion board couldn’t believe Kakirde would make such an unnecessarily huge gamble when a lower bet likely would’ve left him in first.
“Hard to believe a four-time champ would make such a glaring wagering error in FJ,” one fan wrote. “If Amar had bet the standard cover of $1,201 he’d be a five-game winner and a ToC lock.”
One viewer said it was a “good match” despite Kakirde’s “unfortunate” final move. “Amar’s big over-bet cost him the win, unfortunately,” they wrote, as another fan replied, “Kinda fitting considering he won his second game because of the second-place player making a big under-bet. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.”
One reply argues that Miller’s over-bet was more noteworthy, to which the previous commenter replied, “Amar had literally no reason to bet more than to cover Abby’s double up. Steve, on the other hand, had the possibility of Amar betting big and so his big bet at least had more reason behind it.”
Miller commented on the thread as well. “Steve here. Between being a ball of nerves at the start and in the zone for much of DJ, I don’t remember much of the gameplay, so a full postmortem will have to wait until after the viewing party this evening,” he said. “I can say that I had the time of my life, and everyone involved was simply wonderful.”
What did you think of Kakirde’s big bet? Did he overshoot it for no good reason? Let us know in the comments below.
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