LOS ANGELES — New Jeopardy champion Alex Jacob said his experience as a professional poker player helped guide his approach, including the heart-stopping big bets that he placed on the show’s “daily double” categories that allow contestants to risk all their potential earnings.
“The natural tendency ... is you don’t want your score to go down to zero or end up in the negative. People think of negative outcomes and it causes them to play a bit more conservatively,” Jacob said.
But poker games taught him that “when you have a big edge, when the probability is in your favour, you want to bet as much as you possibly can,” he said.
Jacob, a currency trader from Chicago, won the $250,000 top prize on the syndicated TV show’s Tournament of Champions finale that aired Friday.
Jacob’s total winnings were $399,802, including from six regular-season games. The top five Jeopardy! prize winners of all time range from Brad Rutter with $4.4 million to Dave Madden with $430,000, the show said. Ken Jennings, who has the most consecutive games won, 74, is No. 2 on the money list with $3.3 million.
Seinfeld inspires magician series
The new web series Disillusioned wants to be to magicians what Seinfeld was to the life of the standup comic.
Disillusioned stars real-life magician Matt Marcy, who also wrote and created the series, as struggling magician Matt Matisse. He’s scrambling for jobs and recognition, dealing with other magicians who poach his material and getting abuse from hostile kids at birthday parties.
It’s directed by Shilpi Roy, creator of the web series Hipsterhood, and also stars Marianne Chambers as Matisse’s friend and assistant Chelsea and Ben Zelevansky as his lawyer buddy Todd.
Marcy wrote Disillusioned as a play in 2008 and performed it in Los Angeles. In 2014, he adapted the play into a web series.
Six episodes are online on YouTube and at DisillusionedShow.com.
— Tribune News Service
Miss America, ABC make deal
ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey — The Miss America organization has agreed to a new three-year broadcast deal with ABC.
The deal announced Monday between the organization and Dick Clark Productions will keep the pageant on ABC through 2018.
The pageant is televised from Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall each September.
The Miss America pageant began in Atlantic City in 1921 as a way to extend the summer tourist season for a week after Labour Day. It moved to Las Vegas for six years before returning to Atlantic City in 2013.
— The Associated Press
