Jeopardy Strategy, Part 2

I have also wondered about the betting strategy on Daily Doubles.  Once I saw a game with a dominant contestant, i.e. he was answering most of the questions (or is it providing questions to most of the answers?)  When he landed on Daily Doubles, instead of betting a modest amount (which is common) he would go ahead and "make it a true Daily Double," i.e. he would bet everything.  At first I was shocked by his strategy, but after thinking about it it made sense. (He won the game, even though he missed a Daily Double.  He was just a lot better than his challengers.)

After thinking about it, if a player has a large lead, it may not be wise to make such a large bet on a daily double.  It actually decreases one's chances of winning to do that.  By winning, they are allowed to play on the next show.  In the olden days where there was a five-show limit, however, it was justifiable for a contestant to bet big in order to maximize his or her earnings.

For a player who doesn't have a large lead, he or she should think about betting bigger.  For example, digging around on Youtube led to this clip.  By going for a true Daily Double and making it, this contestant put himself in a great position to win: he more or less assured himself of leading going into Final Jeopardy! and gave himself a great chance of either being out of reach (meaning he won) or having the 2/3 rule (see my previous post on Jeopardy!).  If he had missed a modest Daily Double, there wasn't enough time to reasonably climb into first place.  If he had made a modest Daily Double and inched into the lead, his lead would have been very shaky  The other contestants could reasonably catch him by answering just one more $2000 question.  From that point of view, what he did looks smart.

By contrast, in a recent episode I watched, a trailing contestant landed on a Daily Double near the end of Double Jeopardy!.  She was hovering just over half of what the 1st place contestant had.  She made a modest wager and got the question right.  By doing that, she stayed in 2nd place.  She ended Double Jeopardy in second place.  The Final Jeopardy was a question which both her and the 1st-place player got right.  She lost the game.  In that situation, I wanted her to bet big.  If she had bet most/all of her money and got it right, she would have probably finished in first place and by correctly answering the Final Jeopardy! question she would have won.  If she had lost such a bet, she would have lost the game; she lost the game by getting it right and betting small; further, if she missed the Daily Double after betting so small, she (and the 3rd-place contestant) would have likely ended the game with less than half of the leader's total, which would have guaranteed defeat.

I think a part of the uneasiness to wager so high is that the contestants are playing for real money.  If it was all for fun, I think contestants would be more aggressive.  However, I think that even though the prize is real money, contestants should risk more so that they can win the game.  They don't get to keep their score in money if they lose the game.