Man Who Hacked Jeopardy

Man Who
Hacked Jeopardy

When Arthur Chu got the call saying he'd
been selected to go on Jeopardy , his first
move was thorough and decisive: He went
to Google and typed in "jeopardy strategy."
"I knew that just like in terms of my
natural knowledge base, I wasn't ready to
go on Jeopardy," Chu told me on the phone
this morning. "I wasn't like Ken Jennings
—automatically knowing everything from
the top of my head. So I had to train."
By training—that is, going through
Internet message boards and reading up on
past Jeopardy winners—Chu developed an
unorthodox strategy that has made
headlines over the last week. It's rare,
controversial, and effective—and it's
turned him into something of a grand
villain for some fans of the long-running
quiz show. Just one glance at his Twitter
feed will show you some of the ridiculous
vitriolic messages he's gotten over the past
few days, as his story—and winning streak
—started picking up steam. (He's won four
games so far, and needs one more to get
into the Tournament of Champions. His
next appearance will be televised on
February 24.)
So what makes Chu so unusual? While
most players will start from the top of each
column on the Jeopardy board and progress
sequentially as question difficulty
increases, Chu picks questions at random,
using what's called the Forrest Bounce to
hunt for the three Daily Doubles, which
are often scattered among the harder
questions in every game. Instead of
moving from the $200 question to the $400
question and so forth, Chu might bounce
between all of the $1,600 or $2,000
questions—not the kind of strategy you
often see on Jeopardy .
Chu does this for two reasons. For one, it
throws everyone off balance. "It's a lot
more mentally tiring to have to jump
around the board like that," Chu told me.
More importantly, snagging those Daily
Doubles offers him a massive statistical
advantage. Since Daily Doubles allow
players to bet up to their entire bankrolls,
just one can swing an entire Jeopardy
match—and Chu's strategy is to control
them all, even just to prevent other players
from using them.
"The only chance you have to give yourself
an edge—the only moment of power, or
choice you have in Jeopardy is choosing
the next clue if you got the last one right,"
Chu said. "So if you're unpredictable when
you do that, and keep opponents on their
toes, it's a lot more mentally tiring and
might tick off people in the audience, but
it lets you gain and keep an edge that's
very important to winning the game.