James Holzhauer has won more than $2 million on the Jeopardy! game show.The Canadian Press
James Holzhauer, the Jeopardy! contestant currently on a 27-game victory streak, passed $2 million in winnings in the episode that aired on Friday. Holzhauer is still about $455,000 behind Ken Jennings, who won $2.5 million during his record streak of 74 victories in 2004.
But if Holzhauer, a 34-year-old professional gambler in Las Vegas, continues his current streak, he’ll close that gap quickly.
(The all-time top earner, including the “Tournament of Champions” games when previous winners compete against one another, is Brad Rutter, at $4.7 million. Including those games, Jennings has won $3.4 million.)
Jennings averaged around $34,000 per episode, but Holzhauer is more than doubling that pace, pulling in an average of about $76,500.
His strategy bucks Jeopardy! play tradition: He starts at the bottom of the board going for the high dollar clues, then searches for the Daily Doubles, instead of starting at the top of a category and working down. He is also very fast with the buzzer, often leaving his competitors stunned. By the time he gets to Final Jeopardy, he has almost always put the game out of reach.
If he continues to win at his current rate, Holzhauer would surpass Jennings’ dollar total in six more episodes, or in less than half the time it took Jennings to reach that amount.
If Holzhauer wins as many games as Jennings did — he’d have to win 47 more — and continues to win at his current rate, he would amass more than $5.6 million.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
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