'Number one player': James Holzhauer ends 32-game Jeopardy! win streak

After winning 32 games in a row and earning a whopping US$2.4 million, James Holzhauer is the new “number one” Jeopardy! player of all time, according to one devoted fan.

Andy Saunders, the site administrator for The Jeopardy! Fan website, says Holzhauer has unseated Ken Jennings as the best player to have ever competed in the popular TV trivia game show.

“The game is so much different now than it was when Ken Jennings played,” Saunders told CTV News Channel on Tuesday. “The fact that James was able to play against, for the most part, much stronger opposition than Ken did, I think that James has to be the number one player of all time.”

The professional sports gambler lost to librarian Emma Boettcher on the latest episode that aired Monday night. He came $58,000 shy of Jenning’s record total winnings of $2.5 million in 2004. However, Holzhauer only played 32 games compared to Jenning’s 72-game streak.

“I think the most impressive to me is that of the 33 Final Jeopardy clues that he played, he only got one of them wrong so that’s absolutely unheard of,” Saunders said. “That’s one reason why he’s been able to make so much money is because he just hasn’t gotten those clues wrong and he’s averaging $35,000 on those bets.”

Now that Holzhauer’s reign is over, Saunders said he expects the show will still be interesting to watch because the gambler introduced a unique style of betting, which involved selecting the clues worth the most at the beginning of the game in order to bet the accumulated wealth during Double Jeopardy questions and Final Jeopardy.

“You’ll see people start to emulate the strategy and I think you’ll start to see more exciting Jeopardy games down the line,” he said.