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The Man Who Knew Too Much
theodp writes "For thrilling competition, Slate says the Tour de France pales next to the 25-game reign of Jeopardy! supercontestant Ken Jennings. The 30-year-old software engineer has won a total of $788,960, beating the previous record-holder by a margin of over $600,000. Watching KenJen play is like witnessing any great athlete in top form: He's the Michael Jordan of trivia, the Seabiscuit of geekdom, and his antics have once again made Jeopardy! required viewing. (Update: 26 wins and $828,960: 'When Jennings ran the Marvel comics category during the second round, host Alex Trebek asked: Have you done anything besides read comics? It pays to be a nerd, Jennings responded.')"
The terms used in psychology are 'fluid intelligence' and 'crystallized intelligence'
Fluid Intelligence is "a natural ability which is not dependant on acquired knowledge" Crystallized Intelligence is "ability dependent on acquired knowledge"
http://boards.sonypictures.com/boards/forumdisplay .php?s=50aa46369dcf5a3280b1ed37548dfe79&forumid=34
These are the actual message boards for Jeopardy and Ken Jennings posts there frequently on such topics. They also have running tallies of his scores and precantages. Kinda cool information if you like that kind of stuff. Also I have watched most of Ken's game and this guy is amazing with the amount of trivia he knows.
According to this story and countless others, the tapings occurred in February. The next tapings are scheduled for August.
If Ken didn't lose by the end of his season, then he could be back for those tapings. I assume the current season will continue airing even during these tapings, and while Jeopardy has been extremely good at keeping the length of the streak under wraps, I imagine if KJ shows up in August, we're going to hear about it from somebody.
Basicially this is it in a nutshell.
-Michael Larson at the time was unemployed. He became obsessed with game shows thinking that he could get on one and outsmart the system to win on it.
-He starting watching Press your luck and realized that the pattern was psudorandom and completely reversed engenerred the Random pattern, and even perfected a button pressing method to be as precise as possible
-Mike applied to be a contestant on Press your luck, and eventually got the green light to get on. CBS Producers commented that his demeanor was different from other contestants and they were suspicious of him, but couldn't find anything wrong so he got the go ahead.
-Once on the show, In the beginning, he acted just like any other contestant, and went through the question and answer session pretty unenentfully.
-the spin round, was where it got interesting. The First thing Mike did was get a whammy. It's believed that he did it on purpose to get a feel of the button to the board interaction and also not to look like he was blantently hacking the board.
-after the first whammy, it was all big bucks from there. he would almost always either hit big bucks or another space on the "wheel" that he knew would never popup a whammy. The whole time doing it he was in some sort of trancelike state.
-The second Q&A Session goes underway, already he's won a good amount of money but CBS hasn't seen anything yet. CBS Producers are going nuts in the back, more than aware that he's got the system beat from his first round performance. Peter Tomarken is basicially shocked at this point.
-Second round comes around. Mike basicially spins and never stops, collecting even more spins and more money. it gets to the point that Peter is beyond stunned now and doesn't know how to react to this, CBS is going insane in the back, and the episode is running way out of bounds for it's time.
-Mike breaks the $100,000 barrier. at this point he's won more money than was not only thought possible, but has broke the daytime money winnings record.
-finally, he gets frightened that he's going to screw up and get a whammy, so he passes the spins.
-eventually, some spins he has to take get passed to him. Wins Even more money. until basicially all the spins are gone.
-in the end, CBS "retired" him as champion, and originally would not pay him for cheating. eventually they paid him when their lawyers advised thm that they would lose because their wheel was too predictive. They aired te show as a two day show, because it was so long, they increased the patterns, and added more whammy slots where there originally were none.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Personally I think he will just decide to walk once he hits $1000000.
Ken has himself said (on the 23rd show I think it was; where a the lady got ~$1800 taken away retrospectivelly for saying 'Olympics' instead of 'Summer Olympics' and didn't end up with enough $$ to challenge him) that his goal is to be invited to become a writer for Jeopardy. All Jeopardy writers are previous contestants (according to Trebek).
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
They have a light around the contest board. You can't ring in until the light goes on (otherwise, you have a 2 second lockout).
Speaking from experience
red floyd -- former Jeopardy! contestant
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet (apparantly). Ken Jennings has a webpage! I'm sorry to report to the /. crowd that it was designed in MS Word. But it seems to be more of a personal checklist (and a window into how he got so much "useless" knowledge) than a page he intended for other people to see.
And as far as the record goes, an important factor is that until recently after 5 wins a champion was retired, and would only come back for a tournament of champions. So he's the first "champion" to be given this opportunity.
Which is not to imply that he's not preternaturally smart, just that there's more to it than just trivia capacity.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.