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Audience Jeers Contestant Who Uses Game Theory To Win At 'Jeopardy'
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "USA Today reports that Arthur Chu, an insurance compliance analyst and aspiring actor, has won $102,800 in four Jeopardy! appearances using a strategy — jumping around the board instead of running categories straight down, betting odd amounts on Daily Doubles and doing a final wager to tie — that has fans calling him a 'villain' and 'smug.' It's Arthur's in-game strategy of searching for the Daily Double that has made him such a target. Typically, contestants choose a single category and progressively move from the lowest amount up to the highest, giving viewers an easy-to-understand escalation of difficulty. But Arthur has his sights solely set on finding those hidden Daily Doubles, which are usually located on the three highest-paying rungs in the categories (the category itself is random). That means, rather than building up in difficulty, he begins at the most difficult questions. Once the two most difficult questions have been taken off the board in one column, he quickly jumps to another category. It's a grating experience for the viewer, who isn't given enough to time to get in a rhythm or fully comprehend the new subject area. 'The more unpredictable you are, the more you put your opponents off-balance, the longer you can keep an initial advantage,' says Chu. 'It greatly increases your chance of winning the game if you can pull it off, and I saw no reason not to do it.' Another contra-intuitive move Chu has made is playing for a tie rather than to win in 'Final Jeopardy' because that allows you advance to the next round which is the most important thing, not the amount of money you win in one game. 'In terms of influence on the game,Arthur looks like a trendsetter of things to come,' says Eric Levenson. 'Hopefully that has more to do with his game theory than with his aggressive button-pressing.'"
He's playing to win, not necessarily to win the most money possible. He's using a strategy that prevents the other players from getting the Daily Doubles and limits their potential earnings while increasing his odds of earning enough to win.
He's not making people happy, but he's playing to win.
How is he unpredictable if he's known to jump categories after knocking off the two hardest questions? Sounds like a storm in a teacup - dumbasses pissed off because the guy isn't playing how they would.
I guess a lot of Americans hate smart people, don't they? I'd have thought it would have been far more entertaining to watch someone do something different, interesting and successful, but what do I know. I'm sure the Idiocracy version will be along any time now.
They'll stop him somehow. Playing like that will decrease ratings. And ratings are, obviously, all they care about.
I've wondered for years why more players don't play for the tie instead of the win. For one thing, doesn't that mean that the person who would have been in second place but who tied instead also gets to keep their money? Seems to me like it's kind of a dick move to not play for the tie, unless you just don't like the person for some reason. For another, wouldn't it be to your advantage to take someone with you into the next game that you already know you can beat? I mean, I'd feel safer going up against Steve from Montana who I was a few thousand ahead of going into Final Jeopardy than risk facing Watson and Ken Jennings on tomorrow's show.
Just common sense. Don't bet big on daily doubles if you don't know the subject. Hit the big numbers first. I'm always stunned when two contestants are $4k back and they keep picking the $200 questions.
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In another tidbit, Chu has been providing the voice acting for some short story clips on erfworld.com . The author there notes that Chu's disruptive and intelligent gaming is similar to the protagonist of the comic there; it's interesting to see this. A comic about a shrewd strategist who makes waves and steps on toes with his unconventional warfare and leveraging minutiae has a vociferous fan who reads it aloud for other fans before appearing on Jeopardy where he's a shrewd strategist...
And hey, that's some trivia about a contestant on a trivia show.
Jeopardy is all about intellectual competition (and money, and marketing, and Hollywierd...). So one player used his academic understanding of the science known as game theory and applied it to this game, and the viewers are unhappy? I guess the player is smarter than the viewers - hardly surprising, I guess.
by smart strategy, news at 11. We will use small words.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
USA Today reports that Arthur Chu, an insurance compliance analyst and aspiring actor, has won $102,800 in four Jeopardy! appearances using a strategy — jumping around the board instead of running categories straight down, betting odd amounts on Daily Doubles and doing a final wager to tie — that has fans calling him a 'villain' and 'smug.'
How to be called "smug" in American culture: be successful and have a method to your success that is more than a matter of opinion or belief.
The number of ignorant, envious people in America who think their articles of faith are equal to demonstrated facts is just staggering. "I have intensely strong feelings about something so it JUST HAS TO BE right!"
In the old days of Wheel of Fortune, in the last round, they had you select a certain number of consonants and a vowel, and then you had to guess the phrase. After awhile, people started always picking the most common consonants and vowels. Was there similar controversy? I don't recall. At any point, after this got boring, they changed the game to where they gave you these letters automatically and then let you guess some more. I'm not sure if they have now started always receiving the same secondary list of letters or not. Maybe eventually it will get to the point where they give you all of the characters and just see if you can manage to read it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Mr. Arthur Chu is too polite to say it but I'm not.
Gee, I'm sorry that he plays to win and in a new and smart way.
I'm sorry you are all a bunch of dumb motherfuckers.
I'm sorry that he interrupted your sorry-ass motherfucking lives.
I'm sorry that he didn't play by your imaginary rules.
I'm sorry for your sad existence where a game is all you
live for.
Why don't you go eat your microwave dinner and drink for your
miserable excuse for a life. Then cry yourself to sleep
over the universe's cruelty.
Boo-fucking-hoo!!!!
Fucking losers...
He's getting booed because he's taking all the fun out of the game for the viewers. It's not the freaking Olympics. It's a tv show, meant to entertain. He's not being entertaining.
You're missing one point - if you pick the higher value questions in a category without seeing the first few (to understand the types of answers that are wanted), it makes them even harder. It also means that there's a good chance that no one will want to risk buzzing in to answer. And if no one buzzes in, he gets to pick another random block.
So, that's what's happening, and a lot of the outrage is because he is 'wasting' the questions because no one can answer them out of context and it makes the game less fun for the audience and other players.
On Comedy Central. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.... One of the most effective designs, the wedge was also the most painfully uninteresting to watch.
Beneath the surface means exactly nothing when picking up a one night stand.
He's getting booed because he's taking all the fun out of the game for the viewers
What Mr. Chu did did not take the fun out of the viewers who can keep up. On the contrary, those who could keep up with Mr. Chu's strategic moves find the whole thing very stimulating and refreshing.
It is those Joe Sixpacks who are so perplexed by the unconventional moves deployed by Mr. Chu who are doing all the booing.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
On the contrary; it's the most entertaining thing to happen to the show in years and has everybody talking about it. I bet the show's producers love him.
Maybe he should behead his opponent and then shout, "Are you not entertained?"
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Oh no, succes is quite welcome in American culture.
It just has te be gained without any intelligence, talent or effort.
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exactly.
he's not winning "using game theory"...
he's using game theory to *disorient his opponents* by creating *uncertainty* for them but not himself
that's all that's happening here...he puts his opponents (and himself) at a disadvantage because he's disturbing the expected game flow. Only he has the benefit of **knowing what to expect** which allows him to concentrate more on thinking up the right answer.
it's a good strategy, nothing you could write a thesis on...it's more like a smokescreen tactic.
he's winning because he gets the answers right...people are complaining because of how he handles himself and because it makes it harder for them to play along at home
Thank you Dave Raggett
He's getting booed because he's taking all the fun out of the game for the viewers. It's not the freaking Olympics. It's a tv show, meant to entertain. He's not being entertaining.
The network, I'm sure, is ok with people being angry as long as they're getting angry by watching.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that folks weren't more familiar with Jeopardy!.
Normally if a player is in the lead by more than twice as much as the next closest person (that is, a guaranteed win), he will bet an amount that, if he misses the question and the second-place person answers it correctly, will leave him or her in the lead by a dollar. For example, if Alice has $15,000, Bob has $7,000, and Carol as $4,000, Alice will bet $999. If Alice misses the question and Bob gets it correct, Alice will end up with $14,001 and Bob will end up with $14,000, thus securing Alice the win.
To play for the tie instead, Alice would bet $1,000. Thus if she answers incorrectly and Bob answers correctly, they will both have $14,000. Both win the cash prize instead of the consolation prize(s), and both come back on tomorrow's show. If Alice is hardcore nice, she might even miss the question deliberately (yes, that means she'll be foregoing $2,000 extra in prize money) since that will net Bob $14,000 and she'll be bringing someone into the game tomorrow that she's relatively confident she can beat.
If Alice does not have the game locked up, then normally she would bet just enough so that, if she and Bob both answer correctly, she would end up one dollar ahead. For example, if Alice has $15,000, Bob has $10,000, and Carol has $3,000, Alice would bet $5,001, assuming that Bob will bet the entire amount. If both answer the question correctly, then Alice will end up with $20,001 and Bob with $20,000. If both answer incorrectly, Bob will likely end up with something close to $0, and Alice will end up with $9,999. If Alice answers incorrectly and Bob answers correctly, then unless Bob really screwed the pooch on his betting strategy, he will win and there's nothing Alice can do about it. (Which, incidentally, I have seen before.)
However, if Alice is playing for the tie, she will bet $5,000. That way, if she and Bob both answer correctly, they will both win $20,000, and again, she will carry a player she's likely to beat into the next game.
Obviously, that's not the whole story, because you might adjust your betting strategy based on where the third place person is to ensure that you capture at least second place, and sometimes you tweak the amount so that if everyone blows it, you come out ahead. Or sometimes you might do something irrational if you have some ulterior reason for it; for example, Alice might bet more on the question if it is about 18th Century Authors and she happens to be a literature professor with extensive knowledge in that field. But still, hopefully that paints a good enough picture to understand what "betting for the tie" means, versus trying to win outright.
Ken Jennings would always ignore the first two questions of every category in double jeopardy until the daily doubles were gone. When things were going well for him his would mean he would do the bottom three questions in one category and then another and so on. However, if he found he wasn't liking a category he wasn't afraid to switch to another, so there were occasions that what Ken was doing looked not dissimilar to what this guy is doing.
Maybe he should behead his opponent and then shout, "Are you not entertained?"
For those who don't believe in reading TFA, it includes a relevant image :)