This Is the Real Reason ‘Jeopardy!’ Champions Rack Up the Most Wins

One of the reasons behind the cultural legacy of Jeopardy! for decades is its competitive element. The legendary game show doesn’t merely reward contestants who possess a substantial amount of trivial knowledge across various subjects. You can memorize every world capital or Renaissance painter all you want, but if you don’t have a quick trigger on the buzzer, your days on Jeopardy! will be outnumbered.

Iconic super champions like James Holzhauer and current host Ken Jennings are unquestionable bright and knowledgeable individuals, but they have prolific runs on the show due to their buzzing skills. While it seems like a perfunctory act, mastering the Jeopardy! buzzer is an art form, and those who become one with the device will go home with a big paycheck and their names etched into Jeopardy! history.

‘Jeopardy!’s Recent Boom of Super-Champs

The competition factor is taken for granted, but it is essential as to why Jeopardy! rises above other game shows. Rather than one contestant facing off against a wheel or host rattling off questions, players use their quick draw to answer questions in time before their opponents. The series embraces the competition by hosting various special tournaments pitting the top of the heap against each other, including “Tournament of Champions,” and recently, primetime events like Jeopardy! Masters and the highly anticipated Greatest of All Time tournament in 2020, featuring Jennings, Holzhauer, and Brad Rutter.

The most noticeable trend in recent years is the influx of “super-champs,” contestants who win 10+ matches in a row. In the “Sky’s the Limit” era, where players can extend their reign as champions beyond 5 matches, contestants could evolve into household names. Excluding Ken Jennings, whose 74-game streak in 2004 will likely never be broken, no contestant took the world by storm like James Holzhauer. In 2019, the professional gambler channeled his Las Vegas roots by betting big wages on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy, earning over $2 million over 33 appearances. Holzhauer kicked off a boom of super-champs, including Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, Mattea Roach, and recently Adriana Harmeyer, who all adopted his strategy of chasing after Daily Doubles.

James Holzhauer Revolutionized ‘Jeopardy’ Strategy With His Buzzer Skills

How exactly do Holzhauer and other long-running champs pull off their incredible runs? Beyond the innate possession of random pieces of trivia, keen buzzer skills separate the one-day contestants from the super-champs. When weaponized to its fullest degree, buzzing in for a clue elevates from a simple procedure to a game-changing strategy. Holzhauer, like many baseball organizations in the last decade, adopted a technical approach to Jeopardy! gameplay akin to analytics. In an interview with Vulture, he revealed using his expertise as a gambler to study the odds and stay ahead of the curve on the board. His method of working from the bottom up on the board, selecting the high-price clues first, is now a common practice.

However, it is the physical component, controlling the buzzer, that makes you a multi-millionaire. Although “Jeopardy! James” credits Ken Jennings for being the “more dominant player on the buzzer” during his streak, Holzhauer’s process for mastering the buzzer put him in the record book. “I took an old mechanical pencil and wrapped a lot of masking tape around it to simulate the shape of the buzzer,” Holzhauer said when describing his game preparation, as he would put his makeshift buzzer to practice while watching old Jeopardy! episodes.

Buzzer Skills Are The Key Behind Long-Term ‘Jeopardy!’ Success

Of course, the luck of the draw in the category selection on the board is crucial to one’s success on Jeopardy!, but James Holzhauer proved that skill and a calculated competitive edge were equally vital. “He had a lot of questions about the subtlety of the buzzer right away,” show producer Maggie Speak told Claire McNear of The Ringer. After rigorous tryout sessions, anyone fortunate enough to compete on the Jeopardy! stage is more or less on an equal playing field relating to knowledge, but as Ken Jennings put it, “buzzer timing really becomes what tends to separate the winner from the non-winners.”

During a match, you’re not just playing against the board, you’re playing against Michael Harris, a show writer and switch operator who indicates when the contestants are permitted to buzz in. Because contestants are not allowed to buzz in as early as possible, Jeopardy! takes on a rhythmic flow, where one has to follow along with Alex Trebek/Jennings’ speech patterns during clue-reading. Since Jennings’ dominant streak, players begin their taping days with a practice round featuring coaching by Speak, who gives buzzing advice before game time. She advises that players stand in an awkward but effective “Statue of Liberty pose,” for the most precise timing.

Fritz Holznagel’s Secrets of The Buzzer

For aspiring Jeopardy! super-champs, the sacred text is without question former contestant Fritz Holznagel‘s book, Secrets of the Buzzer. Upon returning to compete in 2014’s Battle of the Decades tournament, Holznagel, out of the loop in modern pop culture, recognized that his fellow contestants had the upper hand in knowledge. He began studying the game as something more than a game show, a challenge he referred to as a “reaction-time test tacked onto a trivia contest.” Although he did not win the tournament, Holznagel was convinced he mastered the art of the buzzer and published his book in 2015, containing words of wisdom like using your thumb, keeping your arms in front of you, holding still, chugging coffee in the green room, and locking your eyes on the illuminated enable light that prompts players to buzz in. After intense studying and execution, Holznagel lowered his reaction time from 228 milliseconds to 126 milliseconds. James Holzhauer read the book while preparing for his iconic run and adopted Holznagel’s advice.

“I think people are afraid of the buzzer,” Maggie Speak said, who has witnessed countless one-day contestants who lose not due to a lack of knowledge but because they “psych themselves out.” While the prospect of mastering buzzer mechanisms is daunting, those who allow the device to become an extension of their hand can earn major earnings. Today, contestants understand that using a ballpoint pen or random household object as a mock buzzer for practice is just as important as cracking open books. Jeopardy!, as outlined by an op-ed by 40-game winner Amy Schneider, has evolved into an athletic competition, as contestants must factor in the physical and psychological elements that athletes manage regularly. The competitive nature is an innate draw for audiences indifferent towards game shows, and it’s why people tune into their local CBS affiliate every weeknight as they watch a new brilliant champ dominate the stage. Jeopardy! is available to stream on YouTube TV in the U.S.