Beating The Book: Jeopardy James Holzhauer

hundred and sixteen dollars worth of prize money. That is an average of when you factor in game thirty three, which was the game he lost. When you put it all in the mix, he averaged seventy four thousand, six hundred and seventy three dollars per episode. That average beats the previous single game high before he ever showed up. Ladies and Gentlemen Jeopardy James James Holt Tower, good morning

to you, sir. How you doing? I hate to correct you, the previous gameer was seventy seven thousand, and there actually is a vocal community of fans online who are disappointed that I didn't get a little bit more to beat that average. Throughout the whole run, just a little short of it. So so yes, so so my my intel here is incorrect then, so you just fell short of

that pretty close though. Um, First of all, Jeopardy James, do you like that name or do you sort of coming at the the U R L from my original fan page on Facebook? So I can't be too upset with that. I mean, people like alliteration. There's nothing wrong with that, and I don't. It's not like I feel that people are trying to define my entire life by this. They're just you know, it's kind of the celebrity persona I got. So. So, first of all, thank you for coming.

I we're going to get into your sports betting because you are a sports better and I want to talk to you about that during this hour. But and I know you've you've talked about the Jeopardy aspect of this in the background many many times in other media. But for those who are tuning in for the first time who have not, how did when did the Jeopardy bug start for you? How did you ever get it in your mind? Hey, I want to go on this show. Well, it's kind of been a long time coming, I would say,

when I was eight. I like to say that my life path was set out early in life because I happened to grow up in the Chicago area and I would have kind of access to the TV before my dad got home from work. And in the Chicago area on like most places, we had day baseball because the Cubs played afternoon games all but like eighteen games a

year when I was living there. And then we had Jeopardy, and so Jeopardy was on at three PM there what normally airs, you know, just before primetime in most markets. So I would be watching baseball and Jeopardy when an age where I think most kids wouldn't be allowed to catch these things on at night, and I got the idea like, hey, I'm really into baseball stats, I'm really into this game show. You know, maybe one day I can probably these into a career. You know, just kind

of happened that way. Um, I would say, when I was a young adult, I would take the Jeopardy test online and kind of just be glad to get on the show. But then down the road, I thought, We'll wait a minute. You know, this is I want opportunity at this one. I really try to do my best. You know, do things no one's ever seen before. I really think that the potential for human achievement is sometimes

so much higher than anyone realizes until you try it. Yeah, I I sort of comically say on this show when I bet unders and games, I'm betting against human achievement. That's sort of I think I gravitate towards uh So it's interesting that use that phrase. So just to clarify, then, so you were intrigued by Jeopardy Jeopardy as a child. You were on a couple of game shows internationally before

Jeopardy correct. Yeah, so Jeopardy was always the dream. I would say, um, but run two thousand eleven, I took a hiatus from sports betting for a few years, and you know, I needed a project then. So I've seen somewhere in the media people say I intentionally took off work to prepare for Jeopardy, which is not really true. But at the same time, I was, you know, I kind of on sabbatical and needed something to do, and

I thought I could do really, really good. It's trivia and you know, really knocked the show dead when I get on there. And while I was waiting for Jeopardy to put me through the Ring learned, get me on. There are a couple other shows, the Chase and five hundred questions that I did get on. So how many times did you audition or go through the the application process if you will. So for Jeopardy before they called you back, they have an online test and I've taken

that every year since two thousand six. Um, this is only my second in person audition. So if you pass the test, I think they have a random draw for who gets to go to the in person audition, and then maybe like ten of the people who go to the in person audition get to go on the show. Okay, So there's two elements of this. Obviously, there's then Okay, they call you back and you're like, hey, we want you to be on Jeopardy. You there's gotta be a

knowledge base that you've got to acquire. What did you lean on? Now you have how much time was between that phone call and your first appearance on Jeopardy? How much time are we talking about there? So there were three weeks and my first episode taped on February five, which is two days after the Super Bowl. So it's kind of tricky for me to determine how to how is gonna divide my time between prepping for the show

and betting Super Bowl props. And you know, it turned out to be a great super Bowl for me because, as you know, the pro has often bet on a boring game happening, and like, oh my god, you can't get it more boring super Bowl than we just had. So you know it was great because I kind of walked into the studio with like, well, you know, this is a great week for me financially, even if I punked this right now. Um yeah, you know, three of the three weeks they give you is not enough time,

religio to prepare for the show. You kind of have to be doing your prep work in advance even before that. And you know, they require a really broad knowledge base,

but not a particularly deep one. So I would say my one of my key strategies was to go to like the children's section of the library, look for a book that's aimed at twelve year olds that they know, hey, this reader doesn't have a great attention to span, they're not really that interested in the subject, but let's get them interested, you know, And that that really worked well for me. So so children's books because they cover a wide variety of subjects in a succinct manner. That was

sort of your hack on that. You also, you know there's a lot of literature, for instance, that that is asked about on Jeopardy. You're not reading entire books. What was your sort of shortcut for that? Well, you know, there there's a lot of material out there for everything. You know, they have these people who draw I would say, they dropped like an animated summary of Shakespeare play that boils down into a seven minute video you can watch

on YouTube. You know, if you're able to process that, and you you don't want to actually read the Shakespeare play like me, you know, then most of the nuts and bolts of what Hamlet is about are on there if you really want to get it that way, and for the most part, I mean, if it's not like the Bible or Romeo and Juliet. They don't expect you to have actually read the book and taken notes on

it or something like that. You know, you're supposed to know the major themes, the character names, that kind of stuff the author obviously, So talking to James Holt Tower, by the way, who just fell shy of Ken Jennings all time money hall in the history of Jeopardy, but set so many records within the within the context of the show. By himself and by many, is regarded as the greatest Jeopardy player who has ever played, because that missed a grand total of four daily doubles the entire

run and one final Jeopardy the entire run. So there's the knowledge base that we just talked about. That's one thing that's obviously sort of baseline level that every Jeopardy contestant would study on their own. You had your own way of doing it, Others would have their other way. But your real differentiator, um was the fact that you came up with a Jeopardy strategy, and that now in retrospect, having seen you play it this way, seems so obvious

to every viewer. But what was it that you determined? I assume that when you were eight years old, first first dreaming about Jeopardy, that's not what had happened for you. When did you come up with your special? I'm gonna instead of going one hundred to two D three hundred, I'm gonna start with big money and then I'm going to use my sports betting acumen when betting in daily doubles. Yeah, so, you know, the way I approached sports betting is similar

to way I approach jeopardy. You know, you don't look at what everyone else is doing and then just try to copy it and add a few sprinkles here there. What you can do is just kind of look at the rules of the game and think, like, how can I best approach this? You know, how would a computer

program to play this game optimally approached this thing? And you know, it turns out that that's often a lot different than what everyone else around you is doing, you know, and sometimes it takes someone else doing it for you to recognize that, hey, this is a valid approach that

can work for you. I think, you know, if poker, I've I haven't really tried to play poker competitively for a number of years, But if you look back fifteen years ago when I was playing the strategy people are doing compared to now, you know, it's completely different because it took some people saying, hey, wait a minute, you know, we we need to start occasionally five betting pre flop

as a bluff. You know, it might not have occurred to anyone to do it, but you know, some someone who was really trying to optimize their strategy would have thought of this. You know, someone is trying to optimize the Jeopardy strategy would think, well, wait a minute, what does it do good? Just do me to hit a daily double? If five a thousand dollars in front of me, well, if you have six thousand, now you can really make a big dent with that, well you would accute you.

So you would start. In other words, you were you were accumulating as much money as possible. You were oftentimes starting at the bottom of the grid and Jeopardy, whereas four years and years folks would just go in sort of a systematic order down. And then when you would get to the daily doubles, it was sort of a

you know, serve two purposes. One, you would bet to have a huge, big lead um beyond what was normal in the past, and it also served to eliminate those daily doubles, which are the high variants moments that could have allowed other people back into the game. So it's sort of this perfect strategy. If I'm playing you in Jeopardy, there's really no wouldn't I employ the same strategy like

that would be how you would advise me to play you. Yes, And you know, I will say, most of my opponents when they were up there, you know, even if they only see me for a game, they knew, Okay, you know this guy is different. I need to change up

the game plan I had coming in here. And I guess one of the downsides of this is I'm you're kind of teaching the opponents to play better against you, and this almost cost me um one of my I want to say, my twenty six game, there was a player who built up a huge lead against me, and he uh could moved all in a daily double, but didn't send. I think he's still bet like half his stack when he already had a big lead, which I

think is more than he would have done otherwise. But you know, I was kind of training my opponents to play this hyper aggressive approach that's you know, worked better, a lot better against me than what they were planning to do going in. Probably I in preceding this interview, I went on some of these Jeopardy sort of sites that people are super super involved with Jeopardy, and there is some history. There was one guy back in the day, for like a five game run, he employed this strategy.

Were you aware of him? That was like the one historical example of someone who had employed the strategy that you did. I mean, I'm aware of all the things that have come before me. I would I would say I developed the strategy myself, but I I don't, Uh, I mean, there are certainly elements that are similar to people who have come before me. Absolutely well, So yes, everyone can now take your strategy into it. Emily Butcher I believe was her name, she beat you on the

thirty three which aired on on June three. She only lasted three games herself, so clearly it's not that easy to do right. You have to be able to do everything. And your key Alan Boston, Well, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Alan Boston, famous college basketball better who's a friend of this show and has been on many times. Avid Jeopardy watcher watches it every night and he's like, look, he said James's skill set, James's number one skill is

his ability to anticipate the buzzer. Would you agree with that? Yes? I mean, you know, if I had to play two people from the street to Jeopardy, my knowledge base would rule over everything. But the people who are on the show. You know, they passed a difficult test to be there. They all know most of the clues up there. Maybe not as many as I do, necessarily, but most of

the board. You know, if they're if you uh are buzzing in only thirty three percent of the time, then you know that's really gonna make it tough to win and you gotta rely on all kinds of other stuff. But I was winning the buzzer race, I think I don't know fifty six something like that, and that really

just gives you a huge leg up over the competition. UM. I noticed in the pregames warmups that Emma seemed to have a really great buzzer control, and I was kind of worried about when I was going to have to face her. And I think I won the buzzer a few more times that she did in our game, but she was clearly like top notch at it, really great buzzer control. But so now let me just ask one follow up to that. Everyone can see the question. So

what I'm assuming you're doing, you're reading it fast. So Alex Trebeck is very deliberate how he reads it right, He's very clear, very concise, how he reads it. It's sort of a slow tenor to what he's doing. So I assume you're reading it quicker, but your opponents can do the same thing. What would you say, distill at to one point? Why are you so much better at the buzzer? Like, what is it you just have a quicker reaction time? What is it you speed read better?

I don't know about that. One thing I definitely worked on is trying to solve the clue in less time than it took two to read it, So you know, you can kind of I'm not a neuroscientist, but I'm under the impression that people can create like new neural pathways where if you say, study the order of the president's enough, then as someone calls out eighteenth president is just like answering two plus two. You know you don't have to think about it. You just know that it's

ulysses as Grant. I had to think about that a second. That actually, but um, you and once you kind of get to that level, you okay, Now you have the entire clue to focus on either Alex's voice or when the board lights are coming on. If you have a hd percent of your attention on that instead then it really helps your ability to react to that moment um. I had a practice buzzer that I kind of built out of a mechanical pencil at home. And you built a practice buzzer out of a mechanical pencil, I did.

And you know, this is actually a very common thing that people on the show do. Most of them just don't don't get the opportunity to talk about it, but they'll take a pen or they're popular choice is actually the tube that's your toilet paper sits on. You can press the retractor thing on that's that's right. Um, so you bring up you lists grants. So this kind of jogs in my in my thinking, in your is their

Jeopardy data? Like I grew up in d C, people cheated on driver's test from year to year when they got to sixteen years of age, because they passed the same test from the year forward, so they knew the question. They knew actually the order of the multiple choice. Is there a history? Is there a database of Jeopardy questions where let's take Ulysses S Grant where Ulysses s Grant questions weren't asked as much on Jeopardy as say I don't know Chester A. Arthur questions, Yes, they they have

a it's kind of a fan created archive. I assume

that the show has its own archive. It is not publicly accessible, but there is one that is free to the public called the Jeopardy Archive, and they have like fans transcribing all the shows basically, and they've got a search function where you can kind of Now it's tricky, you know, because if you search for Ulysses Grant, not everyone says the first name on the show, so you might have to search for just Grant and then you get like if someone wrote a grant for a million dollars,

that will pop up to But for the most part, you can kind of run searches and see how often these names come up, and you'll determine, okay, it's five times. It is important to know George Washington as Chester Arthur, and you kind of know where to focus your attention there. So you're aware of all of that going into it. Well, I mean, there might be other sites I'm not aware of, but this this one is. But you had you had some sense that you needed to study that sort of thing,

like you figure out what they ask more than than others. Yes, you kind of get the idea, Like, you know, I watched pro wrestling and I listened to a lot of death metal stuff and that I know it was never gonna come up on the show, and it's it's too bad. But uh, you know, you you recognize which subjects they are going to ask about and which ones they aren't. You were just telling me off air, you just were

on vacation. You were in Prague, you were in Lisbon, you were in Barcelona as well, and you were recognized there as well. Pretty often. Yeah, I would say it happened virtually every day. Uh, you know, especially when I was at the airport or something, and you you get the only tourists at the airport and a lot of Americans are I assume are they're Americans out there and asking me, oh, are you Jeopardy James? You know they

do you embrace that? You love that, Like is this a good development in your life or is it getting to a point now where you're sort of like, I don't know if I like this so much or is it all good? Well? I would say, like there were definitely times where my my daughter was acting out in public and I would have preferred that that exact moment to have an anonymous face. But for the most part,

it's nice to see fans out there. You alluded to the fact that there was a gentleman who almost beat you during your thirty two games streak, uh, and obviously Emily Butcher eventually did on Emma Butcher rather on on your thirty three Were there other times throughout this run?

Now that you look back on it and sort of do the inventory, how many times do you think you got with all the things we just talked about, your knowledge base, your buzzer ability, uh, your instincts for um, the Jeopardy database of questions, the fact that you employed the perfect Jeopardy strategy, all of that in the mix. Just like in poker, you can still have everything set up perfectly, but then there's a certain element of luck involved. How many times did you did the thirty two game

streaks stay alive in your assessment based on just sheer luck? Oh, it's I mean, I don't know how sheer luck is defined, but certainly I needed some element of fortune at least ten times over the streak. You know, I think there's one time in my second game where I had I basically moved all in on a daily double than I did because I was behind in the score. That's time.

And they asked which UH college was nicknamed Sadie Lew And I knew this really only because my wife and I talked about naming our daughter Sadie and she she said, Oh, it's a diminutive of Sarah. It's very nice, and I thought, Okay, it's gonna be something Sarah Sarah Lawrence makes sense, you know that. You know, I don't think that Sadie Leew is a well known nickname. So that's like the only way I could have gotten there on this is because

something like that happened. It's kind of crazy to think about. Well, and I think that's you know, and so many of the correlation. You know, we talked about eliminating the the high variance daily doubles, UM, your your risk, your aversion, the ability to treat the money. UM. You know, I think most people come on a show like Jeopardy, they're constantly thinking, well, I'm betting sixteen thousand dollars you as

a sports bet you just don't have that mentality. And I think that portion right there that we just talked about UM is obviously something that as a poker player, as you said, as a sports better, you're more conditioned for, right You You embrace the fact that there's going to be this kind of variance, and you're okay with the fact I did, oh yeah, that this is going to be part of this game. Sometimes the chips fall where

they may. In other words, you kind of uh developed the mindset not only of okay, I can lose this money, but also you know, I can lose some money and still keep playing the game. You know, if I if I quit work every day every time I lost the bets, I've never did anything done, you know, even I was. I mean, I don't even know if the gambling background helped that much. I noticed, like there are people I was playing against who came from all sorts of professions.

You know, Emma as a librarian. I thought, okay, well she hit this daily double against me when she had I think maybe two thirds of my score in our game. And I thought, okay, well she's a library and maybe she won't bet at all here. And now she did. She knew she that was the move she had to do, and uh, you know, kudos to her. She pulled it out. It had to help and most But where do you think it helped the most? The sports betting background, though, well,

I mean that's definitely a part. I mean in terms of just winning the game. I'm not sure how much the Giants daily double bets actually helped. But you know, in terms of like setting up these these huge pay days, you know, that required a level of us that I think most non yamblers wouldn't have displayed in that moment. One more thing about this and we'll get onto your sports betting here after the break. But the show aired April. You're you're part of the show from April fourth, I

believe it was to June three. Um, you had obviously taped. This was your entire taping before the run. Was it staggered in the middle, Yeah, it was, the entire thing was before. I think my last tape day was something like March twelfth, which you know worked out well for me because it was right before March Madness. I can get back to work alt and I did not win on March Madness. So so when your shows were airing,

you obviously knew how far you got. You knew the outcomes when the hype was growing, and I don't use hype with any connotation to it. But when the publicity was growing and your your que factor, your star power was getting bigger and bigger because you knew that you just fell short of some of Ken's records, Like obviously the game streak, he went a crazy amount seventy four games, was it um and he was winning a lot at

a much uh lower clip than you were. But as that hype was developing, was there a little part of you that sort of wanted to downplay it publicly because you knew this outcome. I was always curious about that because I was trying to when I was hearing you in interviews and watching you, I was looking for tells myself, and I was like, I don't know if he broke it because he seems maybe you're just the most super humble guy in the world, but it almost seems in

some cases that he was bashful. Was I reading into that at all correctly? Um? Maybe? I mean I would say like, first of all, I was completely blown away by how much attention I was receiving. You know, some people tried to prepare me for this, and I said, like, okay,

come on, it's jeopardy. You know, there's not that many people out there who are that interested in this stuff, but yeah, I was just in awe of the different media types that wanted to talk to me and how many people, it turns out our closet Jeopardy fans or either that or they're just really excited to see someone do with something very differently than anything they've ever seen before. So I kind of, you know, was reacting to the level of attention being I don't know five times what

I expected it to be. Um, I would say, like it was if I had to not break the record. It was kind of nice to come so close to doing it, you know, making a really spectacular sweat down the line. And I didn't really want to downplay that because I thought it was kind of cool how how close I got and came just short. It was awesome. It was amazing. Were you were, I mean, what was your love? How bummed were you at that moment? Were you just super dejected or were you okay with it? Uh?

You know, it's a funny story. So when right after the taping finish and I kind of had to go sign my forms to collect my second place money, one of the producers came up to me and she gave me a hug, and she actually started crying because she was She said she had never seen anyone play the game so beautifully before, and I had to like kind of pat her on the back and comfort her. That's amazing. This was ending wow. But you know, I mean, I would say like it was kind of a bitter sweet moment.

Obviously I wasn't happy to lose. But at the same time, you know, I uh, it was getting a little stressful, um going back there every week, and you know, I was kind of like I had I had put this achievement, checked it off the bucket list, you know, like it's okay to move on with life now. Well, absolutely obviously no shaving that. I love that you're comforting herds, you

appreciating just how well you played the game well. James holts Ower for those two and again biggest Jeopardy winner by season among his records, biggest one game winner at

first he broke it. He had he had a one hundred and ten thousand dollar plus night and then a one hundred thirty one thousand dollar event, largest successful daily double wager of twenty five thousand dollars, largest successful final Jeopardy wager of thirty eight thousand first, then uh, I believe it was a sixty thousand again after that sixty thousand plus on one wager. We will get into some

of your sports betting stuff next. How about that? Do that, James holtz Our right here on a numbers game at Visa down back to a numbers game with your host, Gil Alexander, broadcasting live from our visa in studios in Las Vegas. On a numbers game. We're sports betting analytics, live actionable sports betting information. It's Gil Alexander UM Update Open Championship in Royal Port, Russia. There in Ireland. Shane

Lowry still with the two stroke lead. Shane has played thirteen holes so five left to go, two stroke lead over JB. Holmes, who's in the clubhouse eight under par, Tommy Fleetwood, Lee Westwood three shots currently back in the clubhouse as well at seven under as Eldrick tiger Woods fails to make the cut. I just want to point that out as well this morning, and um, of course we'll follow it all weekend long right here on Visa. Back on the show here with James holtz howerd Jeopardy.

James kind enough to join us, James, I said, we're gonna move on to your your sports betting. One last thing, though, I mentioned in the previous segment that in your entire run, you missed four daily doubles and one final Jeopardy question. I want to see how how much this has stuck in your crawl or how your brain works if you just moved on. So I just want to ask you one of the random daily double questions that you missed. This was all the way back on the show that

aired on April eleventh. The question that Alex Trebeck, by the way, is he had just a wonderful, sweet guy. You know, I can't be seeing off camera fraternizing with him because they have every the appearance of impropriety is a huge deal in game shows. But you know, from every interaction I've had with him, he strikes me as a consummate professional. I was really admired him keeping coming into work when he knew he was dealing with this serious health issue. Wish him the best with his with

his health issue. April eleventh, Alex put this question out there. He said, this inductee into the Video Hall of Fame sold seventeen million copies of video cassette she released in nineteen eighty two. The category, by the way, with celebrities, and this was a this was a fine, this was the final Jeopardy one and that you risked three thousand, ten dollars on this one. Do you remember what your answer was? Yes, it was Madonna? And do you remember

what the real answer was? Jane fond And you know, like, I know it's easy to say this now, but if I had twenty more seconds, it would have occurred to me, like cassettes can be for home workouts too. How many times during the actual regular play did you just buzz without knowing the answer and you're just I just want to get there first, or you a guy who you only buzzed when you kind of had an inkling. I would say it wasn't a lot of times. There were

maybe five or so. Now, there were a couple where I thought I knew the answer and that I changed my mind in the middle of the buzzing process, which sometimes worked out in my favor and sometimes not did not. All right, so sports Betting, you identified yourself as a sports better on the show, and by the way, in that regard, let me just on behalf of everybody. Thank you for elevating just what a sports better is in the public domain, right because most the average person thinks

of a sports better. And I was like, oh, that's some degenerate stuff right there. But here you were crushing people and identifies a sports better. And I think I think a lot of people may have sort of been like, oh that, well, that's interesting. Yeah, some people have tried to claim that I got to legalize in an extra couple of states being up there above that. Yeah, all right, So when did you first, Like, how did you get

into sports betting? First of all, Uh so in college I played a lot of online poker, as many so many gambler to live in Las Vegas now did, and uh, you know, I kind of so the idea of like sending money to this offshore place and you know, trusting them to pay you back was ingrained in my head. And then like the idea that hey, people can actually win doing this if they have the right strategy was

also there. Um. I was also into fantasy sports, and you know, from a young age I really wanted to know all the statistics of the baseball players and know what they meant, you know, so I would be that kid who I would trade you for your baseball cards if I didn't have them yet, and try to acquire a complete set of the players and put them all into Excel and take a look at these numbers, like, well, you know, what does it really mean that this guy

is slugging for seventy that last year? You know, But believe it or not, there was a time when four seventy was a really good slugging percentage, right in a different era. Yeah, but uh so I kind of got into it first of all, because you know, I was already in the business of trying to figure out which players and teams were gonna succeed unexpectedly next year, and I thought it might as well make a little money

doing it. And you know, the old like Baseball Prospectus site, it's had kind of ways to convert this information into probabilities, you know, Clay to have import used to run this Monte Carlo simulation of how often teams would make the playoffs at the end of the year, and the idea of you know, kind of simulating randomness into the equation like, Okay, we know this team is the best team, but maybe their players get injured or maybe they you know, bad bounces,

just get them along the way. You If you try to simulate the baseball season, the standard deviation of where your forecast should start them where they should end up is something like nine games. You know, that's a lot of variants into the equation. You really got to be a lot better than your competition to sweat that. So do you You know, here's the thing, when when one says they're professional better, So my audience and an audience

of Vista very sensitive. Those the best pro betters that I know, right, the people who are truly they devote their life to betting, they're very sensitive. Right, So when someone calls themselves a professional sports and I don't know if you've gotten any of this in your sphere, right, So there are those who are like, well, does James is he an originator of his own handicapping? Is the one doing his own handicapping? Or is he more of a guy and by the way, no judgment from hating

for me on any of this. Or is he a guy that is really about finding marketed efficiencies? Is he a screen saper scraper? Is he just looking for an edge numerically rather than just as an originator of a hand as a as a handicapper. Uh. Yeah, you know, I don't know if you've ever had Mitchell Lichtman on the show, but I remember I used to comment on because I have not had him on the show, but I'm very aware of it. Yeah, so I used to

comment on some of his old blog posts. Uh. And you know, it's just myself as a professional gambler, and he would be like, who is this guy? You know, where are his criticious um virtue regarding the what I'm doing? I do it all. You know. When I started out in two thousand six, I was just purely running my own numbers against the market and nuts, you know, especially

I wasn't living in Vegas then. I didn't have access to the best odds all the time, and you know, they didn't have these aspect then obviously, so I couldn't just drive around and expect the odds to still be there when I got there. Uh. My focus largely on baseball futures at that time because I thought that was the most inefficient market. And you know it's I guess it's easier to if you see alignment's off, to think that, Okay,

no other professionals are looking at this market. I can go drive across town to the Hilton, then throw down my money on this and expect it'll it'll still be there when I wanted to be uh and you know, I would say, like one one thing I used to do every year, this is the first year I haven't done.

It is like kind of run a baseball futures hedge fund, where if I see that a team is under priced, now I will just load up on them, you know, way more than the Kelly criterion says I should, knowing that I can bet against them in the World Series if they make it there. You know, maybe I'm giving up a couple of percentage points on the other end, but it's still you know, works out to a long run profit that way. Um, But you know, I definitely

do a lot of line shopping and stuff now. You know, there are times when if I see that the spreading money line are off in a football game, I'll bet both sides of it. That kind of thing. Or you know, if I think the market is over overreacting to breaking injury information, now you know, be happy to take a position on that, even if I don't think anything else of the game because because the futures angle is is interesting.

But you know, most would say you're not going to make a living just betting futures, right like specifically, So that's why the other stuff you're talking about is is interesting to me. Are you nowadays? Are you looking more at halftime lines? Are you doing a lot of in game stuff? Like? What? What? How do you approach that? Yeah? So you know back back in the day I was,

the market is totally changed. Of course, as your listeners all, well, no, you know now that you have access to these apps and you can bet at the biggest sports books from home, it gives you this ability to do stuff you could never do before, like getting in you don't have to physically be present at the sports book to make a

halftime bet. Now it's the huge deal, or is the in game stuff, especially although almost most of the apps in town have limited my end game bets to a hundred zero dollars now unfortunate, but yeah, you always that right, they have limited you. Yeah, yeah, this I think. I don't think there's a sports booking talent that hasn't at least collared me at some level. About about half of them won't take a bet from me at all, and the other half field you know, takes some fraction of

what's they would take from a Joe off the street. Um. That that all started before Jeopardy, So I don't think that this has necessarily affected anything that applied to far away places as well. Yes, I would say, I mean, you know, like there there's some that deal with professionals and they just don't care. I mean they do care in the sense that they move the line more when

I bet than they will for someone else. Right, because there are there are shops, right, we know, the two sort of pillars in far away places that will not ban anybody, right, Pinnacle or a bookmaker like that. Um. But I'm that's interesting that you said that half will not take any of your bets here in Vegas and half will limit you. Yeah, that's about how it breaks down.

So if that's the case, Um, I mean how much you know Listen, you just came off of Jeopardy, which I don't know if you know this, James, you just want two point four million dollars, like did you have you because of all of those you put all of that into the soup if you will. Um, has it changed your outlook on life, like in other words, look, I got this nest egg. Um, they're doing all these things to make my life difficult, betting perhaps I don't

do this moving forward. It has certainly occurred to me, Um, you know, there's people, without revealing too much about what's going on in my email inbox, there are people offering uh, large sums of money for you know, chunks of my time that I might not necessarily want to give up. But it has occurred to me like, how wait a minute, you know, if I if I'm making like I don't know, let's say five thousand dollars and a typical college football Saturday,

working from sun up to sundown? Is that worth my time? When I could go give a speech at some quant fund for more than that, you know, And I don't know, it's a it's a thought like and then it occurs to me, maybe I shouldn't care about the money at all. You know. It's uh like the idea I really enjoy winning. I would say that's kind of driving me more professionally

right now than anything else. Is the idea like, hey, you know I can I can find something that's that no one else sees, Uh that you know, a factor that no one else is considered here and use that too to make some money. I think that's that's always been a really important reason why I got into this line of work. And you know, if I still feel that spark, of course I'm gonna keep doing it just because.

But yeah, you know, it's the thought has occurred to me like, well, you know, maybe I spend some of my Saturday playing with my kid instead of in front of don Best screen. Might might be maybe a bit more balanced life for you at this point. Yeah, you alluded to some things, some things in your email inbox. I want to get into some of your email inbox because I know you've had some chats and you have some aspirations and if you don't mind if we get

into that, maybe a professional sports life for you. I don't know, we'll find out. We'll get with it with James Holt Tower right here exclusively on a numbers game at Visa down Back to a numbers game with your host Gil Alexander, broadcasting live from our visa in studios in Las Vegas. It is a numbers game, it is Gil Alexander. It's serious X Channel two four. Jeff Pearls is here, or as we like to call him now, Jeff Parlay, Maybell do Pearls is Parlay? How will we

had not thought about that before? We should see if Vinny said it earlier. Yeah, I'll give Brendan credit and David credit back here for saying it about a month ago, and then it just disappeared from my brain. No baseball pick from Jeff today. By the way, James Holtzauer is here from Jeopardy thirty two wins in a row on Jeopardy.

We're just talking off air about how, you know, when I told some of my buddies that you were on the show, the different reactions, and one of which is, uh, just talk about the sports, but don't talk about the Jeopardy part. And and and you know, I'm sensitive the fact that you have to talk about the Jeopardy part over and over over again. But to me, that's still like the strategy you employed is still the most fascinating aspect of all of this, right, because it's that's the biggest

window to your brain of all this. I get that you have the knowledge base and all the other stuff and sports betting you do in your own private you know, in your own privacy. Um, but that, to me is what is the main point of all this. It's the fact that you came out with that came up with that strategy, and the fact that sports bettors right should always be looking for a different way to approach things, different markets and such. So I hope you don't mind

that we rehashed all the gems. No, it's no problem at all. I mean, frankly, I'm a little relieved because I took like the months of April to June off work to deal with everything else that was going on in my life. So I'm well behind on the baseball season. I just started doing my football research this week. So do you have any baseball futures that you like? No, you know, I decided I would be mostly sitting out

this season. I mean there's a lot of factors. First of all, I got, you know, so much stuff to manage with the Jeopardy fall out. But also, you know, every year I like to take vacations during the summer. It's kind of a slow sports season, and as you know, the weather here gets intolerable after a certain point. I haven't noticed. Yeah, um, okay, so I know a little bit.

By the way, nothing on football yet you're researching. I've started, but okay, no thoughts yet, you know, I mean my thoughts are kind of the same as they always are. If you look at the odds. I'm kind of aggregating all the odds for season wins and futures right now. And if you look, no surprise, you know, the worst bets tend to be on the teams that have all the hype right now, like the Cleveland Browns. I cannot believe I'm saying this, but are the most hyped team

and they're they're probably the worst bet. If you want to put our Super Bowl future out there, I would agree, uh, no value, that's correct. Um, all right, so I hacked into your inbox. So Seattle Mariners. Have you had a chat with the Seattle Mariners. There was a talk, Yes, a chat is a good term for It was all casual.

You know, there's no job offer anything. But I talked with a couple of people from their front office and they, you know, they seemed to have running running a really good organization there, you know, despite what it would seem like from their on field performance. But they know what they're doing, you know, they know that, Hey, we were in the business of investing in assets for years from now, and they've been buying low on some players. That's uh.

Other teams have decided they don't want to deal with anymore, you know, Domingo Santana, Dan vogel Buck, They you know, players that other teams don't want basically, and they they're finding some value there. I think. Yeah, we've been talking about the science recently here who won thirteen and fifteen games of San Francisco Giants and the conundrum that they have moving to the July thirty first trade deadline of

what do you do? You know, you've been selling You've been in a cell mode all this, you know mentally this whole way, and their GM was hired to you know, look to the future. But the team's not cooperating with the narrative right there, just winning so many games that they're right in the thick of the wild card race. What do they do? And it makes baseball very unique.

Do you aspire to a baseball front office job? Or if, say James the local franchise here in hockey, let's say the Vegas Golden Nights came calling, would that be something of interest to you? So Baseball was the dream definitely half a life ago when I was thinking about this sort of thing. But you know, I will say, I mean, most people who follow baseball closely know they're they're doing all kinds of stuff they didn't do fifteen years ago,

and you know, they're really playing. I would say, close to an optimal approach now of how do we find the best players, how do we pay them, how do we train in them? You know, it's getting like so good now. Whereas I think football and hockey the two major of the four major sports, of the two that really I think could use an infusion of data and like different approaches to the problems they're facing right now.

And you know, I think that in terms of what I would enjoy the most, I'm not sure, But in terms of where I could deliver the most value to a team, it would more likely be in a different sport than baseball, I would think, because baseball has had is sort of the analytics began decades ago, and others other sports haven't sort of evolved necessarily as far. Yeah, and I understand the player tracking data is about to

explode in the NHL. I think there's probably a lot of stuff we can learn from that that it's just you know, breaking in. Of course, you know, I don't have access to the same data sets that these teams have. So I have noticed that, and forgive me for a step your last. I have noticed that when baseball comes up, and more often, not more often than not, but a few times you sort of you on your own, will segue towards hockey. I know that I did right here

with the Knights. But honestly, if you could make if you could waive the magic on though seriously like and you know, let's just say some of the Night's front office might be listening, would that be, honestly like something that you would absolutely embrace, like you would want to have that meeting. Well, there's a couple of things, you know. First of all, if I could work for a hockey team on site, I cannot leave Las Vegas, which you know unless the Oakland the Oakland slash Las Vegas Raiders

call me. Is the only way I can really do this without leaving this city, which I've come to really like. Um, you know the reason the Mariners came up. And my wife is from Seattle. She really envisions us moving back there one day and so I kind of just tossed in an offhand comment about how this would be a place she would like me to work, and you know, things just blow up on the internet now for no reason. It's incredible you've noticed. Um, yeah, you know they working

for the Knights. I don't entirely know what I could do with the data they have because I don't know what it is, but yes, that would definitely be a thing that would interest trying to get you a gig here. Um, do you aspire now, Look, you've had the Jeopardy experience again two point four million dollars plus in your pocket. Uh, you have the two previous experiences internationally on game shows. Do you aspire to be on any other game show? Or was Jeopardy, as you said as a child, that

was the pinnacle? Um? Would another game show even let you on anymore? Well? You know, I mean, I think they have to consider their prize budget accordingly. But you know, for the most part, these guys are looking to make a splash to get ratings. You know, I noticed Ken Jennings has been on at least like four or five other shows since he was on Jeopardy, and they the producers are like Hey, you know, maybe he'll win a little money, but we'll we'll get the name Ken Jennings

on our marque out of it. Uh, And you know, maybe that will be the right thing for me down the road. I don't know. Uh. There's certainly some people who have emailed me about producing a TV show around me as on their talents, and you know, it's something I'd not necessarily considered before, but maybe we could find something that works out there. Do you enjoy the media blitz because you, like you said, when you come back from vacation, you're expecting, not expecting. But we probably know

already that there's another media blitz coming towards you. People aren't done talking to you yet, as obviously evidenced here. I assume they would be done by now, but it turns out there not. That's that's been a surprise to me, and it's it's nice to to be in demand. I will say that. Okay, So when we leave here and we have to win a couple of minutes, Um, what bets are you making today? Are you making any bets at all? What it? What is the rest of your

day look like from a sports betting standpoint? So I'm still kind of in the information gathering process of by the NFL preseason. Um, I will say I would I probably would make a bet at the book once I leave the studio today, except now that they've updated their app, I haven't transferred over to the new South Point app, so I can't actually check what their odds are on

the futures market. And you know, if I if I had these things in my spreadsheet, I might have had a little target sign drawn on a team or two. But I gotta go kind of switch my account over and get that information first. I appreciate you coming in, James. I appreciate a couple of things that you shared here today that you haven't shared anywhere else. The one the story about at the end of Jeopardy when the girl giving you the money sort of gave you the hug

weeping saying how beautifully you played that. So appreciate that nugget, uh. And the note that you are I they're banned from half or limited at half of the sports book here in Las Vegas. I don't think you've you've said that quite as strongly before in that way. If I'm not mistaken, Yeah, well, you know it's not a fact that necessarily interests most people. Oh, I think this audience is very interested in something like that. Um. I think I think that might be the big headline

from this. Um. Yeah. I went on the pet McAfee podcast, and you actually thought that was like the coolest thing he had ever heard, that someone could be banned from a sports book for winning, and like, well, you know, when you're a professional, it's actually not that cool. Well, I mean, listen, what is what is your sort of you know, because obviously there's many kinds of folks. There's that faction that is anti sports book no matter what, they're the worst thing in the world. How dare they?

How dare they? Or do you are you more of that sort of level headed where you're like, hey, look I get it. This is how there's some of their business models are and it's just this is this is how it is. And so I understand that this is their position, and I'm okay with it given that, No, I definitely okay with it. Now. Kind of wish William Hill would come out and say publicly, hey, we we banned players, instead of waffling around it every time they

get interviewed about it. But you know, it's a business. They know what they're doing. They're they're offering a service to certain slice of the population. You know, I I can still bet on sports. I just have to do it somewhere else. James um, your homework assignment is to watch my pinned tweet on Twitter after you here. Based on your last comment, I think that's a good thing. I think I think what you're saying is right. At least be honest about it. Then we'd respect you more.

James Holt Tower, everybody two point four million dollars appreciate you taking the time this morning. I know you have a little girl who you want to get back to. Thank you so much for being on. Thank you, James Holts, our greatest Jeopardy player there ever was, by my money.