While Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek continues his cancer fight, the popular game show of answers and questions keeps rolling along. So does current champion Jason Zuffranieri, who's just surpassed $500,000 in winnings on his 18-day winning streak. That's puts him third on the all-time list, behind last season's #2 James Holzhauer and #1 Ken Jennings. But it's not even a contest at this point, as Zuffranieri is still nearly $2 million behind second place on the all-time list. Both Holzhauer and Jennings earned about $2.5 million during their runs on the show. It's way too early to predict that Zuffranieri will even get close to their winnings.
The competition for total wins on Jeopardy!, though, is a bit more interesting. Zuffranieri is currently in fifth place, with 18 wins. The two contestants holding down 3rd and 4th place are just ahead of him, at 19 and 20 wins respectively. So by the end of the week, Zuffranieri could take third place in all-time number of wins. And that would put him in striking distance of James Holzhauer, who won 32 games in a row before it all came crashing down.
If I'm Jason Zuffranieri, I'm taking aim at second place on the wins list -- just 14 more wins to tie for second. If he can catch James Holzhauer, then (only then) he should start thinking about moving up the earnings list -- even if it would take a while.
The record that probably never gets broken is consecutive wins, a record held by Ken Jennings with an astounding 74 wins in a row! No wonder he became such a household name.
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Jeopardy! Totals
Consecutive Wins:
- Ken Jennings (74)
- James Holzhauer (32)
- Julia Collins (20)
- David Madden (19)
- Jason Zuffranieri (18)
Total Winnings:
- Ken Jennings ($2,520,700)
- James Holzhauer ($2,462,216)
- Jason Zuffranieri ($502,096)
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