Ben Chan is a philosophy professor at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin.
Jeopardy! Run[]
He made his debut on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, and won in a lock game despite dropping $7,000 on an early Daily Double. After winning the rest of the week (with all runaways) he was absent from the episode on April 17, which it was later revealed was a result of Ben catching COVID-19 and being unable to safely travel to California from Wisconsin. He returned again on May 15, 2023 and went up against 8-day champion Hannah Wilson, beating her quite handily - having accumulated a whopping $41,000 before Final Jeopardy was even played - despite not having played in a month and Hannah being an extremely strong player. He ran a nine-game streak, where he accumulated $252,600.
Ben’s strategy involves hunting for Daily Doubles being front and center; he did an excellent job controlling variance in his games, having found all but four of the 27 available during his run and getting 18 of them correct. This hunting and buzzer prowess commonly elevates him into lock positions; he has only played one game where he was in danger of losing going into Final Jeopardy. He is also very strong in the Final round, only having missed two of the ten clues during his run.
His game 10 loss to Lynn De Vito on May 23, 2023, was one of the most controversial rulings in the entirety of Season 39. Despite putting up a Coryat of $24,600 to Lynn’s $13,000, Lynn’s getting $3,000 on her Daily Double and Ben’s losing $7,200 on his two Daily Doubles meant that, for the first time, he did not have a runaway, leading Lynn by only $2,600 ($17,400 to $14,800). The correct response to Final Jeopardy was the two Shakespeare characters Beatrice and Benedick; unfortunately for Ben, he misremembered the name of the latter and wrote down “Who are Beatrice and Benedict?” This dropped him into second place and made Lynn the new champion; despite Ben claiming that he was properly ruled incorrect on Reddit, that did not stop a good section of the community from going into a frenzy and demanding that he be invited back.
Ben is the third seed for the 2024 ToC, behind just Cris Pannullo (21 wins, $748,286) and Ray Lalonde (13 wins, $386,400).
Trivia[]
- He is the fourth contestant not to return the week after Friday on Monday. The first was Priscilla Ball (she felt ill), the second was Claudia Corriere (she accepted a well-paying job) and the third was Zach Newkirk (COVID travel restrictions).
- Ben is the first player in the Sky’s The Limit era (unlimited win streaks) to have turned all five of his first five games into runaways, and the first to do so since Rick Knutsen in 2001.
- He is also the first player to turn his first six and seven appearances on the show into all runaways (after Chuck Forrest in 1985-86) and the first to do so with their first eight and nine appearances ever.