Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time

The Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time was a January 2020 primetime special, featuring the top three winnings Jeopardy! contestants, Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, and James Holzhauer, competing in the first-to-3-wins series with a top prize of $1 million to determine the greatest Jeopardy! contestant "of all time." This special aired on ABC from January 7-9, 2020 for the first three matches, and the final special aired on January 14, 2020. Ken Jennings won the tournament along with the $1,000,000 prize and the title "Greatest of All-Time". Like Super Jeopardy! three decades prior, the clue values were in points instead of cash but were the exact same as on the regular shows themselves.

This also marked the last time Ken Jennings appeared on Jeopardy! as a contestant. He became a consulting producer starting with the syndicated series' 37th Season, and provided video clues in some early episodes. Following the death of Alex Trebek, Jennings served as as an interim host, with his run lasting from January 11–February 19, 2021. And starting in Season 38, Jennings and Mayim Bialik have been co-hosting the syndicated series; both were named permanent co-hosts for Season 39. It also marked the last Jeopardy! primetime special hosted by Alex Trebek.

Additionally, as contestants are barred from competing on the show if they know someone who works for the show, Ken’s duties as consulting producer and guest host have effectively disqualified both Brad and James from competing on the show again. However, the three of them have remained good friends and now star as the three chasers on ABC’s version of The Chase; Season 2 saw them joined by a fourth chaser, Mark “The Beast” Labbett, and there is large push for Season 3 or Season 4 to include Matt Amodio as a Chaser as well.

Results

• Round 1: #1 / #2
• Round 2: #1 / #2
• Round 3: #1 / #2
• Round 4: #1 / #2

Note

• Twenty-three of the twenty-four Daily Doubles during this tournament were either True Daily Doubles or, if the contestant that uncovered it had less than the maximum value of a clue, $1,000 (or $2,000 in Double Jeopardy). The only one that was not was Daily Double #23, which saw Ken wager just 5,000 of his 8,800 points.
• James’ 20,200 wager on the final Daily Double of the tournament was the highest ever True Daily Double wager.
• James also set the record for highest loss in Final Jeopardy, when he wagered his entire bank of 44,000 points in the second game of the fourth match. He needed to do so to have any hope of catching Ken’s lead from the first game, which saw Ken finish with 65,600 points to James’ 34,181 and Brad’s 0.
• Ken is believed to have set the record for highest successful True Final Jeopardy bet, at 25,600 points in Match 3, Game 1.
  • He would break his own record the next match, with a 32,800 wager in Game 1 of the fourth match.
• Ken found 8 of the Daily Doubles during the tournament and was correct on 7 of them, giving him a net gain of 51,600 points for the tournament, while James found 6 and was correct on 5 en route to a net gain of 39,600 points. Brad, despite finding the most Daily Doubles of the three contestants - he found 10 throughout - was only correct on four of them, leading to a net gain of -14,800 points.
• James, Ken, and Brad combined for an average of 56 correct responses per game.

Trivia

• With this win, Ken Jennings reclaimed the top rank for American game show winnings records.
• Those who competed in this competition were later reunited on a program called The Chase.
• In this match, Brad suffered his first defeat in a human-to-human battle for the first time in 20 years.
• Again, a Shakespeare-related question determined the fate of James and Ken, who scored the most prize money at the time by correcting this problem in their 38th consecutive win, and winning by correcting the last one. On the other hand, this problem broke the record for the most prize money in regular games, and James lost the title as he could not answer the last question.
• A year later, Ken took on the consulting producer starting in Season 37 and special host after Alex Trebek's death. As a result, it was the last game that Ken played as an active player since, according to the rules, people who have worked for the company are prohibited from appearing as participants.
• The set used in this competition partly carried over to the regular syndicated series starting in S37.