Jeopardy! viewers haven't seen someone truly dominate the game show since Ken Jennings'
infamous run of 74 games.
But James Holzhauer has changed all that.
So who is the math whiz and professional gambler who's made headlines the world over?
Here's the untold truth of James Holzhauer.
Humble roots
James Holzhauer grew up in Naperville, Illinois.
As a kid he was already kind of a prodigy, in 1989 he was featured in the Chicago Tribune
as a 4-year-old math whiz.
His preschool teachers said he could add two digit numbers in his head, which is pretty
astonishing for someone so young.
In fact his teachers were evidently so impressed by his math skills that they had to get special
work just for him.
And then he grew up to be a professional gambler, so they must have all been so proud.
Holzhauer says his parents helped teach him the value of money.
He told Newsweek:
"My parents were both very frugal, and I think they're responsible for my attitude of always
looking for good value, especially in my work.
In a way, sports betting is like a big game of The Price Is Right: Just like I'd pay $3
for a Coke Zero but not $4, I'd lay three points on the Bears-Packers point spread but
not four."
Honoring grandma
As it turns out, James Holzhauer is roughly the same age as the current, syndicated version
of the game show, and he's been watching it for most of his life.
He explained to Vulture:
"When I watched Jeopardy! as a kid, I would primarily watch with my grandmother…Her
first language wasn't English, so she couldn't follow along well, but she wanted to share
this experience with me since she saw it was something I really liked.
I promised her I'd one day be up on that stage for her.
I don't promise anything unless I intend to fulfill it.
To me, it's fulfilling the promise I made to her 25 years ago."
"And this is for you, Granny.
Is your grandma still alive?
No."
A less-than-awesome student
So any human with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything and also mad math skills must
have been a great student, right?
Well, that was true early on, according to the New York Times, Holzhauer got moved into
fifth grade math at age 7, and he skipped the second grade altogether.
But other than that he doesn't seem to have gone very far in the academically competitive
world of K through 12.
He usually did well on tests, but he was still mostly a C student.
Why?
His brother says his mind was elsewhere…
"He memorized all the words to the movie Dumb and Dumber."
"Hey!
Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?
AHHHHHHHHHHH!"
That probably didn't help, but the real reason for the average grades was because he couldn't
be bothered to do his homework.
In high school he was also known to skip class on occasion, so he could devote his time to
more productive activities, you know, like playing internet poker.
A champion by high school
So while Holzhauer was a pretty solid C student, that didn't stop him from becoming a champion
while he was in junior high and high school.
According to the Chicago Tribune, when he was in junior high he made it to the finals
in Mathcounts, a national middle school mathematics competition.
As a senior he joined the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering Team and placed
first in physics and second in math at the state competition at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
Holzhauer's high school math coach Elizabeth Moore said he specialized in a timed event
involving teams of two.
That event in particular probably helped prepare him for the high-pressure environment of a
Jeopardy! game.
Math major to major gambler
Holzhauer did finally make it to college, despite all the slacking and high school poker-playing.
He then went to the University of Illinois and graduated with a bachelor's degree in
mathematics, which must have thrilled his parents, until he told them he'd be going
on to a lucrative career in sports betting.
To be fair, he didn't go straight from college to professional betting.
According to the New York Post he did actually make an effort to land a sensible job with
the front offices of Major League Baseball, but his efforts never got him anywhere.
He told the New York Times that he also spent a year applying for work as an actuary, but
it was just the sort of desk job he couldn't really see himself sticking with.
Meanwhile, he was paying most of his bills with his gambling income, so it probably wasn't
that hard to abandon the job search and just stick with the career path that was already
working, even if it was something as unique and kinda weird as sports gambling.
Even as a kid, Holzhauer would collect baseball statistics and put them in a spreadsheet,
and then use that information to determine who was truly the MVP of baseball.
His first forays into sports betting was with "future bets," where you pick the World Series-winning
team well in advance of the actual World Series.
Holzhauer did this by analyzing the odds mathematically.
Basically, his math-loving brain gave him an edge over other bettors, which allowed
him to win often enough to make a living.
A longtime game show champion
James Holzhauer seemed to come out of nowhere, but if you're a game show-watching junkie,
you might have seen his face before.
As it turns out, Jeopardy! wasn't Holzhauer's first game show and it wasn't his first big
win, either.
Prior to Jeopardy!, Holzhauer was on Game Show Network's "The Chase" in 2014, where
contestants challenge a quiz show genius called "the chaser."
According to the New York Post, as team leader, Holzhauer helped his fellow contestants earn
a cash prize of $175,000.
"What top gallery in Florence designed by Giorgio Vasari as an office building"
"Uffizi."
"Correct"
"Time!"
"Holy cow, that was impressive."
But that's not all, Holzhauer was a record-breaker on that show, too, answering 12 questions
correctly in the opening round, an accomplishment that wasn't ever repeated over the lifetime
of the show.
And then in the final round he answered 19 questions correctly, setting yet another record
that was never beaten.
A family tradition
It's probably pretty unlikely that anyone in your inner circle is a game show champion.
Game show champs are a rare breed, not only because it's difficult to win a game show
but also because it's difficult to get the opportunity to be on a game show.
In Holzhauer's family, though, being on a game show and taking home a bunch of money
is not especially unusual.
According to Heavy.com, his wife, Melissa Sassin Holzhauer, was also a game show champion,
although not quite at the same level as her famous husband.
Sassin was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire in 2014, and her winnings totaled around $29,000.
Granted, that's is only about 1% of what her husband brought home, although it's also a
whole lot more than you've probably ever won on a game show.
So who's criticizing?
Children's book trivia
If you're going to be on Jeopardy!, it's good to have a mathematical mind, it's good to
be comfortable in a high-pressure setting, and it's good to have a strategy for betting
your money.
But ultimately, what you really need to win Jeopardy! is knowledge.
Because if you can't provide the right question for the given answer, all the mathematics
and strategy in the world isn't going to get you very far.
"Their treasure wasn't gold, it was knowledge.
Knowledge was their treasure."
So where does Holzhauer get his encyclopedic knowledge of trivia?
From books on useless facts?
From the pages of lengthy tomes written by crusty historians?
Nope.
He gets it from children's books.
That's right, according to the Chicago Tribune, Holzhauer actually goes to the library and
peruses the kids section, especially when he needs to learn a subject he doesn't have
a lot of natural interest in.
He explained:
"The books there are filled with pictures and fun facts, and they're a great way to
learn the nuts and bolts of any subject."
Six years trying
Holzhauer didn't enter into the whole Jeopardy! thing on a whim.
According to the New York Times, he took the online tryout test repeatedly for six years
before he was finally offered a chance to audition in person.
In the meantime, he made himself a practice buzzer out of a mechanical pencil, and went
about trying to absorb as much useless information as possible.
"I know EVERYTHING!"
And, well, it worked.
His original goal
For his time on Jeopardy!
Holzhauer gave himself a modest goal: to break the one-game record of $77,000, set in 2010
by Roger Craig.
And according to Deadspin, that's exactly what he did in his fourth game.
But he didn't break it by just a little bit, he exploded the danged thing and took home
$110,914.
Holzhauer later told Vulture that the former record holder reached out to offer congratulations:
"He was really gracious.
He congratulated me and offered some advice about the media frenzy that he knew was coming
for me.
I wasn't ready for it, but he helped me prepare."
He honored his daughter
According to Heavy, Holzhauer and his wife have a daughter, who is nicknamed "Booger,"
which must certainly have a great story behind it.
"Why do they call you Booger?"
"I dunno."
That's what Holzhauer called her as he wished her a happy birthday during that record-smashing
episode of Jeopardy! where he left poor Roger Craig's record looking all sad and pathetic
on the tape reels of Jeopardy! past.
And that final earnings number of $110,914?
That's Holzhauer's daughter's birthday: November 9, 2014.
"11-9-14 is when my daughter was born."
He honored his family
"It's really remarkable that he always places bets that always represents someone's birthday
or wedding anniversary."
A lot of Holzhauer's Jeopardy! bets were cryptic numbers that actually represented the birthdate
of a loved one.
According to Heavy, Holzhauer bet $3,268 in Final Jeopardy the first day he competed on
the show.
That was in honor of his nephew Jack, who was born on March 26, 2008.
He made a similar bet in honor of his niece, who was 3 at the time, but when her family
tried to explain the birthday gesture to her, she just wanted to know where her presents
were.
Some observers criticized Holzhauer for the strange numbers he chose to bet during the
game, but Holzhauer made no excuses.
He told the Naperville Sun:
"Family will always be more important to me than money or winning on Jeopardy!, and the
bets were a fun and unconventional way for me to show that."
All good things...
James Holzhauer smashed every one of his television audience's expectations, including the last
one.
Everyone expected that he would beat Ken Jennings' all-time cash winning record, and in the end
he smashed that expectation by not actually breaking the record.
Jennings finished his run having earned $2,522,700 over the course of 75 episodes.
In 33 episodes, Holzhauer took home $2,464,216, just $58,484 shy of Jennings' record.
The world was so eager to know what would happen that the results of Holzhauer's final
Jeopardy! appearance were leaked to the media hours before the show began airing on June
3, 2019.
According to the New York Times, Holzhauer lost to librarian Emma Boettcher.
Boettcher went into Final Jeopardy a few thousand dollars ahead of Holzhauer, bet enough to
win no matter what Holzhauer wagered, and then got the answer right.
After what seemed like it should have been a devastating loss, an upbeat Holzhauer said
he was okay with how his Jeopardy! story had ended.
He explained:
"Nobody likes to lose.
But I'm very proud of how I did, and I really exceeded my own expectations for the show.
So I don't feel bad about it."
And really, the bright side of Holzhauer's loss is pretty bright, indeed.
He left Jeopardy! a wealthy man who broke multiple show records.
On average, he won around $77,000 per game, more than double Jennings' average.
Remember, $77,000 was previously the biggest sum anyone had ever won in one game, and he
averaged​ that.
He might not have broken the biggest record, but he clearly did pretty alright for himself.
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