January 7 (2020-01-07) – January 14, 2020 (2020-01-14)
Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time is a special tournamentlimited-run series of the game showJeopardy! that took place in January 2020. The tournament was produced forABC and aired on the network inprime time. This was the second time aJeopardy! competition aired on network television (regular shows air in syndication); the first occurred in 1990 when the special tournament seriesSuper Jeopardy! was carried by ABC. This was the last majorJeopardy! tournamentAlex Trebek hosted.
The tournament featured former championsKen Jennings,Brad Rutter, andJames Holzhauer competing for a $1 million top prize and the recognition of being the show’s greatest champion of all time.[1][2][3][4]
Jennings won the tournament on January 14, 2020, with Holzhauer finishing second and Rutter third.[5] With the $1 million prize added to his previous winnings across several game show appearances, Jennings surpassed Rutter as thehighest-earning American game show contestant of all time, a record he had previously held twice.
The tournament began on January 7, 2020, and each match consisted of two games. Each game was played as normal with the Jeopardy! and Double Jeopardy! rounds followed by Final Jeopardy!. Just like inSuper Jeopardy!, the first two seasons ofRock & Roll Jeopardy!,Sports Jeopardy!, and the futureJeopardy! Masters, dollar amounts are replaced with point amounts. The contestant with the highest combined score from the two games would win the match, and the first one to three match wins won the tournament.[4]
Ken Jennings: Jennings first appeared on the program in 2004 and set twoJeopardy! records that he still holds. He won 74 consecutive matches, and his total of $2,522,700 is a record for non-tournament winnings.[6] Entering the tournament, his totalJeopardy! winnings totaled $3,372,700, which was second-highest behind fellow competitor Rutter.[7][8] Jennings said he took part in the competition reluctantly, fearing that because of his age and repeated tournament losses to Rutter (Rutter having won every head-to-head matchup between the two except the IBM Challenge), he was past his peak as aJeopardy! contestant. He agreed to compete largely out of respect forAlex Trebek and because it would be "almost certainly my last time" as a contestant.[9][10]
Brad Rutter: Rutter was thehighest-earning American game show contestant of all time entering the tournament. He first appeared onJeopardy! in October 2000, during the era of the program where contestants were retired after winning five consecutive matches and before the show doubled its question values. After winning $55,102 in his initial run, Rutter qualified for and won the 2001 Tournament of Champions, which at the time was played for $100,000. He was invited back in 2002 for the special Million Dollar Masters Tournament with several past champions, and emerged victorious again to become the firstJeopardy! contestant to win over $1 million. Shortly after Jennings’s run as champion ended, Rutter was one of the many former champions invited back for the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, where two of the former champions in the field would face Jennings in the final match for $2 million. Rutter defeated Jennings andJerome Vered in the final to win the tournament, and the prize money made him the new all-time American game show winnings leader. He later defeated Jennings andRoger Craig in the 2014 Battle of the Decades tournament, winning an additional $1 million and reclaiming his spot at the top of the all-time winnings list from Jennings, who had retaken it in 2009. Rutter still holds the record as the highest-earning contestant (primarily from special tournament events) onJeopardy! with a total of $4,688,436 entering the tournament. Rutter entered the tournament having never lost a match against a human, only coming up short in an exhibition match featuring him and Jennings taking onWatson inJeopardy!: The IBM Challenge in 2011.[11][7][8][12][4]
James Holzhauer: Holzhauer entered the tournament the third-highest-earningJeopardy! contestant of all time, behind Rutter and Jennings. He had won $2,714,216 entering the tournament, with $2,464,216 of that won in 33 matches in 2019. He also won the 2019 Tournament of Champions several weeks before this tournament was announced, taking home an additional $250,000.[7][8][6] Holzhauer is second behind Jennings in total winnings during regular play and, at the time, he was the only contestant besides Jennings to win more than 30 consecutive games. (BothMatt Amodio andAmy Schneider have since surpassed Holzhauer's record of 32 games.) Holzhauer's aggressive wagering on clues allowed him to set several new single-day winning records. He is the only contestant to win $100,000 in a single game, doing so six times, and also held the top 16 single-game scores in program history at the time.[13][7][6] Jennings and Rutter said they had to mimic Holzhauer's aggressive style of play to stand a chance.[10]
On November 18, 2019,ABC announced that the three highest-earningJeopardy! contestants of all time—Jennings,Rutter, andHolzhauer—would compete in a best-of-seven prime-time tournament,Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time. The first contestant to win three matches receives the title and a grand prize of $1 million. The others receive $250,000 each.[14] The series was produced bySony Pictures Television, withHarry Friedman executive producing andAlex Trebek hosting.[15] This marked the first timeJeopardy! had aired onnetwork television instead of insyndication sinceSuper Jeopardy!, a prime-time tournament that aired in 1990 and was also hosted by Trebek.[4] ABC had been the lead broadcaster of the syndicated version since the premiere of its 9th season in 1992, upon which it was picked up for most of the network'sowned-and-operated stations.[3] In addition to ABC, the tournament was broadcast inCanada onYes TV and two of its partner stations,CHEK andNTV, all of which also carry the syndicated version.[16][17][18] The series began taping on December 10, 2019.[19]
