Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time participant Ken Jennings
Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time was a special tournament limited-run series of the game show Jeopardy! that took place in January 2020. The tournament was produced for ABC and aired on the network in prime time. This was the second time a Jeopardy! competition aired on network television; the first occurred in 1990 when the special tournament series Super Jeopardy! was carried by ABC.
The tournament featured former champions Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, and James Holzhauer competing for a $1 million top prize and the recognition of being the show’s greatest champion of all time.Jennings won the tournament on January 14, 2020, with Holzhauer finishing second and Rutter third. With the $1 million prize added to his previous winnings across several game show appearances, Jennings surpassed Rutter as the highest-earning American game show contestant of all time, a record he had previously held twice.Contestants
Ken Jennings:Jennings first appeared on the program in 2004 and set two Jeopardy! records that he still holds. He won 74 consecutive matches, and his total of $2,522,700 is a record for non-tournament winnings. Entering the tournament, his total Jeopardy! winnings totaled $3,372,700, which was second-highest behind fellow competitor Rutter. 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 a Jeopardy! contestant. He agreed to compete largely out of respect for Alex Trebek and because it would "almost certainly [be Jennings'] last time" as a contestant.
Brad Rutter:Rutter was the highest-earning American game show contestant of all time entering the tournament. He first appeared on Jeopardy! 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 first Jeopardy! 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 and Jerome 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 and Roger Craig in the 2014 Battle of the Decades tournament, winning an additional $1,000,000 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) on Jeopardy! 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 on Watson in Jeopardy!: The IBM Challenge in 2011.
James Holzhauer:Holzhauer entered the tournament the third-highest-earning Jeopardy! 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. 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. (Both Matt Amodio and Amy 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. Jennings and Rutter said they had to mimic Holzhauer's aggressive style of play to stand a chance.