2022 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions News

Episode 3 of the Inside Jeopardy! Podcast revealed a brand new format for the 2022 Tournament of Champions, as well as who will be in it. Buzzy Cohen, the 2017 ToC champ, was a guest of Michael Davies and Sarah Foss on the podcast. For those who do not listen to podcasts, Jeopardy! is kind enough to provide it on YouTube.

They start out talking about the contestants who will be participating in the 2022 Tournament of Champions. There will be 21 contestants, including 2 yet unknown winners from October’s Second Chance Tournament. Here are the other champs with links to the last game each one played.

• 02-22-22 Jaskaran Singh (National College Championship)
• 12-17-21 Sam Buttrey (Professors Tournament)
• 01-26-22 Amy Schneider
• 10-11-21 Matt Amodio
• 05-06-22 Mattea Roach
• 06-06-22 Ryan Long
• 10-26-21 Jonathan Fisher
• 01-28-21 Brian Chang
• 07-07-21 Courtney Shah
• 06-14-22 Eric Ahasic
• 02-01-21 Zach Newkirk
• 06-22-22 Megan Wachspress
• 11-17-21 Andrew He
• 11-03-21 Tyler Rhode
• 03-31-22 Jackie Kelly
• 02-12-21 John Focht
• 03-07-22 Margaret Shelton
• 03-11-22 Maureen O’Neil
• 03-01-22 Christine Whelchel

At 21:42 in the video, they start talking about the new format of the 2022 ToC. Right off the bat, it’s announced that Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach will go straight to the semi-final games. A need was felt to draw a distinction between the 3 top players because of the extraordinary number of games each of them won. Therefore, none of the other 18 contestants will have to face off against Amy, Matt or Mattea in their quarterfinals.

The 18 other players will compete in 6 quarterfinal games. There are no Wild Cards. The 6 quarterfinal winners plus Amy, Matt and Mattea will then face off in three semi-final games to determine the three finalists. The final matches will be like the GOAT tournament. The three final winners will play until one of them wins three games. The finals can run from three to seven days.

The producers think that eliminating the Wild Cards will make the quarterfinal games much more competitive. They also think that doing away with the 2-day final format in favor of the first to win 3-games approach will result in more competitive games.

The URL near the end of the podcast, Jeopardy.com/TOC2022 is live now, with images of each contestant and a graphic image of the tournament format. According to the information on that page, the 2022 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions will start on October 31, 2022.