Jesse Yu Explains the Jeopardy Chat
Jesse Chu was a recent contestant on Jeopardy on June 25, 2014. He has already commented on Fikkle Fame’s recap of the match and some of the clues that he wished he could do over. And then there was the chat segment from the game:
Jesse tells us how that came about: “When we fill out the contestant application, we fill in 5 facts that we feel might be interesting about us for a contestant interview. Then there are 4 additional pages of random facts that they think might make good prompts. When we get to the green room, one of the contestant coordinators goes over three that they decided would make good interview prompts and asks us our preference.”
As his favorite, Jesse picked the fact that he has a cousin with the same name (although spelled differently) as a recent big winner on Jeopardy, Arthur Chu. “I picked Arthur Chiu,” Jesse says, “because Arthur Chu’s episodes were still airing at the time and he was still fresh in everyone’s mind in the studio. The episode where he lost (Wed 3/12/14) hadn’t aired until the day after my episode taped.
“My other two prompts were asking about my 4 years volunteering/working at New York Comic Con and wanting to be a teacher if only I could be assured that my students were well behaved. They also tell us that the prompt is Alex’s choice, and he could ask us any of them, even if we decide on one as a favorite.”
As you can see Trebek chose Jesse’s favorite and all was going smoothly until Trebek decided to ask Jesse if his cousin named Arthur was smart. Jesse didn’t quite know how to respond so he ended up feeling that he had inadvertently dissed his cousin! Some of Jesse’s cousins raked him over the coals but Arthur Chiu himself was a good sport about the whole thing.
Some of the guests on here have asked Jesse about various aspects of his Jeopardy! experience and he has been kind enough to answer them. If you have any questions about being a contestant on Jeopardy! for Jesse, post it in the comments.
Here’s one: How does it feel to get a Daily Double that you know after you have made a true Daily Double bet?
When I eventually got around to showing my cousin Arthur Chiu the episode and the Trebek contestant interview segment (as he had continued to avoid watching it, probably out of embarrassment) when I was over at his place for a family get together on July 4th in front of other cousins and family, he shook his head at me when it got to that point and couldn’t believe what I said about him on national TV, acting faintly embarrassed in front of the rest of the family because of it.
But he was cool about it afterwards, didn’t hold it too much over me the rest of the day… We mostly forgot about it after a couple of hours as the day went on and we did stuff together.
All in all, he took it pretty well, I would think…
Still, it will probably be a family joke for the next sixty years. All in good fun, with great mileage.
Yeah, we already have a bunch of family jokes on my mom’s side of the family, many involving me, so this will only add to them.
Hopefully, in a good way, too.
As you know, I often advocate a more conservative betting strategy for FJ than others do. I believe that the value of returning is high. But, I wonder if that is right. So, as a mathematician, I was wondering if you would help? For ease of calculation, let’s say the average winner gets 15,000 ( all numbers involved will be pre-tax), and there are payouts of 1000 and 2000 as well. Assuming everyone has an equal chance, the value of one game would be 6000 [1/3*(15,000 +2000+1000)]. However, the winner returns, so the estimated value would be 2,000 [1/9*18,000] , then 667, then 222, 74, 25, …then 10 for the rest. So, if these assumptions (15,000 average and all with equal chance) are correct, the appearance is worth about 9,100. As a mathematician, does this look right?
*value of one game per person*
So, to sum, assuming every player of equal ability, the value of an appearance is about 60% of the average payday.
Never mind. I realize that one can’t assume this relationship with two fixed amounts and one variable.
@Jesse
I have two questions i was wondering about for the longest time:
1. how long to they give you between the end of dj and when you have to make your bet for fj?
2. are you allowed to use a calculator or a piece of paper and a pen or do you have to figure it out just with your head?
there are so many weird fj bets that you sometimes wonder how somebody bright enough can just miscalculate by 1 K like jill last friday(and still win since she was the only one who got fj right) or blow it altogether and just “freezes”.
i am sure others on this site are also wondering how much time you have to place your final bet and if any help except your brain is allowed. thank you in advance and take care! best wishes from maui!
We get a piece of paper and a pencil to work out our bets for Final. Our scores are displayed right above the main camera, to the left of the board, so we all know how much each of us has at all times in the game, helpful during Daily Double wagering as well.
The break between the end of Double Jeopardy and Final is about the same amount of time as the commercial break between those two. They give us enough time to work it out and don’t come back from the commercial break and show the Aleve shot until all of us are ready with our wagers and have locked them in.
Don’t think they would rush us if we took a little while longer with our wagers, but I guess maybe they would try and get someone to hurry it up to move the game along if they were taking an inordinate amount of time to figure out a Final Jeopardy wager.
Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you with this answer, I was busy with other things in the interim. Still, better late than never, I guess!
I guess I remembered it wrong. It seemed so much faster, but I still don’t think that the commercial breaks are as long as at home. I seem to remember that Johnny Gilbert does the Aleve spot live (although it certainly could be replaced).
Sometimes Johnny Gilbert does the Aleve spot live, other times it’s a prerecorded one that plays, although they do have a bunch of them recorded. Pretty sure all of the Aleve spots that played during my day of taping were prerecorded, though I may be misremembering and Johnny did do one or two live, I dunno.
The commercial breaks do seem to go faster than they are at home. We get some downtime during the breaks, when Alex does some audience Q&A, or does some redub corrections and fixes of clues he may have misread previously. We contestants get a bottle of water and a pep talk, maybe a mic or makeup fix if we need it and then we’re good to go again in a couple of minutes or so. I guess what we get really are shorter than the actual commercial breaks, or maybe it just feels that way when competing or you’re in the audience.
Speaking of Aleve, I dunno if I mentioned before the ice cream cake that my cousins bought and had decorated with the word Aleve at Carvel the day of my episode airing, which we ate together at a post viewing party. Since Aleve is the sponsor who pretty much pays for the second and third place prizes, as Johnny Gilbert says at the end of every episode, they figured that it was appropriate for them to have the cake decorated so.
In watching the game, you were fast on the buzzer, with mixed results. Would you attribute that mostly to the speed of the game, the thrill of doubling up, the speed with which Jennifer would buzz (ultimately with mixed results), green room intakes, or perhaps something else?
Sorry for not getting back to people on this topic sooner rather than later, I had a bunch of things come up.
I was trying to be fast on the buzzer, especially when I thought I knew the answer. Results, as you say, were mixed. The speed of the game was a factor, as that thing goes way quicker than you can imagine. I should’ve slowed down and done the Arthur Chu thing in allowing my opponents to attempt to answer first if I wasn’t sure, and then using their wrong answers to try and get the right one. Jennifer buzzing in quickly and building up a decent lead also led me to try and be aggressive, which didn’t work out so well either.
Green room nerves were mostly gone by the time I had seen a couple episodes tape, though some nerves were still there. Can never really get rid of them… Didn’t fall apart too badly on stage, so I guess the nerves weren’t too big of a factor, I guess, though some might see things differently because of how I ultimately did in my episode.
You did well for how fast the game goes. It just looked like you thought your best chance to win was to act first. It just didn’t exactly work out, but you were still in it until the end, so it wasn’t that bad of a strategy. Jennifer was tough: I wish she had won a couple more to play in ToC.
Yeah, seeing her in the ToC would’ve been nice. Again, I sat next to her mom in the audience after I got back from the lunch break, so I was pulling for her quite a bit even if she did beat me. Was really excited for her when she won another game after mine.
On the other hand, I also did kinda want Ari or Sunil to beat her, since they seemed like pretty cool guys from when I met them in the green room and beforehand at the hotel in the case of Sunil, but what’s done is done…
Still an experience figuratively few will ever have.
Yeah, it was really fun to do. Got to meet Alex and a bunch of pretty cool people, got to go to LA, and got to be on national TV!
First, thank you for answering my barrage of questions which can be accessed on the discussion for your game.
Secondly, you stated that you had a good educational background (school and SAT), and you keep up with the NYTimes. Other than that, what did you do to prepare for your appearance?
Really, I just watched Jeopardy episodes to familiarize myself with the type of questions that they ask. And to try and remind myself not to overthink things, which I sometimes do, like when I answered Haiphong to that Asian Cities question, since I doubt the average Jeopardy watcher knows about that place, but almost everyone knows where Da Nang is.
I also checked out j-archive for a while, but that’s about it. I already spend too much time on the internet, and more time wasn’t going to help me too much. I mentioned my Wikipedia habits in a previous post too, so I think that helped a bit.
Also, I figured you could also link one of the meme photos that was created when someone on my Facebook who was watching the show took a screenshot of the episode and posted text over it. You know the one I’m talking about, the one that concerns my cousin. I remember I linked it in one of the episode recap comments, pretty sure its the one you linked to my episode…
It is the most amazing feeling in the world, really. My expression there really tells it all.
Great job, Jesse. Have you been recognized by anyone from your appearance on Jeopardy outside of your family and friends? Been stopped on the streets of NYC?
Not yet, as it was only one episode I appeared on. Still, when I walk around with the Jeopardy baseball cap and the tote bag they gave us, it does invariably lead to questions about whether I work for Jeopardy or something like that. Then I launch into my spiel about being on the show.
Sometimes I just ask random people if they watch the show and say that I was on it last week. Some justact annoyed, but most are amazed and ask me how it happened and how I did. Then I launch into my spiel again.
I was in Chinatown the day before my episode was to air at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory getting some ice cream (mmm, Don Tat and Green Tea ice creams…) with my Jeopardy hat and tote bag, jokingly asking if I could get a discount since I was going to be on Jeopardy the next day, trying to drum up as much publicity as I could. One of the customers asked to take a photo with me since her mom was a huge Jeopardy fan. My first (semi-) celebrity picture! I was so excited!
Couple more people on the streets of Chinatown asked me about my hat and I told them to watch the episode tomorrow.
A customer at my mom’s laundromat asked me if I was the guy who was on Jeopardy a couple days ago. I had told a bunch of the regular customers there to watch the episode and when it aired, and I help out there often enough that my face is pretty recognizable, even when I’m not sporting the Jeopardy baseball cap.
That’s about all the recognition I’ve had so far.
For NY man that’s great. We have a rep for looking past people and not at them. LOL