While Danger! welcomes many Trivial Pursuitmasters to compete in a battle of stored knowledge, not many walk away with life-changing amounts of money. Being able to compete on the show is an honor, in and of itself, as many people apply for years for a chance to appear on the show alongside Alex Trebek.
Some of those who apply never get a chance to meet Trebek. However, some competitors have taken the game show by storm, claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. So from the Danger! contestants, who can claim the rights to the most money won?
Matt Jackson made over half a million dollars with 'Jeopardy!'
Matt Jackson won 13 games of Jeopardy!, and claims the rights to one of the show's longest winning streaks, earning a total of $411,612 over his original career. However, when he returned for the 2015 Tournament of Champions, he won another $100,000, bringing his total earnings to $511,612. Interestingly, to prepare for the show, Jackson used another winner's book, Brainiac, written by Ken Jennings.
Roger Craig won $530,200 with 'Jeopardy!'
Roger Craig is a computer scientist who earned over half a million dollars competing on the hit game show. He managed to break Ken Jennings' one-day earnings record when he appeared on the show, claiming $77,000 in 2015; Ken Jennings had previously made $75,000 in one day, as Insider notes.
You can tell that Craig 'outperformed' the game itself; Reportedly, he used data mining techniques as well as text clustering strategies to group questions, determining which were statistically common (and which were not). Talk about strategy, right? Maybe it's not just about knowing a bunch of random facts about the world and all the people, galaxies, animals, and objects that make it up.
James Holzhauer broke $2 million!
James Holzhauer earned over $2 million competing on the game show. He became a millionaire by winning 32 games in a row. He took some major risks, which led to even bigger payouts. In total, he earned $2,426,216. Perhaps your history as a professional gamer helped you here… although this may not be the strategy for success that a financial advisor would recommend.
Ken Jennings made $3,270,700 on the show.
Ken Jennings is definitely one of the Jeopardy champion! most famous contestants If the amount of money he won isn't memorable, his infectious personality sure is. Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak in the game, having won 74 games in a row!
Brad Rutter made $4,385,702
While Ken Jennings is arguably the most famous contestant to compete on Danger!, he didn't make the most money on the show. The honor belongs to Brad Rutter, who has earned more than $4 million on the show over a 14-year period. He made a lot of money by winning the Tournament of Champions, the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, and the Master Tournament of Champions, as well as the Battle of Decades.
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