Speaker 1: Check it down, Man down, Man skill, Alexander. I love
Speaker 1: when people say this next guest needs no introduction, and
Speaker 1: then they proceeded to reduce ing. I will do the same.
Speaker 1: This next guest really does need no introduction, but just
Speaker 1: for the sake of introduction. Uh. He won thirty two
Speaker 1: consecutive games on Jeopardy that were aired between April fourth
Speaker 1: and June two. He raked in more than two point
Speaker 1: four million dollars I'll be exact, two million, four two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixteen dollars worth of prize money. That is
Speaker 1: an average of when you factor in game thirty three,
Speaker 1: which was the game he lost. When you put it
Speaker 1: all in the mix, he averaged seventy four thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy three dollars per episode. That average beats
Speaker 1: the previous single game high before he ever showed up.
Speaker 1: Ladies and Gentlemen Jeopardy James James Holt Tower, good morning
Speaker 1: to you, sir. How you doing? I hate to correct you,
Speaker 1: the previous gameer was seventy seven thousand, and there actually
Speaker 1: is a vocal community of fans online who are disappointed
Speaker 1: that I didn't get a little bit more to beat
Speaker 1: that average. Throughout the whole run, just a little short
Speaker 1: of it. So so yes, so so my my intel
Speaker 1: here is incorrect then, so you just fell short of
Speaker 1: that pretty close though. Um, First of all, Jeopardy James,
Speaker 1: do you like that name or do you sort of
Speaker 1: coming at the the U R L from my original
Speaker 1: fan page on Facebook? So I can't be too upset
Speaker 1: with that. I mean, people like alliteration. There's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that, and I don't. It's not like I feel
Speaker 1: that people are trying to define my entire life by this.
Speaker 1: They're just you know, it's kind of the celebrity persona
Speaker 1: I got. So. So, first of all, thank you for coming.
Speaker 1: I we're going to get into your sports betting because
Speaker 1: you are a sports better and I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about that during this hour. But and I
Speaker 1: know you've you've talked about the Jeopardy aspect of this
Speaker 1: in the background many many times in other media. But
Speaker 1: for those who are tuning in for the first time
Speaker 1: who have not, how did when did the Jeopardy bug
Speaker 1: start for you? How did you ever get it in
Speaker 1: your mind? Hey, I want to go on this show. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of been a long time coming, I would say,
Speaker 1: when I was eight. I like to say that my
Speaker 1: life path was set out early in life because I
Speaker 1: happened to grow up in the Chicago area and I
Speaker 1: would have kind of access to the TV before my
Speaker 1: dad got home from work. And in the Chicago area
Speaker 1: on like most places, we had day baseball because the
Speaker 1: Cubs played afternoon games all but like eighteen games a
Speaker 1: year when I was living there. And then we had Jeopardy,
Speaker 1: and so Jeopardy was on at three PM there what
Speaker 1: normally airs, you know, just before primetime in most markets.
Speaker 1: So I would be watching baseball and Jeopardy when an
Speaker 1: age where I think most kids wouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 1: catch these things on at night, and I got the
Speaker 1: idea like, hey, I'm really into baseball stats, I'm really
Speaker 1: into this game show. You know, maybe one day I
Speaker 1: can probably these into a career. You know, just kind
Speaker 1: of happened that way. Um, I would say, when I
Speaker 1: was a young adult, I would take the Jeopardy test
Speaker 1: online and kind of just be glad to get on
Speaker 1: the show. But then down the road, I thought, We'll
Speaker 1: wait a minute. You know, this is I want opportunity
Speaker 1: at this one. I really try to do my best.
Speaker 1: You know, do things no one's ever seen before. I
Speaker 1: really think that the potential for human achievement is sometimes
Speaker 1: so much higher than anyone realizes until you try it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I sort of comically say on this show when
Speaker 1: I bet unders and games, I'm betting against human achievement.
Speaker 1: That's sort of I think I gravitate towards uh So
Speaker 1: it's interesting that use that phrase. So just to clarify, then,
Speaker 1: so you were intrigued by Jeopardy Jeopardy as a child.
Speaker 1: You were on a couple of game shows internationally before
Speaker 1: Jeopardy correct. Yeah, so Jeopardy was always the dream. I
Speaker 1: would say, um, but run two thousand eleven, I took
Speaker 1: a hiatus from sports betting for a few years, and
Speaker 1: you know, I needed a project then. So I've seen
Speaker 1: somewhere in the media people say I intentionally took off
Speaker 1: work to prepare for Jeopardy, which is not really true.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I was, you know, I
Speaker 1: kind of on sabbatical and needed something to do, and
Speaker 1: I thought I could do really, really good. It's trivia
Speaker 1: and you know, really knocked the show dead when I
Speaker 1: get on there. And while I was waiting for Jeopardy
Speaker 1: to put me through the Ring learned, get me on.
Speaker 1: There are a couple other shows, the Chase and five
Speaker 1: hundred questions that I did get on. So how many
Speaker 1: times did you audition or go through the the application
Speaker 1: process if you will. So for Jeopardy before they called
Speaker 1: you back, they have an online test and I've taken
Speaker 1: that every year since two thousand six. Um, this is
Speaker 1: only my second in person audition. So if you pass
Speaker 1: the test, I think they have a random draw for
Speaker 1: who gets to go to the in person audition, and
Speaker 1: then maybe like ten of the people who go to
Speaker 1: the in person audition get to go on the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's two elements of this. Obviously, there's then Okay,
Speaker 1: they call you back and you're like, hey, we want
Speaker 1: you to be on Jeopardy. You there's gotta be a
Speaker 1: knowledge base that you've got to acquire. What did you
Speaker 1: lean on? Now you have how much time was between
Speaker 1: that phone call and your first appearance on Jeopardy? How
Speaker 1: much time are we talking about there? So there were
Speaker 1: three weeks and my first episode taped on February five,
Speaker 1: which is two days after the Super Bowl. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of tricky for me to determine how to how
Speaker 1: is gonna divide my time between prepping for the show
Speaker 1: and betting Super Bowl props. And you know, it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a great super Bowl for me because,
Speaker 1: as you know, the pro has often bet on a
Speaker 1: boring game happening, and like, oh my god, you can't
Speaker 1: get it more boring super Bowl than we just had.
Speaker 1: So you know it was great because I kind of
Speaker 1: walked into the studio with like, well, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a great week for me financially, even if I
Speaker 1: punked this right now. Um yeah, you know, three of
Speaker 1: the three weeks they give you is not enough time,
Speaker 1: religio to prepare for the show. You kind of have
Speaker 1: to be doing your prep work in advance even before that.
Speaker 1: And you know, they require a really broad knowledge base,
Speaker 1: but not a particularly deep one. So I would say
Speaker 1: my one of my key strategies was to go to
Speaker 1: like the children's section of the library, look for a
Speaker 1: book that's aimed at twelve year olds that they know, hey,
Speaker 1: this reader doesn't have a great attention to span, they're
Speaker 1: not really that interested in the subject, but let's get
Speaker 1: them interested, you know, And that that really worked well
Speaker 1: for me. So so children's books because they cover a
Speaker 1: wide variety of subjects in a succinct manner. That was
Speaker 1: sort of your hack on that. You also, you know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of literature, for instance, that that is
Speaker 1: asked about on Jeopardy. You're not reading entire books. What
Speaker 1: was your sort of shortcut for that? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there there's a lot of material out there for everything.
Speaker 1: You know, they have these people who draw I would say,
Speaker 1: they dropped like an animated summary of Shakespeare play that
Speaker 1: boils down into a seven minute video you can watch
Speaker 1: on YouTube. You know, if you're able to process that,
Speaker 1: and you you don't want to actually read the Shakespeare
Speaker 1: play like me, you know, then most of the nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts of what Hamlet is about are on there
Speaker 1: if you really want to get it that way, and
Speaker 1: for the most part, I mean, if it's not like
Speaker 1: the Bible or Romeo and Juliet. They don't expect you
Speaker 1: to have actually read the book and taken notes on
Speaker 1: it or something like that. You know, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: know the major themes, the character names, that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff the author obviously, So talking to James Holt Tower,
Speaker 1: by the way, who just fell shy of Ken Jennings
Speaker 1: all time money hall in the history of Jeopardy, but
Speaker 1: set so many records within the within the context of
Speaker 1: the show. By himself and by many, is regarded as
Speaker 1: the greatest Jeopardy player who has ever played, because that
Speaker 1: missed a grand total of four daily doubles the entire
Speaker 1: run and one final Jeopardy the entire run. So there's
Speaker 1: the knowledge base that we just talked about. That's one
Speaker 1: thing that's obviously sort of baseline level that every Jeopardy
Speaker 1: contestant would study on their own. You had your own
Speaker 1: way of doing it, Others would have their other way.
Speaker 1: But your real differentiator, um was the fact that you
Speaker 1: came up with a Jeopardy strategy, and that now in retrospect,
Speaker 1: having seen you play it this way, seems so obvious
Speaker 1: to every viewer. But what was it that you determined?
Speaker 1: I assume that when you were eight years old, first
Speaker 1: first dreaming about Jeopardy, that's not what had happened for you.
Speaker 1: When did you come up with your special? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: instead of going one hundred to two D three hundred,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with big money and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to use my sports betting acumen when betting in daily doubles. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: you know, the way I approached sports betting is similar
Speaker 1: to way I approach jeopardy. You know, you don't look
Speaker 1: at what everyone else is doing and then just try
Speaker 1: to copy it and add a few sprinkles here there.
Speaker 1: What you can do is just kind of look at
Speaker 1: the rules of the game and think, like, how can
Speaker 1: I best approach this? You know, how would a computer
Speaker 1: program to play this game optimally approached this thing? And
Speaker 1: you know, it turns out that that's often a lot
Speaker 1: different than what everyone else around you is doing, you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it takes someone else doing it for you
Speaker 1: to recognize that, hey, this is a valid approach that
Speaker 1: can work for you. I think, you know, if poker,
Speaker 1: I've I haven't really tried to play poker competitively for
Speaker 1: a number of years, But if you look back fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago when I was playing the strategy people are
Speaker 1: doing compared to now, you know, it's completely different because
Speaker 1: it took some people saying, hey, wait a minute, you know,
Speaker 1: we we need to start occasionally five betting pre flop
Speaker 1: as a bluff. You know, it might not have occurred
Speaker 1: to anyone to do it, but you know, some someone
Speaker 1: who was really trying to optimize their strategy would have
Speaker 1: thought of this. You know, someone is trying to optimize
Speaker 1: the Jeopardy strategy would think, well, wait a minute, what
Speaker 1: does it do good? Just do me to hit a
Speaker 1: daily double? If five a thousand dollars in front of me, well,
Speaker 1: if you have six thousand, now you can really make
Speaker 1: a big dent with that, well you would accute you.
Speaker 1: So you would start. In other words, you were you
Speaker 1: were accumulating as much money as possible. You were oftentimes
Speaker 1: starting at the bottom of the grid and Jeopardy, whereas
Speaker 1: four years and years folks would just go in sort
Speaker 1: of a systematic order down. And then when you would
Speaker 1: get to the daily doubles, it was sort of a
Speaker 1: you know, serve two purposes. One, you would bet to
Speaker 1: have a huge, big lead um beyond what was normal
Speaker 1: in the past, and it also served to eliminate those
Speaker 1: daily doubles, which are the high variants moments that could
Speaker 1: have allowed other people back into the game. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of this perfect strategy. If I'm playing you in Jeopardy,
Speaker 1: there's really no wouldn't I employ the same strategy like
Speaker 1: that would be how you would advise me to play you. Yes,
Speaker 1: And you know, I will say, most of my opponents
Speaker 1: when they were up there, you know, even if they
Speaker 1: only see me for a game, they knew, Okay, you
Speaker 1: know this guy is different. I need to change up
Speaker 1: the game plan I had coming in here. And I
Speaker 1: guess one of the downsides of this is I'm you're
Speaker 1: kind of teaching the opponents to play better against you,
Speaker 1: and this almost cost me um one of my I
Speaker 1: want to say, my twenty six game, there was a
Speaker 1: player who built up a huge lead against me, and
Speaker 1: he uh could moved all in a daily double, but
Speaker 1: didn't send. I think he's still bet like half his
Speaker 1: stack when he already had a big lead, which I
Speaker 1: think is more than he would have done otherwise. But
Speaker 1: you know, I was kind of training my opponents to
Speaker 1: play this hyper aggressive approach that's you know, worked better,
Speaker 1: a lot better against me than what they were planning
Speaker 1: to do going in. Probably I in preceding this interview,
Speaker 1: I went on some of these Jeopardy sort of sites
Speaker 1: that people are super super involved with Jeopardy, and there
Speaker 1: is some history. There was one guy back in the day,
Speaker 1: for like a five game run, he employed this strategy.
Speaker 1: Were you aware of him? That was like the one
Speaker 1: historical example of someone who had employed the strategy that
Speaker 1: you did. I mean, I'm aware of all the things
Speaker 1: that have come before me. I would I would say
Speaker 1: I developed the strategy myself, but I I don't, Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are certainly elements that are similar to
Speaker 1: people who have come before me. Absolutely well, So yes,
Speaker 1: everyone can now take your strategy into it. Emily Butcher
Speaker 1: I believe was her name, she beat you on the
Speaker 1: thirty three which aired on on June three. She only
Speaker 1: lasted three games herself, so clearly it's not that easy
Speaker 1: to do right. You have to be able to do everything.
Speaker 1: And your key Alan Boston, Well, I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with Alan Boston, famous college basketball better who's
Speaker 1: a friend of this show and has been on many times.
Speaker 1: Avid Jeopardy watcher watches it every night and he's like, look,
Speaker 1: he said James's skill set, James's number one skill is
Speaker 1: his ability to anticipate the buzzer. Would you agree with that? Yes?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if I had to play two
Speaker 1: people from the street to Jeopardy, my knowledge base would
Speaker 1: rule over everything. But the people who are on the show.
Speaker 1: You know, they passed a difficult test to be there.
Speaker 1: They all know most of the clues up there. Maybe
Speaker 1: not as many as I do, necessarily, but most of
Speaker 1: the board. You know, if they're if you uh are
Speaker 1: buzzing in only thirty three percent of the time, then
Speaker 1: you know that's really gonna make it tough to win
Speaker 1: and you gotta rely on all kinds of other stuff.
Speaker 1: But I was winning the buzzer race, I think I
Speaker 1: don't know fifty six something like that, and that really
Speaker 1: just gives you a huge leg up over the competition. UM.
Speaker 1: I noticed in the pregames warmups that Emma seemed to
Speaker 1: have a really great buzzer control, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of worried about when I was going to have to
Speaker 1: face her. And I think I won the buzzer a
Speaker 1: few more times that she did in our game, but
Speaker 1: she was clearly like top notch at it, really great
Speaker 1: buzzer control. But so now let me just ask one
Speaker 1: follow up to that. Everyone can see the question. So
Speaker 1: what I'm assuming you're doing, you're reading it fast. So
Speaker 1: Alex Trebeck is very deliberate how he reads it right,
Speaker 1: He's very clear, very concise, how he reads it. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a slow tenor to what he's doing. So
Speaker 1: I assume you're reading it quicker, but your opponents can
Speaker 1: do the same thing. What would you say, distill at
Speaker 1: to one point? Why are you so much better at
Speaker 1: the buzzer? Like, what is it you just have a
Speaker 1: quicker reaction time? What is it you speed read better?
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. One thing I definitely worked
Speaker 1: on is trying to solve the clue in less time
Speaker 1: than it took two to read it, So you know,
Speaker 1: you can kind of I'm not a neuroscientist, but I'm
Speaker 1: under the impression that people can create like new neural
Speaker 1: pathways where if you say, study the order of the
Speaker 1: president's enough, then as someone calls out eighteenth president is
Speaker 1: just like answering two plus two. You know you don't
Speaker 1: have to think about it. You just know that it's
Speaker 1: ulysses as Grant. I had to think about that a second.
Speaker 1: That actually, but um, you and once you kind of
Speaker 1: get to that level, you okay, Now you have the
Speaker 1: entire clue to focus on either Alex's voice or when
Speaker 1: the board lights are coming on. If you have a
Speaker 1: hd percent of your attention on that instead then it
Speaker 1: really helps your ability to react to that moment um.
Speaker 1: I had a practice buzzer that I kind of built
Speaker 1: out of a mechanical pencil at home. And you built
Speaker 1: a practice buzzer out of a mechanical pencil, I did.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is actually a very common thing
Speaker 1: that people on the show do. Most of them just
Speaker 1: don't don't get the opportunity to talk about it, but
Speaker 1: they'll take a pen or they're popular choice is actually
Speaker 1: the tube that's your toilet paper sits on. You can
Speaker 1: press the retractor thing on that's that's right. Um, so
Speaker 1: you bring up you lists grants. So this kind of
Speaker 1: jogs in my in my thinking, in your is their
Speaker 1: Jeopardy data? Like I grew up in d C, people
Speaker 1: cheated on driver's test from year to year when they
Speaker 1: got to sixteen years of age, because they passed the
Speaker 1: same test from the year forward, so they knew the question.
Speaker 1: They knew actually the order of the multiple choice. Is
Speaker 1: there a history? Is there a database of Jeopardy questions
Speaker 1: where let's take Ulysses S Grant where Ulysses s Grant
Speaker 1: questions weren't asked as much on Jeopardy as say I
Speaker 1: don't know Chester A. Arthur questions, Yes, they they have
Speaker 1: a it's kind of a fan created archive. I assume
Speaker 1: that the show has its own archive. It is not
Speaker 1: publicly accessible, but there is one that is free to
Speaker 1: the public called the Jeopardy Archive, and they have like
Speaker 1: fans transcribing all the shows basically, and they've got a
Speaker 1: search function where you can kind of Now it's tricky,
Speaker 1: you know, because if you search for Ulysses Grant, not
Speaker 1: everyone says the first name on the show, so you
Speaker 1: might have to search for just Grant and then you
Speaker 1: get like if someone wrote a grant for a million dollars,
Speaker 1: that will pop up to But for the most part,
Speaker 1: you can kind of run searches and see how often
Speaker 1: these names come up, and you'll determine, okay, it's five times.
Speaker 1: It is important to know George Washington as Chester Arthur,
Speaker 1: and you kind of know where to focus your attention there.
Speaker 1: So you're aware of all of that going into it. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there might be other sites I'm not aware of,
Speaker 1: but this this one is. But you had you had
Speaker 1: some sense that you needed to study that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: like you figure out what they ask more than than others. Yes,
Speaker 1: you kind of get the idea, Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: watched pro wrestling and I listened to a lot of
Speaker 1: death metal stuff and that I know it was never
Speaker 1: gonna come up on the show, and it's it's too bad.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, you you recognize which subjects they
Speaker 1: are going to ask about and which ones they aren't.
Speaker 1: You were just telling me off air, you just were
Speaker 1: on vacation. You were in Prague, you were in Lisbon,
Speaker 1: you were in Barcelona as well, and you were recognized
Speaker 1: there as well. Pretty often. Yeah, I would say it
Speaker 1: happened virtually every day. Uh, you know, especially when I
Speaker 1: was at the airport or something, and you you get
Speaker 1: the only tourists at the airport and a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans are I assume are they're Americans out there and
Speaker 1: asking me, oh, are you Jeopardy James? You know they
Speaker 1: do you embrace that? You love that, Like is this
Speaker 1: a good development in your life or is it getting
Speaker 1: to a point now where you're sort of like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I like this so much or is
Speaker 1: it all good? Well? I would say, like there were
Speaker 1: definitely times where my my daughter was acting out in
Speaker 1: public and I would have preferred that that exact moment
Speaker 1: to have an anonymous face. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: it's nice to see fans out there. You alluded to
Speaker 1: the fact that there was a gentleman who almost beat
Speaker 1: you during your thirty two games streak, uh, and obviously
Speaker 1: Emily Butcher eventually did on Emma Butcher rather on on
Speaker 1: your thirty three Were there other times throughout this run?
Speaker 1: Now that you look back on it and sort of
Speaker 1: do the inventory, how many times do you think you
Speaker 1: got with all the things we just talked about, your
Speaker 1: knowledge base, your buzzer ability, uh, your instincts for um,
Speaker 1: the Jeopardy database of questions, the fact that you employed
Speaker 1: the perfect Jeopardy strategy, all of that in the mix.
Speaker 1: Just like in poker, you can still have everything set
Speaker 1: up perfectly, but then there's a certain element of luck involved.
Speaker 1: How many times did you did the thirty two game
Speaker 1: streaks stay alive in your assessment based on just sheer luck? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I don't know how sheer luck is defined,
Speaker 1: but certainly I needed some element of fortune at least
Speaker 1: ten times over the streak. You know, I think there's
Speaker 1: one time in my second game where I had I
Speaker 1: basically moved all in on a daily double than I
Speaker 1: did because I was behind in the score. That's time.
Speaker 1: And they asked which UH college was nicknamed Sadie Lew
Speaker 1: And I knew this really only because my wife and
Speaker 1: I talked about naming our daughter Sadie and she she said, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a diminutive of Sarah. It's very nice, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be something Sarah Sarah Lawrence makes sense, you
Speaker 1: know that. You know, I don't think that Sadie Leew
Speaker 1: is a well known nickname. So that's like the only
Speaker 1: way I could have gotten there on this is because
Speaker 1: something like that happened. It's kind of crazy to think about. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think that's you know, and so many of
Speaker 1: the correlation. You know, we talked about eliminating the the
Speaker 1: high variance daily doubles, UM, your your risk, your aversion,
Speaker 1: the ability to treat the money. UM. You know, I
Speaker 1: think most people come on a show like Jeopardy, they're
Speaker 1: constantly thinking, well, I'm betting sixteen thousand dollars you as
Speaker 1: a sports bet you just don't have that mentality. And
Speaker 1: I think that portion right there that we just talked
Speaker 1: about UM is obviously something that as a poker player,
Speaker 1: as you said, as a sports better, you're more conditioned for,
Speaker 1: right You You embrace the fact that there's going to
Speaker 1: be this kind of variance, and you're okay with the
Speaker 1: fact I did, oh yeah, that this is going to
Speaker 1: be part of this game. Sometimes the chips fall where
Speaker 1: they may. In other words, you kind of uh developed
Speaker 1: the mindset not only of okay, I can lose this money,
Speaker 1: but also you know, I can lose some money and
Speaker 1: still keep playing the game. You know, if I if
Speaker 1: I quit work every day every time I lost the bets,
Speaker 1: I've never did anything done, you know, even I was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know if the gambling background
Speaker 1: helped that much. I noticed, like there are people I
Speaker 1: was playing against who came from all sorts of professions.
Speaker 1: You know, Emma as a librarian. I thought, okay, well
Speaker 1: she hit this daily double against me when she had
Speaker 1: I think maybe two thirds of my score in our game.
Speaker 1: And I thought, okay, well she's a library and maybe
Speaker 1: she won't bet at all here. And now she did.
Speaker 1: She knew she that was the move she had to do,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, kudos to her. She pulled it out.
Speaker 1: It had to help and most But where do you
Speaker 1: think it helped the most? The sports betting background, though, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's definitely a part. I mean in terms
Speaker 1: of just winning the game. I'm not sure how much
Speaker 1: the Giants daily double bets actually helped. But you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of like setting up these these huge pay days,
Speaker 1: you know, that required a level of us that I
Speaker 1: think most non yamblers wouldn't have displayed in that moment.
Speaker 1: One more thing about this and we'll get onto your
Speaker 1: sports betting here after the break. But the show aired April.
Speaker 1: You're you're part of the show from April fourth, I
Speaker 1: believe it was to June three. Um, you had obviously taped.
Speaker 1: This was your entire taping before the run. Was it
Speaker 1: staggered in the middle, Yeah, it was, the entire thing
Speaker 1: was before. I think my last tape day was something
Speaker 1: like March twelfth, which you know worked out well for
Speaker 1: me because it was right before March Madness. I can
Speaker 1: get back to work alt and I did not win
Speaker 1: on March Madness. So so when your shows were airing,
Speaker 1: you obviously knew how far you got. You knew the
Speaker 1: outcomes when the hype was growing, and I don't use
Speaker 1: hype with any connotation to it. But when the publicity
Speaker 1: was growing and your your que factor, your star power
Speaker 1: was getting bigger and bigger because you knew that you
Speaker 1: just fell short of some of Ken's records, Like obviously
Speaker 1: the game streak, he went a crazy amount seventy four games,
Speaker 1: was it um and he was winning a lot at
Speaker 1: a much uh lower clip than you were. But as
Speaker 1: that hype was developing, was there a little part of
Speaker 1: you that sort of wanted to downplay it publicly because
Speaker 1: you knew this outcome. I was always curious about that
Speaker 1: because I was trying to when I was hearing you
Speaker 1: in interviews and watching you, I was looking for tells myself,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't know if he broke
Speaker 1: it because he seems maybe you're just the most super
Speaker 1: humble guy in the world, but it almost seems in
Speaker 1: some cases that he was bashful. Was I reading into
Speaker 1: that at all correctly? Um? Maybe? I mean I would
Speaker 1: say like, first of all, I was completely blown away
Speaker 1: by how much attention I was receiving. You know, some
Speaker 1: people tried to prepare me for this, and I said, like, okay,
Speaker 1: come on, it's jeopardy. You know, there's not that many
Speaker 1: people out there who are that interested in this stuff,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I was just in awe of the different
Speaker 1: media types that wanted to talk to me and how
Speaker 1: many people, it turns out our closet Jeopardy fans or
Speaker 1: either that or they're just really excited to see someone
Speaker 1: do with something very differently than anything they've ever seen before.
Speaker 1: So I kind of, you know, was reacting to the
Speaker 1: level of attention being I don't know five times what
Speaker 1: I expected it to be. Um, I would say, like
Speaker 1: it was if I had to not break the record.
Speaker 1: It was kind of nice to come so close to
Speaker 1: doing it, you know, making a really spectacular sweat down
Speaker 1: the line. And I didn't really want to downplay that
Speaker 1: because I thought it was kind of cool how how
Speaker 1: close I got and came just short. It was awesome.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. Were you were, I mean, what was
Speaker 1: your love? How bummed were you at that moment? Were
Speaker 1: you just super dejected or were you okay with it? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, it's a funny story. So when right after
Speaker 1: the taping finish and I kind of had to go
Speaker 1: sign my forms to collect my second place money, one
Speaker 1: of the producers came up to me and she gave
Speaker 1: me a hug, and she actually started crying because she
Speaker 1: was She said she had never seen anyone play the
Speaker 1: game so beautifully before, and I had to like kind
Speaker 1: of pat her on the back and comfort her. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: This was ending wow. But you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: would say like it was kind of a bitter sweet moment.
Speaker 1: Obviously I wasn't happy to lose. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, I uh, it was getting a little stressful,
Speaker 1: um going back there every week, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was kind of like I had I had put this achievement,
Speaker 1: checked it off the bucket list, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: okay to move on with life now. Well, absolutely obviously
Speaker 1: no shaving that. I love that you're comforting herds, you
Speaker 1: appreciating just how well you played the game well. James
Speaker 1: holts Ower for those two and again biggest Jeopardy winner
Speaker 1: by season among his records, biggest one game winner at
Speaker 1: first he broke it. He had he had a one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten thousand dollar plus night and then a
Speaker 1: one hundred thirty one thousand dollar event, largest successful daily
Speaker 1: double wager of twenty five thousand dollars, largest successful final
Speaker 1: Jeopardy wager of thirty eight thousand first, then uh, I
Speaker 1: believe it was a sixty thousand again after that sixty
Speaker 1: thousand plus on one wager. We will get into some
Speaker 1: of your sports betting stuff next. How about that? Do that,
Speaker 1: James holtz Our right here on a numbers game at
Speaker 1: Visa down back to a numbers game with your host,
Speaker 1: Gil Alexander, broadcasting live from our visa in studios in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. On a numbers game. We're sports betting analytics,
Speaker 1: live actionable sports betting information. It's Gil Alexander UM Update
Speaker 1: Open Championship in Royal Port, Russia. There in Ireland. Shane
Speaker 1: Lowry still with the two stroke lead. Shane has played
Speaker 1: thirteen holes so five left to go, two stroke lead
Speaker 1: over JB. Holmes, who's in the clubhouse eight under par,
Speaker 1: Tommy Fleetwood, Lee Westwood three shots currently back in the
Speaker 1: clubhouse as well at seven under as Eldrick tiger Woods
Speaker 1: fails to make the cut. I just want to point
Speaker 1: that out as well this morning, and um, of course
Speaker 1: we'll follow it all weekend long right here on Visa.
Speaker 1: Back on the show here with James holtz howerd Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: James kind enough to join us, James, I said, we're
Speaker 1: gonna move on to your your sports betting. One last thing, though,
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the previous segment that in your entire run,
Speaker 1: you missed four daily doubles and one final Jeopardy question.
Speaker 1: I want to see how how much this has stuck
Speaker 1: in your crawl or how your brain works if you
Speaker 1: just moved on. So I just want to ask you
Speaker 1: one of the random daily double questions that you missed.
Speaker 1: This was all the way back on the show that
Speaker 1: aired on April eleventh. The question that Alex Trebeck, by
Speaker 1: the way, is he had just a wonderful, sweet guy.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't be seeing off camera fraternizing with
Speaker 1: him because they have every the appearance of impropriety is
Speaker 1: a huge deal in game shows. But you know, from
Speaker 1: every interaction I've had with him, he strikes me as
Speaker 1: a consummate professional. I was really admired him keeping coming
Speaker 1: into work when he knew he was dealing with this
Speaker 1: serious health issue. Wish him the best with his with
Speaker 1: his health issue. April eleventh, Alex put this question out there.
Speaker 1: He said, this inductee into the Video Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: sold seventeen million copies of video cassette she released in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two. The category, by the way, with celebrities,
Speaker 1: and this was a this was a fine, this was
Speaker 1: the final Jeopardy one and that you risked three thousand,
Speaker 1: ten dollars on this one. Do you remember what your
Speaker 1: answer was? Yes, it was Madonna? And do you remember
Speaker 1: what the real answer was? Jane fond And you know, like,
Speaker 1: I know it's easy to say this now, but if
Speaker 1: I had twenty more seconds, it would have occurred to me,
Speaker 1: like cassettes can be for home workouts too. How many
Speaker 1: times during the actual regular play did you just buzz
Speaker 1: without knowing the answer and you're just I just want
Speaker 1: to get there first, or you a guy who you
Speaker 1: only buzzed when you kind of had an inkling. I
Speaker 1: would say it wasn't a lot of times. There were
Speaker 1: maybe five or so. Now, there were a couple where
Speaker 1: I thought I knew the answer and that I changed
Speaker 1: my mind in the middle of the buzzing process, which
Speaker 1: sometimes worked out in my favor and sometimes not did not.
Speaker 1: All right, so sports Betting, you identified yourself as a
Speaker 1: sports better on the show, and by the way, in
Speaker 1: that regard, let me just on behalf of everybody. Thank
Speaker 1: you for elevating just what a sports better is in
Speaker 1: the public domain, right because most the average person thinks
Speaker 1: of a sports better. And I was like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: some degenerate stuff right there. But here you were crushing
Speaker 1: people and identifies a sports better. And I think I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people may have sort of been like,
Speaker 1: oh that, well, that's interesting. Yeah, some people have tried
Speaker 1: to claim that I got to legalize in an extra
Speaker 1: couple of states being up there above that. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So when did you first, Like, how did you get
Speaker 1: into sports betting? First of all, Uh so in college
Speaker 1: I played a lot of online poker, as many so
Speaker 1: many gambler to live in Las Vegas now did, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of so the idea of like
Speaker 1: sending money to this offshore place and you know, trusting
Speaker 1: them to pay you back was ingrained in my head.
Speaker 1: And then like the idea that hey, people can actually
Speaker 1: win doing this if they have the right strategy was
Speaker 1: also there. Um. I was also into fantasy sports, and
Speaker 1: you know, from a young age I really wanted to
Speaker 1: know all the statistics of the baseball players and know
Speaker 1: what they meant, you know, so I would be that
Speaker 1: kid who I would trade you for your baseball cards
Speaker 1: if I didn't have them yet, and try to acquire
Speaker 1: a complete set of the players and put them all
Speaker 1: into Excel and take a look at these numbers, like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, what does it really mean that this guy
Speaker 1: is slugging for seventy that last year? You know, But
Speaker 1: believe it or not, there was a time when four
Speaker 1: seventy was a really good slugging percentage, right in a
Speaker 1: different era. Yeah, but uh so I kind of got
Speaker 1: into it first of all, because you know, I was
Speaker 1: already in the business of trying to figure out which
Speaker 1: players and teams were gonna succeed unexpectedly next year, and
Speaker 1: I thought it might as well make a little money
Speaker 1: doing it. And you know, the old like Baseball Prospectus site,
Speaker 1: it's had kind of ways to convert this information into probabilities,
Speaker 1: you know, Clay to have import used to run this
Speaker 1: Monte Carlo simulation of how often teams would make the
Speaker 1: playoffs at the end of the year, and the idea
Speaker 1: of you know, kind of simulating randomness into the equation like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we know this team is the best team, but maybe
Speaker 1: their players get injured or maybe they you know, bad bounces,
Speaker 1: just get them along the way. You If you try
Speaker 1: to simulate the baseball season, the standard deviation of where
Speaker 1: your forecast should start them where they should end up
Speaker 1: is something like nine games. You know, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of variants into the equation. You really got to be
Speaker 1: a lot better than your competition to sweat that. So
Speaker 1: do you You know, here's the thing, when when one
Speaker 1: says they're professional better, So my audience and an audience
Speaker 1: of Vista very sensitive. Those the best pro betters that
Speaker 1: I know, right, the people who are truly they devote
Speaker 1: their life to betting, they're very sensitive. Right, So when
Speaker 1: someone calls themselves a professional sports and I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've gotten any of this in your sphere, right,
Speaker 1: So there are those who are like, well, does James
Speaker 1: is he an originator of his own handicapping? Is the
Speaker 1: one doing his own handicapping? Or is he more of
Speaker 1: a guy and by the way, no judgment from hating
Speaker 1: for me on any of this. Or is he a
Speaker 1: guy that is really about finding marketed efficiencies? Is he
Speaker 1: a screen saper scraper? Is he just looking for an
Speaker 1: edge numerically rather than just as an originator of a
Speaker 1: hand as a as a handicapper. Uh. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever had Mitchell Lichtman on
Speaker 1: the show, but I remember I used to comment on
Speaker 1: because I have not had him on the show, but
Speaker 1: I'm very aware of it. Yeah, so I used to
Speaker 1: comment on some of his old blog posts. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's just myself as a professional gambler, and
Speaker 1: he would be like, who is this guy? You know,
Speaker 1: where are his criticious um virtue regarding the what I'm doing?
Speaker 1: I do it all. You know. When I started out
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, I was just purely running my
Speaker 1: own numbers against the market and nuts, you know, especially
Speaker 1: I wasn't living in Vegas then. I didn't have access
Speaker 1: to the best odds all the time, and you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't have these aspect then obviously, so I couldn't
Speaker 1: just drive around and expect the odds to still be
Speaker 1: there when I got there. Uh. My focus largely on
Speaker 1: baseball futures at that time because I thought that was
Speaker 1: the most inefficient market. And you know it's I guess
Speaker 1: it's easier to if you see alignment's off, to think that, Okay,
Speaker 1: no other professionals are looking at this market. I can
Speaker 1: go drive across town to the Hilton, then throw down
Speaker 1: my money on this and expect it'll it'll still be
Speaker 1: there when I wanted to be uh and you know,
Speaker 1: I would say, like one one thing I used to
Speaker 1: do every year, this is the first year I haven't done.
Speaker 1: It is like kind of run a baseball futures hedge fund,
Speaker 1: where if I see that a team is under priced,
Speaker 1: now I will just load up on them, you know,
Speaker 1: way more than the Kelly criterion says I should, knowing
Speaker 1: that I can bet against them in the World Series
Speaker 1: if they make it there. You know, maybe I'm giving
Speaker 1: up a couple of percentage points on the other end,
Speaker 1: but it's still you know, works out to a long
Speaker 1: run profit that way. Um, But you know, I definitely
Speaker 1: do a lot of line shopping and stuff now. You know,
Speaker 1: there are times when if I see that the spreading
Speaker 1: money line are off in a football game, I'll bet
Speaker 1: both sides of it. That kind of thing. Or you know,
Speaker 1: if I think the market is over overreacting to breaking
Speaker 1: injury information, now you know, be happy to take a
Speaker 1: position on that, even if I don't think anything else
Speaker 1: of the game because because the futures angle is is interesting.
Speaker 1: But you know, most would say you're not going to
Speaker 1: make a living just betting futures, right like specifically, So
Speaker 1: that's why the other stuff you're talking about is is
Speaker 1: interesting to me. Are you nowadays? Are you looking more
Speaker 1: at halftime lines? Are you doing a lot of in
Speaker 1: game stuff? Like? What? What? How do you approach that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you know back back in the day I was,
Speaker 1: the market is totally changed. Of course, as your listeners all, well, no,
Speaker 1: you know now that you have access to these apps
Speaker 1: and you can bet at the biggest sports books from home,
Speaker 1: it gives you this ability to do stuff you could
Speaker 1: never do before, like getting in you don't have to
Speaker 1: physically be present at the sports book to make a
Speaker 1: halftime bet. Now it's the huge deal, or is the
Speaker 1: in game stuff, especially although almost most of the apps
Speaker 1: in town have limited my end game bets to a
Speaker 1: hundred zero dollars now unfortunate, but yeah, you always that right,
Speaker 1: they have limited you. Yeah, yeah, this I think. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a sports booking talent that hasn't at
Speaker 1: least collared me at some level. About about half of
Speaker 1: them won't take a bet from me at all, and
Speaker 1: the other half field you know, takes some fraction of
Speaker 1: what's they would take from a Joe off the street. Um.
Speaker 1: That that all started before Jeopardy, So I don't think
Speaker 1: that this has necessarily affected anything that applied to far
Speaker 1: away places as well. Yes, I would say, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like there there's some that deal with professionals
Speaker 1: and they just don't care. I mean they do care
Speaker 1: in the sense that they move the line more when
Speaker 1: I bet than they will for someone else. Right, because
Speaker 1: there are there are shops, right, we know, the two
Speaker 1: sort of pillars in far away places that will not
Speaker 1: ban anybody, right, Pinnacle or a bookmaker like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But I'm that's interesting that you said that half will
Speaker 1: not take any of your bets here in Vegas and
Speaker 1: half will limit you. Yeah, that's about how it breaks down.
Speaker 1: So if that's the case, Um, I mean how much
Speaker 1: you know Listen, you just came off of Jeopardy, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, James, you just
Speaker 1: want two point four million dollars, like did you have
Speaker 1: you because of all of those you put all of
Speaker 1: that into the soup if you will. Um, has it
Speaker 1: changed your outlook on life, like in other words, look,
Speaker 1: I got this nest egg. Um, they're doing all these
Speaker 1: things to make my life difficult, betting perhaps I don't
Speaker 1: do this moving forward. It has certainly occurred to me, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's people, without revealing too much about what's
Speaker 1: going on in my email inbox, there are people offering uh,
Speaker 1: large sums of money for you know, chunks of my
Speaker 1: time that I might not necessarily want to give up.
Speaker 1: But it has occurred to me like, how wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you know, if I if I'm making like I don't know,
Speaker 1: let's say five thousand dollars and a typical college football Saturday,
Speaker 1: working from sun up to sundown? Is that worth my time?
Speaker 1: When I could go give a speech at some quant
Speaker 1: fund for more than that, you know, And I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a thought like and then it occurs
Speaker 1: to me, maybe I shouldn't care about the money at all.
Speaker 1: You know. It's uh like the idea I really enjoy winning.
Speaker 1: I would say that's kind of driving me more professionally
Speaker 1: right now than anything else. Is the idea like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know I can I can find something that's that
Speaker 1: no one else sees, Uh that you know, a factor
Speaker 1: that no one else is considered here and use that
Speaker 1: too to make some money. I think that's that's always
Speaker 1: been a really important reason why I got into this
Speaker 1: line of work. And you know, if I still feel
Speaker 1: that spark, of course I'm gonna keep doing it just because.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, it's the thought has occurred to
Speaker 1: me like, well, you know, maybe I spend some of
Speaker 1: my Saturday playing with my kid instead of in front
Speaker 1: of don Best screen. Might might be maybe a bit
Speaker 1: more balanced life for you at this point. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: alluded to some things, some things in your email inbox.
Speaker 1: I want to get into some of your email inbox
Speaker 1: because I know you've had some chats and you have
Speaker 1: some aspirations and if you don't mind if we get
Speaker 1: into that, maybe a professional sports life for you. I
Speaker 1: don't know, we'll find out. We'll get with it with
Speaker 1: James Holt Tower right here exclusively on a numbers game
Speaker 1: at Visa down Back to a numbers game with your
Speaker 1: host Gil Alexander, broadcasting live from our visa in studios
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. It is a numbers game, it is
Speaker 1: Gil Alexander. It's serious X Channel two four. Jeff Pearls
Speaker 1: is here, or as we like to call him now,
Speaker 1: Jeff Parlay, Maybell do Pearls is Parlay? How will we
Speaker 1: had not thought about that before? We should see if
Speaker 1: Vinny said it earlier. Yeah, I'll give Brendan credit and
Speaker 1: David credit back here for saying it about a month ago,
Speaker 1: and then it just disappeared from my brain. No baseball
Speaker 1: pick from Jeff today. By the way, James Holtzauer is
Speaker 1: here from Jeopardy thirty two wins in a row on Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: We're just talking off air about how, you know, when
Speaker 1: I told some of my buddies that you were on
Speaker 1: the show, the different reactions, and one of which is, uh,
Speaker 1: just talk about the sports, but don't talk about the
Speaker 1: Jeopardy part. And and and you know, I'm sensitive the fact
Speaker 1: that you have to talk about the Jeopardy part over
Speaker 1: and over over again. But to me, that's still like
Speaker 1: the strategy you employed is still the most fascinating aspect
Speaker 1: of all of this, right, because it's that's the biggest
Speaker 1: window to your brain of all this. I get that
Speaker 1: you have the knowledge base and all the other stuff
Speaker 1: and sports betting you do in your own private you know,
Speaker 1: in your own privacy. Um, but that, to me is
Speaker 1: what is the main point of all this. It's the
Speaker 1: fact that you came out with that came up with
Speaker 1: that strategy, and the fact that sports bettors right should
Speaker 1: always be looking for a different way to approach things,
Speaker 1: different markets and such. So I hope you don't mind
Speaker 1: that we rehashed all the gems. No, it's no problem
Speaker 1: at all. I mean, frankly, I'm a little relieved because
Speaker 1: I took like the months of April to June off
Speaker 1: work to deal with everything else that was going on
Speaker 1: in my life. So I'm well behind on the baseball season.
Speaker 1: I just started doing my football research this week. So
Speaker 1: do you have any baseball futures that you like? No,
Speaker 1: you know, I decided I would be mostly sitting out
Speaker 1: this season. I mean there's a lot of factors. First
Speaker 1: of all, I got, you know, so much stuff to
Speaker 1: manage with the Jeopardy fall out. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: every year I like to take vacations during the summer.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a slow sports season, and as you know,
Speaker 1: the weather here gets intolerable after a certain point. I
Speaker 1: haven't noticed. Yeah, um, okay, so I know a little bit.
Speaker 1: By the way, nothing on football yet you're researching. I've started,
Speaker 1: but okay, no thoughts yet, you know, I mean my
Speaker 1: thoughts are kind of the same as they always are.
Speaker 1: If you look at the odds. I'm kind of aggregating
Speaker 1: all the odds for season wins and futures right now.
Speaker 1: And if you look, no surprise, you know, the worst
Speaker 1: bets tend to be on the teams that have all
Speaker 1: the hype right now, like the Cleveland Browns. I cannot
Speaker 1: believe I'm saying this, but are the most hyped team
Speaker 1: and they're they're probably the worst bet. If you want
Speaker 1: to put our Super Bowl future out there, I would agree, uh,
Speaker 1: no value, that's correct. Um, all right, so I hacked
Speaker 1: into your inbox. So Seattle Mariners. Have you had a
Speaker 1: chat with the Seattle Mariners. There was a talk, Yes,
Speaker 1: a chat is a good term for It was all casual.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no job offer anything. But I talked
Speaker 1: with a couple of people from their front office and they,
Speaker 1: you know, they seemed to have running running a really
Speaker 1: good organization there, you know, despite what it would seem
Speaker 1: like from their on field performance. But they know what
Speaker 1: they're doing, you know, they know that, Hey, we were
Speaker 1: in the business of investing in assets for years from now,
Speaker 1: and they've been buying low on some players. That's uh.
Speaker 1: Other teams have decided they don't want to deal with anymore,
Speaker 1: you know, Domingo Santana, Dan vogel Buck, They you know,
Speaker 1: players that other teams don't want basically, and they they're
Speaker 1: finding some value there. I think. Yeah, we've been talking
Speaker 1: about the science recently here who won thirteen and fifteen
Speaker 1: games of San Francisco Giants and the conundrum that they
Speaker 1: have moving to the July thirty first trade deadline of
Speaker 1: what do you do? You know, you've been selling You've
Speaker 1: been in a cell mode all this, you know mentally
Speaker 1: this whole way, and their GM was hired to you know,
Speaker 1: look to the future. But the team's not cooperating with
Speaker 1: the narrative right there, just winning so many games that
Speaker 1: they're right in the thick of the wild card race.
Speaker 1: What do they do? And it makes baseball very unique.
Speaker 1: Do you aspire to a baseball front office job? Or if,
Speaker 1: say James the local franchise here in hockey, let's say
Speaker 1: the Vegas Golden Nights came calling, would that be something
Speaker 1: of interest to you? So Baseball was the dream definitely
Speaker 1: half a life ago when I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But you know, I will say, I mean,
Speaker 1: most people who follow baseball closely know they're they're doing
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff they didn't do fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're really playing. I would say, close
Speaker 1: to an optimal approach now of how do we find
Speaker 1: the best players, how do we pay them, how do
Speaker 1: we train in them? You know, it's getting like so
Speaker 1: good now. Whereas I think football and hockey the two
Speaker 1: major of the four major sports, of the two that
Speaker 1: really I think could use an infusion of data and
Speaker 1: like different approaches to the problems they're facing right now.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that in terms of what
Speaker 1: I would enjoy the most, I'm not sure, But in
Speaker 1: terms of where I could deliver the most value to
Speaker 1: a team, it would more likely be in a different
Speaker 1: sport than baseball, I would think, because baseball has had
Speaker 1: is sort of the analytics began decades ago, and others
Speaker 1: other sports haven't sort of evolved necessarily as far. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I understand the player tracking data is about to
Speaker 1: explode in the NHL. I think there's probably a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff we can learn from that that it's just
Speaker 1: you know, breaking in. Of course, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have access to the same data sets that these teams have.
Speaker 1: So I have noticed that, and forgive me for a
Speaker 1: step your last. I have noticed that when baseball comes up,
Speaker 1: and more often, not more often than not, but a
Speaker 1: few times you sort of you on your own, will
Speaker 1: segue towards hockey. I know that I did right here
Speaker 1: with the Knights. But honestly, if you could make if
Speaker 1: you could waive the magic on though seriously like and
Speaker 1: you know, let's just say some of the Night's front
Speaker 1: office might be listening, would that be, honestly like something
Speaker 1: that you would absolutely embrace, like you would want to
Speaker 1: have that meeting. Well, there's a couple of things, you know.
Speaker 1: First of all, if I could work for a hockey
Speaker 1: team on site, I cannot leave Las Vegas, which you
Speaker 1: know unless the Oakland the Oakland slash Las Vegas Raiders
Speaker 1: call me. Is the only way I can really do
Speaker 1: this without leaving this city, which I've come to really like. Um,
Speaker 1: you know the reason the Mariners came up. And my
Speaker 1: wife is from Seattle. She really envisions us moving back
Speaker 1: there one day and so I kind of just tossed
Speaker 1: in an offhand comment about how this would be a
Speaker 1: place she would like me to work, and you know,
Speaker 1: things just blow up on the internet now for no reason.
Speaker 1: It's incredible you've noticed. Um, yeah, you know they working
Speaker 1: for the Knights. I don't entirely know what I could
Speaker 1: do with the data they have because I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is, but yes, that would definitely be a
Speaker 1: thing that would interest trying to get you a gig here. Um,
Speaker 1: do you aspire now, Look, you've had the Jeopardy experience
Speaker 1: again two point four million dollars plus in your pocket. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have the two previous experiences internationally on game shows.
Speaker 1: Do you aspire to be on any other game show?
Speaker 1: Or was Jeopardy, as you said as a child, that
Speaker 1: was the pinnacle? Um? Would another game show even let
Speaker 1: you on anymore? Well? You know, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: they have to consider their prize budget accordingly. But you know,
Speaker 1: for the most part, these guys are looking to make
Speaker 1: a splash to get ratings. You know, I noticed Ken
Speaker 1: Jennings has been on at least like four or five
Speaker 1: other shows since he was on Jeopardy, and they the
Speaker 1: producers are like Hey, you know, maybe he'll win a
Speaker 1: little money, but we'll we'll get the name Ken Jennings
Speaker 1: on our marque out of it. Uh, And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that will be the right thing for me down
Speaker 1: the road. I don't know. Uh. There's certainly some people
Speaker 1: who have emailed me about producing a TV show around
Speaker 1: me as on their talents, and you know, it's something
Speaker 1: I'd not necessarily considered before, but maybe we could find
Speaker 1: something that works out there. Do you enjoy the media
Speaker 1: blitz because you, like you said, when you come back
Speaker 1: from vacation, you're expecting, not expecting. But we probably know
Speaker 1: already that there's another media blitz coming towards you. People
Speaker 1: aren't done talking to you yet, as obviously evidenced here.
Speaker 1: I assume they would be done by now, but it
Speaker 1: turns out there not. That's that's been a surprise to me,
Speaker 1: and it's it's nice to to be in demand. I
Speaker 1: will say that. Okay, So when we leave here and
Speaker 1: we have to win a couple of minutes, Um, what
Speaker 1: bets are you making today? Are you making any bets
Speaker 1: at all? What it? What is the rest of your
Speaker 1: day look like from a sports betting standpoint? So I'm
Speaker 1: still kind of in the information gathering process of by
Speaker 1: the NFL preseason. Um, I will say I would I
Speaker 1: probably would make a bet at the book once I
Speaker 1: leave the studio today, except now that they've updated their app,
Speaker 1: I haven't transferred over to the new South Point app,
Speaker 1: so I can't actually check what their odds are on
Speaker 1: the futures market. And you know, if I if I
Speaker 1: had these things in my spreadsheet, I might have had
Speaker 1: a little target sign drawn on a team or two.
Speaker 1: But I gotta go kind of switch my account over
Speaker 1: and get that information first. I appreciate you coming in, James.
Speaker 1: I appreciate a couple of things that you shared here
Speaker 1: today that you haven't shared anywhere else. The one the
Speaker 1: story about at the end of Jeopardy when the girl
Speaker 1: giving you the money sort of gave you the hug
Speaker 1: weeping saying how beautifully you played that. So appreciate that nugget, uh.
Speaker 1: And the note that you are I they're banned from
Speaker 1: half or limited at half of the sports book here
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. I don't think you've you've said that
Speaker 1: quite as strongly before in that way. If I'm not mistaken, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's not a fact that necessarily interests most people. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think this audience is very interested in something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I think that might be the big headline
Speaker 1: from this. Um. Yeah. I went on the pet McAfee podcast,
Speaker 1: and you actually thought that was like the coolest thing
Speaker 1: he had ever heard, that someone could be banned from
Speaker 1: a sports book for winning, and like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're a professional, it's actually not that cool. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, what is what is your sort of
Speaker 1: you know, because obviously there's many kinds of folks. There's
Speaker 1: that faction that is anti sports book no matter what,
Speaker 1: they're the worst thing in the world. How dare they?
Speaker 1: How dare they? Or do you are you more of
Speaker 1: that sort of level headed where you're like, hey, look
Speaker 1: I get it. This is how there's some of their
Speaker 1: business models are and it's just this is this is
Speaker 1: how it is. And so I understand that this is
Speaker 1: their position, and I'm okay with it given that, No,
Speaker 1: I definitely okay with it. Now. Kind of wish William
Speaker 1: Hill would come out and say publicly, hey, we we
Speaker 1: banned players, instead of waffling around it every time they
Speaker 1: get interviewed about it. But you know, it's a business.
Speaker 1: They know what they're doing. They're they're offering a service
Speaker 1: to certain slice of the population. You know, I I
Speaker 1: can still bet on sports. I just have to do
Speaker 1: it somewhere else. James um, your homework assignment is to
Speaker 1: watch my pinned tweet on Twitter after you here. Based
Speaker 1: on your last comment, I think that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: I think I think what you're saying is right. At
Speaker 1: least be honest about it. Then we'd respect you more.
Speaker 1: James Holt Tower, everybody two point four million dollars appreciate
Speaker 1: you taking the time this morning. I know you have
Speaker 1: a little girl who you want to get back to.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on. Thank you, James Holts,
Speaker 1: our greatest Jeopardy player there ever was, by my money.