Adriana Harmeyer raked in her fifth straight Jeopardy! win in an impressive runaway game on June 4, and she did it all without finding a single Daily Double.
Harmeyer is an archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana with three-day winnings of $91,800. Playing against the returning champ was Travis Kissire, a deputy public works director from Boise, Idaho, and Christina Paul, a foreign service officer from Davie, Florida. While those two found all three of the Daily Doubles, they weren’t of much help at all to their games.
Paul was the first to find a Daily Double in the match, losing $1,000 from her score when answering incorrectly on a true Daily Double bet. Kissire lost more than half of his winnings on his Daily Double loss. Paul was able to add just $1,000 to her score with the third Daily Double. Despite finding the bonus clues, neither of the players could catch up to Harmeyer’s score.
Harmeyer was on a tear through the standard Jeopardy questions and enjoyed a strong lead for most of the game. The scores at the first break were Harmeyer with $4,000, Kissire with $2,600, and Paul with $600. At the second break the scores were Harmeyer with $6,200, Kissire with $3,000, and Paul with $600. By the time of Final Jeopardy, there was no catching up with the leader — Harmeyer already had a runaway game in her grasp with her score going into the Final Round ($17,400 vs. Kissire’s $4,800 and Paul’s $2,400).
Harmeyer just needed to make sure she didn’t bet too much in the final round if she were to answer incorrectly. Luckily, she didn’t, and she ended up gaining $7,000 for a final score of $24,400. Kissire also answered correctly on the Mary Poppins-themed final clue but Paul was stumped. Kissire ended the game with $9,599, just $1 shy of doubling his score. Paul bet it all and ended with $0.
Because of their scores entering the last round, both players needed Harmeyer to get Final Jeopardy wrong to have any chance of winning, but she prevailed. Her winnings tonight helped her break the $100k mark. She now has a five-day total of $116,200. Fans on the Jeopardy Reddit discussion board were impressed by Harmeyer’s victory secured without the help of any Daily Doubles.
“There goes the argument that finding the DDs and luck takes all the fun out of it! Albeit, I’ll give that theory a bit more credence when it comes to Masters,” one fan wrote of Paul and Kissire’s Daily Double woes. Another fan noted that Harmeyer benefitted from Daily Double losses in a previous game as well.
“It’s too bad (in the sense of wanting competition) that Adriana got another lock from a DD fail, but both were very hard clues and her reputation is why players are betting big on them,” they said. One fan thinks Harmeyer has what it takes to stage an even longer streak.
“Adriana is impressive and [likable] and fun to watch. I’m going to predict a 20 game run. Hoping for even more. Go Adriana!” they shared. She’s certainly proven herself unbeatable so far!
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