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Who Will Win the ‘Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time’ Tournament?

On Tuesday, Jeopardy! will begin airing a first-of-its-kind “Greatest of All Time” tournament, pairing Brad Rutter (the all-time winningest Jeopardy! contestant, who has won an unparalleled five previous tournaments and never been defeated by a human opponent), Ken Jennings (whose 74-game streak during his initial 2004 appearance remains perhaps the most astonishing feat in the game show’s history), and James Holzhauer (who nearly equaled Jennings’s total prize money in less than half the number of games, and has since won the Tournament of Champions).

It is Jordan vs. LeBron vs. Kareem; Ruth vs. Mays vs. Aaron; The Last Jedi vs. The Last Jedi vs. The Last Jedi. $1,000,000 hangs in the balance. But before we get to the games and have the ever-loving gyrification beaten out of us, let’s go through the basics. How is this tournament going to be structured, how do you plan for playing the best minds in Jeopardy! history, and—no big deal—who’s likeliest to win?

The Format
The GOAT tournament, which begins Tuesday, will play out more or less like a best-of-seven sporting championship. Each evening will consist of two back-to-back games. The winner of the night’s aggregate two games receives a point; the first player to receive three points wins the tournament, meaning the event could last anywhere from three to seven nights. The tournament is getting prime placement: Instead of Jeopardy!’s usual block, GOAT will air during prime time (8 p.m. Eastern) on ABC.

Harry Friedman, who has been the executive producer of both Jeopardy! and its sister show Wheel of Fortune for the last 25 years, is retiring this spring when the current season finishes taping. GOAT is effectively Friedman’s last hurrah before Mike Richards, a veteran of The Price Is Right and Let’s Make a Deal, takes over as EP this summer: “This is his bookend,” says Cory Anotado, the founder of the game-show-focused Buzzer Blog.

Anotado says that GOAT is in keeping with Friedman’s ethos. “He’s responsible for making the show exactly what it is today,” he says. As EP, Friedman has pushed an otherwise staid show in new directions and toward new audiences, with tournaments like this one, doubling the dollar values of clues in 2001, and getting the show onto streaming platforms like Netflix, where they have found an eager audience of cord-cutters.

“There are very few game shows that have such a high level of play that you could convince a network to show a bunch of people doing the same thing” over and over, says Anotado. “Jeopardy! is a very sport-like game.”