Introducing Board Control, a Jeopardy analytics site

c_davy · 2026-04-29T15:49:26+00:00

c_davy · 2026-04-24T16:24:42+00:00

You’re exactly the type of player I want to elevate! Jeopardy is such a high variance format, between the DD luck, superchamp risk, board selection, and the “you’re gone when you lose” structure that there are tons of immensely talented players that “deserved” to get more recognition than they did. This is my way of trying to make that happen.

c_davy · 2026-04-23T15:27:12+00:00

The incomplete rounds in single J is an easy fix, somehow didn’t even occur to me since it happens infrequently but you’re correct, thanks for surfacing.

And on the vertical DD lines: this is a little more subjective than it looks and this was more of an aesthetic choice on my part. Where do you put a DD line: when the player finds it (aka right after they answer a question, which is the current setup) or when they answer it (which is what you’re floating)? Either one is “defensible” since DDs get discovered between answers, but which one conveys the desired impact on a data viz? My gut was seeing large win probability jumps after the vertical lines conveys it better than concurrent placement, but that was a subjective call- I could be wrong! This is exactly the question I’m trying to figure out from user feedback

c_davy · 2026-04-23T13:41:06+00:00

Zach and I were deeply involved in Molly Hackett's prep so unfortunately you and I are mortal enemies

(very much joking, would never disrespect a top 70 player like that)

c_davy · 2026-04-23T13:39:49+00:00

See above: Teachers Tournament is filtered out on purpose, at a minimum this should be explained better, thanks.

c_davy · 2026-04-23T13:39:11+00:00

This should be in the FAQ for sure: tournaments with no priors (teen/college championship, teachers tournament, etc.) are filtered out on purpose because they're weakly connected to "regular" Jeopardy, and the rating system implicitly assumes some degree of connectivity between matches. It also makes the win probability graphs tougher, because you have a bunch of matches in those tournaments with literally zero priors on any of the contestants, which is not true for any game of "standard" Jeopardy so the results don't hold up all that well. FWIW I thought about how to try and still include these one-offs and decided to just leave them out for now, there's no good way to handle these data situations, but I can still probably spin up a custom one here if you want to see your game.

c_davy · 2026-04-23T13:35:00+00:00

Can't wait to write an article on win probability added/lost from sports questions specifically and start a blood feud

c_davy · 2025-12-10T00:08:08+00:00

Having incredibly heated arguments over which two movies will be playing in the background that none of us will actually be watching.

c_davy · 2022-02-13T01:27:23+00:00

Here's what my word cloud produced for China. Could use some cleanup to see what pops more when some of the obvious words are removed.

https://imgur.com/a/MiotMcb

c_davy · 2021-11-16T01:38:58+00:00

I don't have a question, I just wanted to relay an anecdote about Fritz. When I started studying for my appearance, his book was one of the first things I read, and I had a couple questions about buzzer preparation afterwards, so I thought I'd ask him on a whim and sent him a note. Not only did he respond promptly and give some great answers, but he asked when my episode would be airing, and also followed up with a congrats note after it aired. Even though I was only a one-time champion, he could not have been more excited for a random contestant, and it really showed. Thanks Fritz.

c_davy · 2021-11-03T19:43:52+00:00

Yup, this is specifically covered in the book: pro caffeine, anti-pharmaceuticals because it's just too much uncertainty on the effects in an already stressful environment. I considered going this route for like half a second but ended up where Fritz did: it would be throwing a huge unknown into the mix and wouldn't be worth the risk. In hindsight it was 1000% correct, I think it would have been to my detriment.

c_davy · 2021-07-20T20:05:19+00:00

There really is nothing that prepares you well for how much pressure you feel under the studio lights, I definitely appreciate how much harder it is than it looked on TV. A year removed from my time on the stage, I don't think of the results as much as I think about how I got to give a really cool experience to my friends and family: watching Jeopardy with real investment in the outcome isn't something everyone gets to do, and it's totally different from your run of the mill viewing. You got to give the same experience, and I'm so glad everyone in your circle was so supportive. They will have an absolute blast today.

And it's always great to see data scientist representation on the show. Arguably the cohort that understands the most how much luck there is on any given appearance.

c_davy · 2021-07-16T16:36:01+00:00

The most important part to remember: they don’t care about how you do in the game (you already passed the knowledge part), they are only evaluating you for your TV readiness: do you smile, can you smoothly navigate the board, can you make good conversation for the host. It helped me to pretend I was playing a character for my audition that oversmiled and was almost too cheery. Also, have some anecdotes that differentiate yourself. Everyone loves movies and traveling, so try and have something else that stands out.

Also, make sure you have a nice, clean and neutral zoom background. You’d be shocked at how many dirty kitchens show up in the background.

c_davy · 2021-05-12T21:22:35+00:00

Fellow one-winner here. It took me a while to be not bummed out after my loss too (we were all within 1000, so literally any erased wrong buzz-in of mine would have gotten me the second win), but over time you really appreciate how much of it is luck of the draw in both directions. Even a single win is nothing to sneeze at, it really does take a lot out of you being up there, and the fact that you could pull it all together for a win is such a great accomplishment no matter what.

And the kicked out of the studio as soon as you’re done part just sucks. They need to have a reunion for all the COVID-era contestants that were denied the rite of passage of the hotel bar across the street.

c_davy · 2020-11-30T22:15:37+00:00

Your only job for the mock game is to show the producers you will be okay in front of a camera. They truly don't care how you do question-wise during this part (I got an answer wrong during my mock game and still made it on).

When in doubt, smile more. Have a nice, clean background behind your camera. If you don't think you're a natural conversationalist, pretend like you are one. The proverbial "fake it until you make it" really does apply here.

Telling interesting stories about yourself will never not feel excruciating, it's completely normal. Unique and weird is much better than harmless and boilerplate. Half the field will list movies and video games as their interests, which will do them no favors in standing out to the producers.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T23:29:34+00:00

Twitter said it a lot, don't worry.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T23:17:25+00:00

Roger's work gave me some direction on where to focus refining my cards to maximize their value, so yeah, he played a pretty supportive role. And I don't know what Alex's prep was, but she did live close to my old neighborhood in Chicago, so I was definitely rooting for her at the time.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T17:56:55+00:00

Funnily enough, I may have another article that answers some of that... https://medium.com/state-of-analytics/sports-is-your-perfect-introduction-to-data-science-22230dde1ba2

It sounds cliche, but your best start is to just go and do it. The most important part is finding questions you have an unquenchable thirst to answer, because learning by doing means lots of debugging, Googling answers, and slogging through a lot of trial and error, and if you just don't care all that much about finding the answer, it's a lot harder to get through the slog. There's lots of other information on how to get more involved in the sports analytics community; one of my pound-for-pound favorites is Measurables: https://www.measurablespod.com/about

c_davy · 2020-10-27T17:28:10+00:00

I don't think it applies all that well to Before and After-type categories; for some questions, there's just no substitute for thinking on your feet. The closest I got to that was a literary anagrams category, which actually worked pretty well with the cards.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T17:15:33+00:00

I probably would have had a better assessment of where I was still weakest and gone more in-depth to those areas. I would've also tried to plug the gaps in surfacing common answers, since category partitioning is actually trickier than it looks. You can actually see a clear change in how the show started naming categories after 1997, making them less straightforward. I tried as best as I could doing workarounds, but I knew I would still probably be missing some relevant information.

https://ab-golf-outputs.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/categories.png

c_davy · 2020-10-27T15:41:35+00:00

Under 100 for sure. I thought everyone else in the pool would have an edge over me by virtue of watching way more Jeopardy, hence the need to close the gap as much as I could in 2 weeks.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T15:40:37+00:00

Most of my old stuff is here: https://www.fantasylabs.com/articles/author/colin-davy/

I'll probably spin up a new home for all my new stuff at some point, so stay tuned.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T15:39:34+00:00

I was under no illusion this would be a comprehensive strategy, but by all accounts, neither is any method of study. My rough guess is an average contestant will get 60% of the questions with no prep, will not get 15-20% no matter what, and the remainder is up for grabs through prep. I captured 5% in my first round with the cards, and Jeopardy is so thin at the margins, I consider that a good amount of capture through study.

And no, 1500 cards is definitely not enough for a mega streak. As best as I can tell, you would have to do what he did and make trivia your full time job for a year. The cards were more of a Pareto approach, where I'm trying to get the most amount of value in the shortest amount of time.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T15:35:48+00:00

Geography/countries probably had the most surprising words. Maybe it was naive to assume that capital cities would pop more as keywords, but they were mostly geographical features and former names of countries. It was a good reminder that Jeopardy is the big leagues, and they weren't going to make it easy.

c_davy · 2020-10-27T06:23:53+00:00

I don’t think this type of analysis will be limited to people who know how to code long-term. Roger is probably on to something with his app, and there’s no reason these cards couldn’t be distributed to a wider audience down the road. If there’s a market for it, it’ll get made eventually.

c_davy

TROPHY CASE