James Holzhauer’s ‘Jeopardy!’ Winning Streak Halted at 32 Games

On ‘Jeopardy!’ this season, James Holzhauer seemed to be poised to not only surpass Ken Jennings, the show’s all-time top champion in regular-game earnings but the best challenger to-date to conquer the 74 consecutive win streak.

But suddenly and unexpectedly, Holzhauer came up short on both record marks.

James Holzhauer had amassed $2,462,216 in his 32 consecutive wins entering the episode that aired on June 3 (recorded on March 12). But up against Emma Boettcher, a librarian from Chicago, and Jay Sexton, a senior engineer from Georgia Tech University, Holzhauer encountered his most competitive contest on the show, with Boettcher and Sexton buzzing in first with much higher frequency against Holzhauer compared to the almost all of the 64 contestants that had previously lost to Holzhauer.

It was in the Double Jeopardy round that Boettcher found both Daily Doubles and correctly answering them to earn $10,600 which gave her enough of an edge to enter Final Jeopardy with the lead over Holzhauer — the first time in 33 games he did not possess first place going into the final question.

Host Alex Trebek commented “I can’t believe how good these three contestants have been on ‘Jeopardy!’ today.”

Holzhauer, in the rare second place spot, wagered only enough in Final Jeopardy to ensure beating out the third-place Sexton while hoping Boettcher would wager big and answer incorrectly.

She did wager big but she also did correctly answer in Final Jeopardy (the topic of Shakespeare’s Time which focused on Christopher Marlowe). Boettcher — who once penned a Masters thesis in college on ‘Jeopardy!’ trivia and the varying difficulty of its clues — finished the historic game winning $46,801 and received a high-five from Holzhauer himself.

Full episode (available online thru June 7, 2019):

James Holzhauer came up $56,484 short of Ken Jennings’ 74-game earnings but left a memorable, indelible mark on the show. Throughout his 32 dominant wins, Holzhauer achieved the top 16 single-game winnings in ‘Jeopardy!’ history and 18 of the all-time top 20, as noted below (previous single-game record holder Roger Craig from 2010 ranks 17th, Ken Jennings from 2004 ranks 18th).

Combined with his $58,333 from his 2014 appearance on GSN’s ‘The Chase’ and the $2,000 from placing runner-up in his 33rd ‘Jeopardy!’ game, Holzhauer’s $2,522,549 ranks fourth all-time in American game show winnings history.