Holy cow. The current rule is that the show cannot ask him to leave, right? Has any contestant “retired” after winning so much and nobody beat them?
^^No
As they say, if it can’t go on forever it will stop. At some point, I expect him to lose. Remember the name Nancy Zerg. She beat Ken Jennings on in his 75th game. Did Nancy go on a long run of wins herself? No, she lost her next game.
As noted, Jeopardy contestants are a very selective bunch. On any given day, any of them can win (with a little luck). Right categories. Wrong answer (or question :)). Never know. We shall see.
I have enjoyed the run so far. Interesting to see how much further he can go. When he does lose (will put an “if” in there but seems clear it will happen eventually), how will it unfold. Runaway games happen. Nature of the game. Had we had 19 of them in a row (or whatever number out of 19 that have been runaways for James) with a different winner each night (or at least no one winning more than 2 games) I think it would be boring. But having it be the same contestant each night and winning by huge margins (beyond just runaways) to me has been amazing and fun to watch. Even have my sister watching so we text each other during/after each show. My dad and kids have been longtime watchers with me. Others talking about it who have never really been interested is fun too.
We - my mother, brother and I - watch at 6 pm, so dinner time. My brother will even take a 1/2 hour off of a sports game (or the draft, or something) to watch. We had to turn it back and not watch Wheel!
I knew two answers tonight that none of them even tried to answer!!! So proud of myself. LOL
Yes, @TomSrOfBoston , I got ratification. Didn’t get the other one. But at least I got one of them. Now I can die happy! 
@sevmom The other was aardvark.
Nobody got General Foods, including me! My husband did get aardvark though.
I got aardvark but I always thought they were the same as anteater. lol
And I actually was goofy enough to blurt out armadillo! Clearly some of us need to get our “A” animals straight!
“When he does lose (will put an “if” in there but seems clear it will happen eventually), how will it unfold.”
It might be a long time coming, but I predict that James will eventually lose when a match comes along that has a very strong player, one that if he/she can’t quite keep up with James on the button can at least stay within striking distance, combined some categories where James isn’t quite so strong. Throw in James betting fairly big on a DD or FJ and missing coupled with the other strong player betting big on a DD and FJ and hitting and you’ve got the makings of a James Holzhauer defeat.
We’ve already seen at least two players who were able to stay within striking distance of James for most of their games - the guy Monday and there was a woman back in James’s first week who also did (but she missed a DD late in the game taking her out of contention). Combine another one of those players with a costly miss by James and you will have a new Jeopardy champion.
How could none of them know the General Lee is a Dodge Charger???
Too bad he has to pay taxes on his winnings. The amount he won today was amazing.
I think a challenger needs to be strong like the guy on Monday with the third player getting little. I think that was a problem on Monday, that the third player was pretty good too so was taking the questions away from the ‘strong’ challenger.
His undoing will probably be going against another strong player, and his betting not paying off.
H and I have a couple plastic trophies from winning trivia on cruises and have also won at a brewery . We don’t frequent trivia contests at all, just happened upon the brewery one a few months ago and got lucky (and won a brewery gift certificate, but better yet, also symphony tickets-Pianist Alain Lefevre playing a concerto ( #4) by a somewhat obscure Canadian composer , Andre Mathieu, who died young and has been championed by Lefevre. Wonderful and I thank a trivia contest for that. Beautiful music.
We wouldn’t do well with some of the newer trivia games in clubs these days-lots of new stuff we don’t know much about compared to younger players . Jeopardy still seems to involve more general knowledge type stuff that the old folks like. It will be interesting to see how the game evolves, particularly when Alex steps down. They may need to tweak things to keep younger viewers interested.
@HiToWaMom I read an article where he mentioned a category he avoided - politics. They’re also putting a lot of the double jeopardy clues in the $1,000 slots (which James always goes for first). Are they doing that on purpose? At least two days in a row he chose the double jeopardy clue as his very first pick. That kept his overall score down.
The next 2 weeks will be the Teachers’ Tournament so James will get a break, assuming that he wins tonight and tomorrow night. I wonder how much Jeopardy’s ratings will fall without James?
I’m sure the placement of DDs is randomly generated to keep the game honest. I highly doubt that a few have been in the $1000 slot purposely because of James.
“Too bad he has to pay taxes on his winnings. The amount he won today was amazing.”
There is no special game show tax. Game show winnings are taxed as ordinary income. So if you win say a hundred grand on a game show it would be taxed the same as if you earned a hundred grand in salary.
Where game show winners sometimes get in tax trouble is when they win an expensive object like a boat or a car instead of cash. With cash you just give part of the cash to the government as income tax and you keep the rest. If you win a car you are taxed on the retail value of the the car. So if you don’t happen to have enough cash on hand to pay the income tax on the value of the car then you will probably have to sell the car in order to pay the tax.
BTW, Jeopardy does not do any withholding from your winnings for tax purposes. You get a check for the full amount you won, and it’s up to you to pay the taxes on it.
James also had childhood dreams of being in a MLB front office a la Moneyball. I bet someone will hire him. https://www.mlb.com/news/jeopardy-winner-wants-to-be-a-mlb-general-manager?partnerId=ed-13715967-1140038163