has there ever been a game in the semifinals where 3 wildcards played or do they try to avoid this

I cannot think of a single solitary reason they would ever allow this to happen.

maybe the pairings are random

No TV producer with an interest in remaining employed is going to say "Well, that's how the chips fell! We've gotta go with it!"

Just a few things here:

1. It makes as little sense to me as putting two of the top five money winners in the same quarter-final game, and I've seen that.
2. ISTR that in regulation play, the contestant coordinators put players together in whatever manner they think will make the most competitive games.
3. There was a ToC (1988?) where two players tied for the high score of the week in the QF's, and they each beat a wild card player by $1. One of those wild card players was placed as the high-scoring player in his semifinal game.

So, it's not far-fetched that some scenario might occur in which the producers felt that an all-WC game was a good thing. I'd disagree with them, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen.

As in, in regulation play? I don't see why that doesn't make sense at all, depending on the field.

Precisely. Which proves my point all the more: why do you want to guarantee a wildcard player a spot in your two-day final?

But it's very possible that a wildcard player could have a higher score than *several* of the quarterfinal winners.

In fact, if I was being strictly fair, that's how I would seed it: the best wildcard qualifier plays against the #3 and #4 QF winners, the next best plays the #2 and #5 QF winners, and the #1 QF winner gets the two poorest WCs. Gives you the best chance of getting the #1, #2, and #3 QF winners into the finals.

But, at the same time, you want ratings all week, not just those two days, and that #1 / two crappy WCs game would likely be a snoozer. So I can see that getting massaged.

I'll gladly eat my words if someone can cite evidence (doesn't the J! Archive keep records of this crap?), but I'm still not convinced.

Good thing I'm not a member of a Nielsen family because when it's tourney time, that's the only time I watch.

Then you're in good company, because that's two more days than I do. :)

The problem with this is, they would have to put three of the five quarter-final winners together in one of the other two semi-finals. It just doesn't seem fair to the winners to have that happen.

-- Don

Probably, but this website in particular tracks the Tournaments of Champions up until...he stopped doing it.

I have no idea how this would be feasible, but I really like the idea of a loser's round, where the high scoring non-winners would play for a single spot in the next round.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, because the only way I can interpret it is more or less what we're talking about, and we're saying why it's NOT a good idea. In the tournament, the four "highest scoring non-winners" advance. The original question was whether Jeopardy had ever created a "losers round" featuring only wild-card players competing in one of the three semi-final games. While Jeopardy is free to do whatever they want, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to do that, since it A) guarantees that someone who lost their first game would be playing for the championship and B) forces three of the five who won their games to all play against each other in the semifinals.

Neither of those are Worst-Idea-Ever disastrous decisions that would forever alter the purity and goodness which is the world's most popular quiz show. After all, you still have to win the rest of your matches no matter who you face. Ultimately, if TPTB decided that three wild card players would make an intriguing matchup, it's certainly within their right to set it up that way. It just doesn't "feel" right as a basic issue of fairness. I doubt they've ever done it, and I doubt they ever will.

To answer one of toetyper's original thoughts definitively, no, the semifinal matchups are definitely not random, nor are they pre-determined by outcome, the way a traditional bracket would be. After the nine semifinalists are determined, Jeopardy producers decide who will play whom in the semifinal games.

Matt, if I'm understanding Travis correctly, he's saying that by having 3 wildcards together, and having the 4th against seasoned winners, sure you're guaranteeing one WC will move on, but chances are ONLY one will move on. If you spread them out, there's a chance (albeit a slim one) of having an ALL-wildcard final.

Well, OK, if that's the point then it does -- as he rightly said -- bring up feasibility issues. The simplest solution in that case would be to have six qualifying games instead of five (making three more past winners very happy in the process) and then have the semifinals consist of two games where the six winners play each other and a third where only three wild card players face off.

I'm not sure what purpose it serves to guarantee one-and-only-one wild card player a seat at the final table, but that would be the easiest way to do it.

Actually, I interpreted Travis's suggestion as something akin to the play-in game for the NCAA basketball tournament, where you would get, say, five winners, and then the three top losers play in the play-in game for the sixth and final spot in the semis. Then two semis with those six and mano-a-mano in the finals.

All these great ideas Travis has -- I wonder which one really was his?

You're right, that would work and would actually be completely feasible in that the tournament still gets done in ten days.

I was just going to let you guys keep going and attributing all of these things to me. Please go on. :)

Chris Lemon hit it right that I was putting forth a "play-in": the three high scoring losers in the Quarterfinal round would compete for the last Semi-final spot, with the winner of that game moving on. It sounds great in my head, but it would take all kinds of jiggering of the rules that I haven't thought of. The idea works much better when you have a field size of just over or under a power of two, and of course, a two-sided contest.

I asked this question on the Jeopardy discussion board, and it turns out that one person very quickly pointed to this game. It's a Teen Tournament, not a TOC, but the structure is the same and apparently this game pitted three wild card players against each other in the first semifinal. So there is precedent.

EDIT: And someone else pointed to it happening in the 2007 College Tournament. How about that?

Oh, yeah, you're right, because the way Chris described it (which made tons of sense to me at the time) you'd only be left with two finalists. Again, all things are theoretically doable, but that (like the four-player Super Jeopardy rounds) would be a hard thing for fans to wrap their brains around.

Even as a nine-year old fan who squeeed with delight at the prospect of having well-loved champions back to play again, I could smell the fail of the four-player round coming a mile away. I'm sure there's a reason the $1,000,000 Masters was done in the standard two-week frame.

Yeah, I didn't like the head-to-head final either, but as you said, it gets you done in ten days.

If you were going to do a full play-in system, it would take a lot longer and a bigger field: say, eight first-round matches, the play-in, three semis...and that leaves you with a three-day final as the culmination of three weeks? Blah.

Playing the final over multiple days has never been my favorite thing in the world, but the TOC better suits the existing wildcard system than it does a play-in, I think.

Blah indeed. Certainly better than it being a three-month tournament, however. Dance, monkey, dance!
This is purely preference, I grant you, but why can't it be the top nine in the tournament, the winner of each of the three qualifying days goes on to the two-day final series, no wild cards. The whole thing's done in a week.

Well, it could, of course. Especially if the attitude was "get it over with". Jeopardy, however, sees the Tournament of Champions as an important and ratings-attractive event that they would prefer to have fill two weeks instead of one.

Meanwhile, someone on the Jeopardy board went back through all the Tournaments of Champions and found out that, in fact, three wild card players did meet in the semifinals one time. So yes, it has happened once out of twenty (not counting this one) ToC's

How are the ratings for the tournaments as compared to regular play, I wonder.
Interestingly enough (interesting to me, anyhow) I absolutely love the NCAA basketball tournament, which is all about multiple weeks of elimination games. Just a part of my inconsistent wacked out genetics, I suppose.

I always thought it would be cool in the second and subsequent ToC's to take out the fourth wild-card spot and put the previous year's winner there.

Now that (i) they're no longer married to starting on Monday and (ii) they generally wait more than a year between ToC's, I'd like to see a format with more QF games and fewer wild cards. The simplest version would have six QF's, three wild cards and a single-day final. My preferred version would be seven QF's, no wild card and a second-round bye for the top winner from the QF's.

Mmm, this crow tastes delicious.

I would love to know what the logic was that predicated that decision.

THANK YOU

Haven't they done this format once or twice? I want to say it was either for a 10th Anniversary tournament (with one player from each of the previous nine years) or a Teen Reunion tournament.

I recall hearing in the past that, before getting to producer whims, one thing they always avoid in a tournament semifinal is having any two contestants face each other who already faced each other in the quarterfinal. I wonder if that's always held true or not.

I haven't been paying enough attention to see if this is a trend, but I figured that this year's ToC starting on Wednesday made sure that the Finals wouldn't be bumped out due to NCAA coverage.

10th Anniversary did that: one person drawn from the semi-final pool from the last eight tournaments plus the winner of the most recent grand championship made up the nine contenders.

For the Teen Reunion, twelve contestants from the early teen championships played; the three top daily winners played in a single game for all the money. The one who emerged victorious in the semi-final but didn't make the Friday show won a smaller fourth place prize.