James Holzhauer did not break another Jeopardy! record on Friday night, though that would have required a game like no one has ever seen on the long-running trivia show. On Thursday, the current Jeopardy! champion got within striking distance of Ken Jennings record for regular season career winnings when he won his 31st straight game.
On Friday, Holzhauer cruised once more. He found and answered all three Daily Doubles correctly and added $27,000 in Final Jeopardy to win with $79,633 and reach a 32-day total of $2,462,216. That puts him just $58,484 off the all-time mark Jennings set during his 74-game run on the show in 2004. Considering that Holzhauer is averaging well over that deficit, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that he passes Jennings during the next episode.
Holzhauer and Jennings are inexorably tied together in Jeopardy! celebrity and lore, and the two have commented about each other often and even met one another in the past. But now we have Jennings commenting about Holzhauer appearing on another show. Game Show Network, which aired The Chase for a few seasons, also works with Jennings. And it seems the network has decided to rebroadcast the episode where Holzhauer crushes it on the show and air it with Jennings commenting about the episode.
The video shows The Chase portion of the show, in which the contestant races The Beast to put a money amount into the bank for the competitors to split at the end of the show. In the clip, Holzhauer actually misses the first question, but he quickly returns to form with $60,000 at risk.
It’s a pretty cool idea, especially considering these two are almost certainly headed for a death match of some sort in the future. And come Monday, Holzhauer will have almost certainly put another of Jennings’ lofty records in the rearview.
