Jeopardy! — the "total point affair"

Alex Trebek was fond of saying that a player in a distant third entering the second day of a tournament final often came back to win. In 2015, Keith Williams at The Final Wager looked at the history, and found… not so much.

Below is an update of Keith's work. With the addition of games to J! Archive over the last several years, it appears that every multiple-game, aggregate-score match is now captured — 135 in all as of May 2023. The first table gives the aggregate results, and the second lists the individual matches. Each of those individual listings links to the final game of the match in the Archive.

Winner's position entering final day
1st
2nd
3rd
Tournament of Champions
21
4
4
Teen Tournament
16
13
3
College Championship
22
6
3
Teachers Tournament
7
3
0
Professors Tournament
1
0
0
Senior Tournament
8
2
0
Others
17
5
0
Totals
92
33
10

Winner's position entering final day 1st 2nd 3rd
Tournament of Champions
 1985 1986 1989 2001 2004 2006 1987 1988 1999
1990 1991 1992 2009 2017
1993 1994 1995
1996 1998 2000
2003 2007 2010
2011 2013 2014
2015 2019 2021
Teen Tournament
 1987 1989 1990 1988 1994 1996 2006 Jul 2007 2013
1991 1992 1993 Feb 1997 Nov 1997 Mar 1999
1995 2001 2005 Nov 1999 2002 2003
Feb 2008 Nov 2008 2009 2004 Feb 2007 2011
2012 2016 2018 2014
2019
College Championship
 1989 1990 1991 1998 Feb 2000 2003 1992 1995 2013
1993 1994 1996 2008 2016 2017
1997 1999 Nov 2000
2001 2002 2004
2005 2007 2009
Feb 2010 Nov 2010 2012
2014 2018 2020
2022 (NCC)
Teachers Tournament
 Nov 2012 2013 2015 2011 Feb 2012 2020
2016 2017 2018
2019
Professors Tournament
 2021
Senior Tournament
 1987 1988 1989 1990 1993
1991 1992 1994
Jul 1995 Dec 1995
Others
 Int'l 2001 MDM UToC SF1 10th Ann Int'l 1997 UToC SF21
UToC F2 MDCI IBM 2022 SC 1 HSR
BotD ASG 1 ASG 2
ASG WC ASG F GOAT 1
GOAT 2 GOAT 3 GOAT 4
2022 SC 2 2023 Masters

1 Brad Rutter won the second semifinal of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions from a tie with Chris Miller for second after the first game.
2 The final of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions was a three-game total-point affair; Rutter won, and led after both the first and second games.

Tournaments with a single-game final:

The 2022 Tournament of Champions final was a series of single games; the winner is the first to win three. (Jeopardy!: The Greatest of All Time also had a first to three wins format, but it was a series of two-game matches.)

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