So what makes Chu so unusual? While most players will start from the top of each column on the Jeopardy board and progress sequentially as question difficulty increases, Chu picks questions at random, using what's called the Forrest Bounce to hunt for the three Daily Doubles, which are often scattered among the harder questions in every game. Instead of moving from the $200 question to the $400 question and so forth, Chu might bounce between all of the $1,600 or $2,000 questions—not the kind of strategy you often see on Jeopardy.
Chu does this for two reasons. For one, it throws everyone off balance. "It's a lot more mentally tiring to have to jump around the board like that," Chu told me.
More importantly, snagging those Daily Doubles offers him a massive statistical advantage. Since Daily Doubles allow players to bet up to their entire bankrolls, just one can swing an entire Jeopardy match—and Chu's strategy is to control them all, even just to prevent other players from using them.
"The only chance you have to give yourself an edge—the only moment of power, or choice you have in Jeopardy is choosing the next clue if you got the last one right," Chu said. "So if you're unpredictable when you do that, and keep opponents on their toes, it's a lot more mentally tiring and might tick off people in the audience, but it lets you gain and keep an edge that's very important to winning the game."
) intrigued me so I googled him. He used to be a poker player but now works as a currency trader. Totally game theory-ing the game.
Yes, he actually seems fairly harmless and laidback despite the extreme NTJ-ness...
