“Jeopardy!” contestant James Holzhauer was finally eliminated on his thirty-third appearance on the long-running quiz show. His champion streak came to an end this Monday when he was bested by Emma Boettcher, a librarian from the University of Chicago.

While his all-time winnings amount to a cool excess of $2 million, he was still short the achievement of past “Jeopardy!” champ Ken Jennings, though his take needed 75 episodes to build up back in 2004. Already “Jeopardy James” Holzhauer has cemented his reputation in the syndicated game program for his aggressive and high-risk play-style that saw him accumulate money fast.

Streak ended

The June 3 episode of “Jeopardy!” saw Holzhauer take on new challengers Jay Sexton and Emma Boettcher. While the actual broadcast would not be until the evening, early leaks of the episode in question reveal that this time, the pro sports gambler from Las Vegas was finally overcome by the Chicago university librarian, who herself has suddenly risen to prominence for defeating the seemingly invincible Holzhauer. But the records for the show now stand according to USA Today, with Jeopardy James cleaning house on all Top 15 daily money totals. That includes his debut win record of $131,127 from April 17, when his do-or-die play strategy was first impressively demonstrated.

Holzhauer's “Jeopardy!

” strategy hinges on wagering absurd amounts of his game money whenever he selects a Daily Double answer. First he would sweep the highest-value answers on all screen categories. This play style was aided by James’ incredibly encyclopedic body of knowledge. From his first 25 winning episodes Holzhauer had on average 35.5 correct question guesses against a 1.04 incorrect response.

Of the 75 Daily Doubles he hit before his thirty-third outing, Jeopardy James gave the correct questions to 71.

'Who is Emma?'

Emma Boettcher, the contestant who finally booted Jeopardy James Holzhauer from the show (before he could beat Ken Jennings’ record), also happens to have an academic interest in the quiz show. As NBC News has it, during the contestant introductions Monday night, host Alex Trebek mentioned that Boettcher did her Master’s thesis on a text-mining experiment to determine if a computer can estimate the difficulty of a “Jeopardy!

” answer clue. Her graduate school study at the University of North Carolina was given the Elfreda Chatman Research Award, before she went to the University of Chicago.

Even with such past preparation, Boettcher was still hard-pressed against Jeopardy James until the Final Jeopardy round. It was Holzhauer’s uncharacteristically modest bet for the right answer (which all three contestants got) that helped the librarian cinch the win. Already, her fellow workmates both in Chicago and formerly in North Carolina are celebrating Boettcher’s triumph.
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