The Best Players In Jeopardy! History

April 2024 ยท 2 minute read

Before James Holzhauer came along with his Vegas tactics for racking up gargantuan cash totals, Roger Craig was the guy when it came to big Jeopardy! winnings. As Delaware Online reports, Craig, a computer scientist from Newark, Delaware, enjoyed a seven-day winning streak in 2010, the most eventful of which was his second game, in which his final score of $77,000 set a new record for one-day winnings total, breaking the previous record of $75,000 set by Ken Jennings. This record stood for nearly a decade until James Holzhauer smashed it on April 9, 2019 with a new record of $110,914. (Holzhauer would, of course, go on to break his own record a few times.) By the end of his seven-day run, Craig had totaled $230,200, finally losing in his eighth game to a sportswriter on a sports-themed "Final Jeopardy."

Craig, of course, returned for the Tournament of Champions in 2011, which he won, racking up a cool quarter mil. In 2014, he was in elite company in the Battle of the Decades tournament, where he made it to the finals, finishing in third behind Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, adding $50,000 to his total. He was drafted by Austin Rogers' team in the All-Star Games, along with Teen Tournament champion Leonard Cooper, but Team Austin was knocked out in the wild card round. All told, Craig's winnings total $530,200.

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