Key Points
Jamie Ding says he’s relieved to be done with Jeopardy for a while.
The champion won 31 games and $882,605 during his winning streak.
Ding is glad he at least lost to a professional chess player, Greg Shahade.
Although his historic winning streak on Jeopardy came to an end, Jamie Ding is content and ready to move on (for now).
The 31-game champion won $882,605 before his last game on Monday, during which he was defeated by fellow contestant Greg Shahade in a runaway win. Still, Ding, 33, has cemented his place in the legendary show’s history books and landed at No. 5 on the Jeopardy Leaderboard of Legends ranking of past players.
How does he feel? Slightly relieved.
“Yeah [I feel a sense of relief], just having some certainty,” he told producer Sarah Whitcomb during a Jeopardy Substack interview shared on Wednesday. “Jeopardy, I guess, is kind of like baseball in theory. It could go on forever. You could just never, ever stop and that would be interesting but also, I mean, eventually I assumed that I would get tired.”
Still, Ding admitted it’s “bittersweet” to wrap up his time on the beloved game show.
“I certainly would have liked for it to go on longer. But on the other hand, I mean, I’m really lucky that it went on as long as it did,” the bureaucrat and law student said. “And, I mean, I definitely caught some breaks along the way. So, every game was a gift.”
Shahade, 47, is an international master of chess currently on his own run on the show since his debut earlier this week. Shahade told Philadelphia magazine that he had to amp himself up to take on Ding, who he called “the sweetest person.”
“Before the match, I did hype myself up a bit,” Shahade said. “Hit my chest a little bit, just kind of like to get pumped.”
Jamie Ding on ‘Jeopardy!’.
Credit: Hulu
After Shahade won, Ding was nothing but courteous. Ding, who had 23 runaway games and 976 correct responses during his streak, told Whitcomb he was honored to be defeated by such an all-star player.
“This last one — I think it was a great game,” he said. “If it had to end, I’m glad that it ended to a really strong player and in a game that I think was quite fun for everyone.”
Ding will definitely be back on the Ken Jennings-hosted series as he now joins the likes of all-time leaders Jennings (74 wins), Matt Amodio (38) and Amy Schneider (40). If he had won one more episode, his run would’ve tied that of James Holzhauer, who won 32 consecutive Jeopardy episodes in 2019.
“When the next call comes, I think it will be nice to hunker down and do maybe a little more proper studying,” Ding noted.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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