Top 3 Most Dominant Contestants in History

[Jeremy Nelson]

Today i (unsuccessfully) tried to reel in statistics on John Hatten\'s Blockbusters run, similar to the running stats one person kept during Ken Jennings\' run on Jeopardy. Although I knew he was a 20 match winner who won all of his Gold Runs, I didn\'t realize how dominant he was. During his first 10 match tenure, he went 20-2 in the 22 games played, and captured spaces on the board on a roughly 2-1 ratio to the family pair. 

 

Knowing all that, I pose this to you all- who are your top 3 most dominant contestants of all time? It can either be based on a total reign or one episode. Mine in no particular order:

 

Ken Jennings (Jeopardy!)

John Hatten (Blockbusters)

Neil Bines (Caesar\'s Challenge)

 

 

[Vahan_Nisanian]

In no order:

 

Michael Larson (Press Your Luck)

Neil Bines (Caesar\'s Challenge)

Tom O\'Brien ($ale of the Century)

[TLEberle]

Various cases can be made for Michael Larson, Thom McKee, Kit Salisbury, and Alice Conkwright.

[BrandonFG]

-Ken Jennings

-Thom McKee

-John Hatten

 

On one hand, you could make the case that using winning streaks is too easy of a crutch. On the other hand, to win so many games consecutively and make it look easy is no small feat.

 

Honorable mention: Michael Larsen.

[TLEberle]

On one hand, you could make the case that using winning streaks is too easy of a crutch.

To that end, two-thirds of Jeopardy contestantry played under a different paradigm where you were excused after five wins. There\'s a few players in that top quintile that could stake a claim for \"most dominant,\" but are ill-remembered because they played in the 1980s or 1990s, and were gone after a week.

The mother-daughter pair on Blockbusters that mowed down twenty solo contestants on the way to the $120,000 top prize also could put in a requisition form too.

[PYLdude]

Jennings, McKee, and Larson are the correct answers. Jennings for his decimation of so many players, McKee for his endurance, Larson for his exploitation of what turned out to be a broken system.


If the list doesn\'t start at least with Jennings and McKee it doesn\'t to me have a lot of cred. #3 could be open to interpretation. Any big TTD winner could be there. You could make an argument for many other Jeopardy contestants (Roger Craig, Dave Madden, Spangenberg, Rutter, insert here).

[JepMasta]

I think Jon Hatten was such a phenom based on the fact that his house burned to the ground DURING his run, and he still kept his cool when a lesser man would have folded like a cheap suit.

[TLEberle]

Wow is that totally uncalled for.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Thom McKee was an incredible champion, and maybe it\'s just me, but it just doesn\'t seem that hard to win a considerable number of times on Tic Tac Dough. Maybe it\'s that the questions weren\'t all that hard to begin with.

[TLEberle]

Couple that with the fact that if you go first all you have to do is get your questions correct and you\'ll never lose.

[PYLdude]

If it was so easy to do it, why did nobody come close to his streak afterwards? I mean, takes endurance to keep going as long as he did. Not everybody has that.


I would think McKee being over $100,000 ahead of his closest competitor reinforces his spot in the top 2.


Easy questions or not, you still had to do a fair amount of work to get to six figures. Never mind doing it three times.

[J.R.]

I think, with any reasonable argument, you could poke holes into anybody\'s dominance over a particular game.

 

Sure McKee got a lot of softball questions and cupcake opponents, but he still had to get them right. I think he\'s up there just for the longevity.

 

My list would be: Ken Jennings, Thom McKee and Michael Larson (The mental focus needed to concentrate on the board patterns for that long with the serious $ at stake is my reasoning)

[Jeremy Nelson]

I would think McKee being over $100,000 ahead of his closest competitor reinforces his spot in the top 2. Easy questions or not, you still had to do a fair amount of work to get to six figures. Never mind doing it three times.

Let\'s focus on the wins, not the dollar amount here. The average take for winning a game on TTD is somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000. Take out a few tie games here and there that really add to the pot (I think Tom had a $30K+ one), and at the end of the day, only a third of that money at best came from actual knowledge based gameplay. The other $200K or so was made up of cruises, cookware, and disco jukeboxes earned by avoiding dragons.

[PYLdude]

I would think McKee being over $100,000 ahead of his closest competitor reinforces his spot in the top 2. Easy questions or not, you still had to do a fair amount of work to get to six figures. Never mind doing it three times.

Let\'s focus on the wins, not the dollar amount here. The average take for winning a game on TTD is somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000. Take out a few tie games here and there that really add to the pot (I think Tom had a $30K+ one), and at the end of the day, only a third of that money at best came from actual knowledge based gameplay. The other $200K or so was made up of cruises, cookware, and disco jukeboxes earned by avoiding dragons.

I call bullshit. Most of McKee\'s bonuses didn\'t go so well, IIRC (Wink remarked on how it wasn\'t always the best part of his game). I would argue at least three-fifths of his winnings were from the front game, if for nothing else but the eight cars he won.

[Craig Karlberg]

Here\'s my Top 3:

 

Ken Jennings(for obvious reasons)

Thom McKee(for his endurance & the courage to stay on as long as he did)

Michael Larsen*

 

Before I explain the * on Larsen, Thom\'s run was partly knowledge & partly strategic.  Not only was he smart, he was also courageous to make smart, strategic decisions based on what was happening.  He didn\'t win 40 some games & win $300K+ just for nothing.

 

My honorable mention goes to Roger Craig\'s $77K single-day record on J!  Someday, someone will be daring enough to end a J! match with $100K.

 

*The reason for this is because some claimed his game was rigged.  He simply exploited the system to his advantage.  Still, CBS decided to change the patterns after his dominant performance.  His game wasn\'t rigged in my eyes.  He just found a fundamental flaw in the system that allowed him to beat it & win $110K+.