The Jeopardy! IBM Challenge finishes today with a full game between Watson, Brad, and Ken. Whomever has the highest cumulative score from the two games wins one million dollars. Whoa.

The scores as they stand currently are Brad with $10,400. Watson with $35,734, and Ken with $4,800.

Alex begins the show by listing 3 thing he has learned so far during this challenge:

1. “Watson is Fast, knows a lot of stuff and can really dominate a match. “(Come on, Alex, that’s three things in and of itself)
2.  “Watson is capable of some weird wagers.” Then he goes on to describe Watson’s Final Jeopardy wager of “just $947” last night in a category (U.S. Cities) that we all thought would be super easy for it, and would thus elicit a super high wager.
3.  “Toronto is now a U.S. city!” Burn! 

As usual, the contestants drew to see who would select the first clue, and it turns out Watson won.

I’m sleepy, so instead of narrating what happened during the game, I’m just going to summarize how everyone questioned the answers and what went wrong with Watson during this round, ok?

Tonight’s Jeopardy! Round Categories:

     EU, The European Union

     Actors who Direct

     Dialing for Dialects

     Breaking News

     One Buck or Less

     Also On Your Computer Keys

Brad:

• 7 Correct Responses 
• 4 times ringing in before Watson
• 3 times Watson didn’t ring in  
• 1 Incorrect Responses, rang in before Watson

Ken

• 9 Correct Responses
• 1 Daily Double (not competing with Watson)
• 2 times ringing in before Watson
• 6 times Watson didn’t ring in
• 1 Incorrect Responses
• Watson was incorrect first, so he had an opportunity to ring in.

Watson

• 10 Correct Responses
• 2 Incorrect Responses
• EU, the European Union for $1000
• Also On Your Computer Keys for $400: had a 96% confidence rating, but its response was completely unrelated to computer keys – it seemed to ignore the context of the clue.
• 11 Non-responses
• 8 Instances where it had a correct response but too low of confidence level.
• 3 Instances where all possible responses were incorrect

At the end of the round; Ken has $8600, Watson has $4800, and Brad has $2400, this is going first in Double Jeopardy!

During the Contestant introduction Interlude, we find out that in addition to the $1 million the winner will receive, second place gets $300,000 and third place is awarded $200,000.

• IBM will donate 100% of Watson’s winnings to two charities: World Vision, a “first class humanitarian relief organization,” and World Community Grid, a program where you can donate your spare computing power on your PC to support AIDS and Cancer Research. That sounds incredible and I’m disappointed I can’t participate in that because I am a Mac user.
• Brad’s donation will go the Lancaster County Community Foundation in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He’s donating in order to improve technology in public schools in Lancaster, PA. That is where the founder of The Relationship Foundation is from, for whom I am the volunteer Managing Director. If someone is feeling philanthropic, I invite you to donate to us – we are an educational start up that teaches a curriculum based on healthy relationship skills to teenagers. That is something we all need. This seems like an inappropriate plug. Sorry, but donate!
• Ken is playing for Village Reach, a Seattle based nonprofit that provides medical supplies and care like vaccines to remote areas of the world.

The Double Jeopardy! Round categories are:

     Nonfiction.

     Legal “E”s

     What to wear?

     U.S. Geographic Nicknames

     Magical Mouse-tery tour

     Familiar Sayings

This round’s response summary is as follows:

Brad:

• 4 Correct Responses
• 3 times ringing in before Watson 
• 1 times Watson didn’t ring in  
• 0 Incorrect Responses 

Ken

• 7 Correct Responses
• 4 times ringing in before Watson
• 3 times Watson didn’t ring in
• 0 Incorrect Responses

Watson

• 17 Correct Responses
• 2 Daily Doubles
• Nonfiction for $1200: Watson has $8400 and wagers $2127 on this clue, “The New Yorker’s 1959 review of this said in its brevity & clarity it is ‘unlike most such manuals, a book as well as a tool.” Watson’s response: “Let’s try, ‘What is Dorothy Parker?” Its confidence level was only 14%, but it had to answer its top possibility, as wrong as it was. Watson’s score dropped to $6723.
• Legal “E”s for $1600. Watson had $15,073 at the time and risks only $367: “This 2-word phrase means the power to take private property for public use; it’s OK as long as there is just compensation.” Watson questions correctly (duh, because it’s an easy clue) and its score rises to $15440.
• 0 Incorrect Responses
• 4 Non-responses
• 1 Instances where it had a correct response but too low of confidence level.
• 3 Instances where all possible responses were incorrect

At the end of the Double Jeopardy! round, the scores are:

Brad $5600

Ken $18200

Watson $23440

Final Jeopardy Category: 19^th Century Novelists.

William Wilkinson’s “An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia” inspired this Author’s Most Famous Novel.

All 3 contestants question correctly. Brad wagered all $5600 to finish today with $11,200. Added to his $10,400 total yesterday, and his overall score is $21,600. Already below Watson’s single-day earnings from yesterday.

Ken amended his correct response with the flippant parenthetical, “I for one welcome our new computer overlords” to uproarious laughter from the IBM nerd-audience. He’s so fucking clever. He wagered only $1000, thus ends today with $19200. Coupled with his $4800 score from yesterday, his total winnings are $24,000. He’s going to finish in Second Place.

Watson wagered an impressive $17,973, increasing today’s winnings to $41,413 and his overall score to $77,147. Yeah he won. We all predicted that, no matter how little I wanted it to happen.

So IBM’s charities get to split the million. Lancaster, PA gets $100,000. Village Reach gets $150,000. Not a bad way to end an interesting 3-day Jeopardy! binge.

I would like to commend Ken and Brad for strong-arming Watson more today. They rang in before Watson had a chance a good number of times, which is really one of the best strategies to use during a game of this sort, as described/predicted by Frank Lantz, game designer and colleague/friend of my brother. Had Ken and Brad not been able to ring in as quickly as they did tonight, their scores would have been much lower. You gave it your all, guys, but this was one round you were never going to win.

The Jeopardy! Teen Tournament starts tomorrow night, so we can all go back to feeling really good about our smarty pants selves by dominating teenagers in our favorite game show.

Until then…