On last week’s Gambling with an Edge show, I shared a story about when a friend tried out for the Jeopardy! game show. Although it doesn’t relate to video poker, there is clever strategy involved. After I told the story on the air, several people wrote flattering emails to me requesting that I publish the story. Here goes, in a slightly modified form. And long-time readers of mine might remember I wrote about this more than a decade ago.
In the late 1980s I was a contestant on Jeopardy! That sentence doesn’t deserve an exclamation point at the end of it, but the name of the show, Jeopardy!, includes an exclamation point in its title, so what can I do?
At the time about 15,000 self-selected people took the test each year in a number of locations and about 500 were selected to actually be on the air. The first time I tried, I did not pass the test. Over the next year I spent maybe 500 hours memorizing lists of such things as Academy Award winners, capital cities, presidents and vice presidents in order, and questions from every trivia book I could find. I re-read college level American history books and scanned People magazine issues so I was familiar with pop culture. I didn’t concentrate on sports because I pretty much kept up on that and could already answer most questions they would likely ask. During lunch hours I would read an almanac. The second time I took the test, I passed. It was easier the second time around partly because I was much better prepared, and partly because I noticed they kept several of the same questions from year to year.
I got on the show, and like two-thirds of the contestants, lost in my one-and-only appearance. Still, I answered several questions correctly and I was proud of my performance. Maybe a little too proud.
The show was taped a couple of months before it was shown on the air. I let 400 of my closest friends know when the show I was on would be broadcast. This was before cell phones, twitter, email, and all of that. It took quite an effort to let 400 people know, especially since I probably only had twenty or so good friends at the time.
Over the next six months I would manage to bring up that I was a Jeopardy! contestant in the first five minutes with every person I met. Yes it was excessive, but this was my first fifteen minutes of fame and I was milking it. Today I’m used to being a minor celebrity in the video poker segment of the gambling world. Back then I had never even heard of video poker and in no way was any kind of a celebrity at all.
I probably would have gotten tired of being an obnoxious one-trick pony were it not for Paul Rodriguez. This is not his real name. I don’t want to get him in trouble. But the story is real.
At the time I worked as a Data Base Administrator for a large company in greater Los Angeles. Paul was a programmer in the same department and we were buddies. Actually, I wanted to be Paul. He was slim, muscular, handsome, and the ladies loved him. We were both single and he and I would go to country western dance halls together. Although I was taller and the better dancer, the ladies far preferred his company to mine.
Paul topped out at maybe 5’6″ and he had a cheerful cockiness about him. Both of his parents were born in Puerto Rico and he was proud of his heritage. As an example of his personality, he’d go up to a pretty blonde girl and ask her if she had a little Puerto Rican in her? The answer was almost always no. He then asked her if she’d LIKE a little Puerto Rican in her. He got slapped a few times, but basically everybody laughed at his stupid little joke.
After my Jeopardy! experience, several of the women wanted to hear stories about my game show adventure and my inside knowledge of what Alex Trabek was really like. (Like I knew. I’d seen him for several hundred hours on TV, and he did shake my hand at the end of the show, but that was it.) This upset Paul because he’d heard my Jeopardy! stories dozens of times and he’d prefer the ladies dance with him rather than listen to me. I getting more attention than him was upsetting the natural order of things — at least from his perspective. And he getting irritated made it a little more fun for me.
Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He blurted out one night, “Well, it’s not such a big deal. It really can’t be that hard to get on Jeopardy! I bet that I could get on the show myself.”
This was exactly what I wanted him to say. “Oh really? I’ll be happy to fade that bet. The test is in October, which is ten months away. I’ll help you a little, but you have to pass the test and get on the show in the year following. How about it?”
We finally agreed to a $250 bet. This was a sizeable bet for both of us at the time. This was years before I moved to Vegas to be a professional gambler. And even when I did move here, I was playing for very low stakes. I tell people I had a $6,000 bankroll when I started playing video poker in 1994. Yes I had that much, but that was also the fund I used to pay expenses of such things as food, rent, transportation, clothes, etc. It wasn’t much, and this was five or so years after I was on Jeopardy!
I was willing to help Paul get ready for the test because I knew he had no shot at getting on the show. He was bright, but lazy. In college he majored in getting laid. You can’t get on Jeopardy! without being a pretty serious student for a long period of time. And since he wasn’t going to make it on the air, I could afford to be generous with the assistance I gave him.
I told him that he could take the test in the morning or the afternoon and I even gave him one of the questions I remembered. I told him that fifteen or so people out of the room of 500 would get called for an interview immediately afterwards. But Paul didn’t need to worry about that for two reasons. First, he wasn’t going to be in the top fifteen and second, the personality requirement to be a Jeopardy contestant is pretty low — and Paul easily had that covered.
I told him that they only checked the ID of the fifteen folks who made it to the interview. It was at least possible that some people would have ringers take the test for them. I told him I’d take the test for him for $1,000. And if I didn’t pass I told him he could keep the $250 side bet. He declined (of course!) and promised he wouldn’t use any other ringer either.
I lent him eight different trivia books I had used to get ready, two almanacs, and a US history book. I suggested he read old copies of National Geographic because there were a lot of questions about geography on the test. He told me he hadn’t read that magazine since junior high school when he and his classmates would memorize which of the old issues had pictures of bare-breasted primitive women. He told me he had fond memories of that. I sneered at him, of course, but I had done the same thing when I was in junior high school.
Finally the day of the test came. Paul took the entire day off. I asked him why he wasn’t just taking off half a day. He was going to end up losing $250 and so why spend a personal day as well? He told me he was taking the test in the afternoon but was going to study in the morning.
I told him that was good plan, but I was lying to him when I said that. There are such a large number of potential questions they can ask; any last minute studying is likely to be ineffective. Still, I remembered that in the line to get in to take the test, quite a few of the contestants were studying various books trying to gain whatever edge they could.
I was expecting him to call me that night to tell me he lost. I got no calls. I went to the dance hall that night figuring I might run into him there. No such luck. I figured he probably picked up some pretty lady at the game show tryout. But no problem, really. I’d have plenty of time to gloat starting tomorrow.
The next day at work I went up to him to pick up my $250. “Not so fast,” he told me. “I’m still alive. I did quite well on the test and was called up afterwards. It’s still not a lock, of course, because they certify too many contestants and a few don’t get called. Tell you what. I’ll settle for $245 if you want to pay me now. And if you don’t mind I’ll keep your books for a while. Seems like more study might be a good plan.”
“No way in hell am I going to pay you anything!” I replied. “Although if YOU want to pay ME $245, I’ll think about it.”
This simply did not compute. It was basically impossible that he passed the test. On the other hand, I’d never known him to lie to me. So what gives? I knew one-in-a-million odds sometimes come in, but betting against those events at even money is smart gambling. Isn’t it?
I figured the most likely explanation was that he was telling me a little white lie so he could have more time to come up with the $250. They would tape shows through February or so. So in a couple of months the truth would be obvious and he could no longer avoid it. I could wait for my money.
Over the next few months, Paul skipped a couple of our normal dance hall nights so he could study. I didn’t understand his behavior. He never seemed to study for the qualifying test, and now he was studying for the show that I was not even certain he was going to be on? Curiouser and curiouser.
In mid-January, Paul told me he was scheduled to attend the taping the show on Thursday of the following week. Did I want to come along and be in the audience for the show?
You bet I did! I had to see this with my own eyes.
When that Thursday came and I was seated in the audience, I looked over to where all the contestants were sitting. They were in a special section away from the regular audience. Sure enough Paul was in that group! Amazing! Up until seeing him sit there, I was pretty sure I’d won $250 and he was playing a practical joke on me to make me earn my money. Now it looked like I had lost $250. I was on the wrong side of a $500 swing and not happy about it.
They taped five shows that day which would end up airing from Monday through Friday. Alex and the returning champion changed clothes before taping the next day’s show so the audience at home thought it really WAS another day. They didn’t call Paul for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. I looked over in the contest pool and there were still four contestants there. Likely they would only call two of them for Friday. There was still a chance Paul wouldn’t be called. Was he a real contestant or not?
Finally there was no more mystery. Two contestants were told to go get dressed for the show … and Paul was one of them. Okay. So be it. I was sorry I lost the bet, but he was my friend and I was rooting for him to do well.
He didn’t embarrass himself on the air, but he didn’t win. The returning champion was pretty good, but Paul stayed close enough. When it came to Final Jeopardy, Paul correctly bet everything he had. If Paul won and the leader lost, however much he bet, Paul would come in first. It worked out exactly the opposite. The leader answered the question correctly; Paul didn’t and came in third.
After Paul shook Alex Trabek’s hand and signed whatever paperwork he had to sign, the two of us went out for a drink. He had a beer and I had a Diet Coke. I congratulated him and grudgingly paid him the $250 I owed. I told him that I couldn’t figure out how he did it. That test was damned difficult and I just didn’t believe he could pass it. “So, tell me. How did you do it? Inquiring minds want to know.”
He refused to say. Paul said, “If you really want to know, it’ll cost you another $250. And you gotta promise not to tell anybody else for ten years. And when I say anybody, I mean everybody. If anybody finds out from you I’ll hunt you down and you’ll be very, very sorry.”
“You can’t do that!” I yelled. “That’s blackmail or extortion, or something. Plus I already paid you $250.”
“You’ve been on Jeopardy!” he told me. “You know it’s neither blackmail nor extortion unless I threaten to do something bad to you. I’m not threatening anything. I will happily keep my mouth shut if you don’t pay. Insofar as the original $250 goes, I’ve already won that, thank you very much. It has nothing to do with whether or not I tell you how I did it. And if you wait until tomorrow or later to decide, the price will have gone up to $500. Or maybe more.”
Damn! Double damn! I did not like this at all. I argued a bit more but I soon saw I had no chance to win. Either agree to pay him another $250 or forever wonder how he did this.
I agreed to pay. Not happily. Not pleasantly. But I agreed to give him $250 the next day and I wanted to know NOW how he did it.
“It was easy,” he told me. “I took the test twice.”
“But that’s impossible!” I told him. “They only give it once a year.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he told me, “but a better way of looking at it is they actually give it twice in one day. I figured that if they kept basically the same test from year to year, probably they had the same test in the afternoon as they did in the morning.
“I made a reservation for the morning test in the name of Mike Diego and in the afternoon as Paul Rodriguez. In the morning I had on an old college sweatshirt, glasses and wore a ball cap. In the afternoon I had on contacts and was wearing coat and tie. You’d recognize me both ways because you know me well. Nobody else would know it’s the same guy. And they weren’t really looking. There were about 500 people there both times and the show staff were just concerned with the logistics of getting people in their seats, passing out the test, and checking to see nobody was cheating. That kind of thing.
“The test was very tough and you’re right, I had no chance to get thirty-five right answers out of fifty. Probably between fifteen and twenty. Maybe. So I spent my time memorizing the questions I didn’t know. When I got out, I waited for everybody to be released and just went out with the other disappointed losers.
“I then went to the public library and looked up the questions I had memorized, and I changed clothes in the library restroom. I got back to the studio in time, went in and aced the test. I probably got forty-seven or forty-eight right because I had forgotten a couple of the ones I thought I had memorized. Still, you only needed thirty-five to pass and I did much better than that.
“Remember, you now owe me another $250 and can’t tell a soul for at least ten years. Any questions?”
“But what if they had changed the tests between morning and afternoon?” I asked.
“Then I would have lost $250. But if they kept them the same I’d win $500 because I planned all along to milk the extra money from you if I could. So I figured the odds were two-to-one in my favor. You’ve talked about gaining the edge at gambling. Aren’t you proud of me for listening?”
I paid him the next day. About six months later, Paul moved away from Southern California and I haven’t seen him since. I’d like to. One reason I’m retelling this story is that maybe he’ll hear or read it and get in touch with me.
It is very unlikely that this methodology for getting on Jeopardy! still works. These events took place more than twenty years ago and I wrote about it in Casino Player eleven years ago. Although that’s a piece-of-junk publication now, it was a lot better previously and it had pretty good circulation. Although nobody from Jeopardy! contacted me after I wrote the article, I figure somebody who read the article must have passed it along to someone who works there. It seems likely they have better security now and rotate the tests they use. But I don’t know that for sure.