The kid pulled it off: After repeatedly losing in tournaments (including a second-place finish against a damn machine), Ken Jennings has won Jeopardy!’s The Greatest Of All Time tournament against his longtime rivals (and Twitter enemies) Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer. The structure of the tournament was based around a first-to-three format, with the first contestant to win three matches—based on how many points they get in each game—taking home the $1 million prize. Jennings won after four episodes, with Holzhauer spoiling the sweep by winning one of the earlier matches after Jennings’ commanding lead.
It was all for naught, though, with Jennings proving to be unstoppable in the ultimate Jeopardy! challenge. Surprisingly, though (as Entertainment Weekly points out), Jennings’ all-time total of winnings still falls short of Rutter’s all-time record. Though Rutter didn’t win any of the matches during the GOAT tournament, he managed to bank $4.6 million over his career of winning other Jeopardy! tournaments. Even with this $1 million prize, Jennings’ total is only up to $4.37 million. Still, as the winner of the tournament, he’s officially the Greatest Of All Time, so it doesn’t matter if Rutter is the all-time money-winner and Holzhauer holds the record for highest winnings in a single game.
The only thing to do now is give Jennings a rematch against IBM’s Watson computer, possibly with the fate of all humanity hanging in the balance. That’d be pretty exciting.