Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I bet sports all the time and very rarely get in a spot where someone offered me even money on something I'm going to get right five out of six times.
I first got into gambling because it was a way for me to leverage my love of baseball statistics. For the first few years, that's all I would focus on.
The best bet I made that won was on the Tampa Bay Rays - who had never had a winning season in franchise history - to advance to the 2008 World Series.
I know life goes on if you make a big bet and you lose. But if you don't give yourself the best chance of winning, you're going to kick yourself tomorrow.
I'm a pro sports gambler. You have winning days and you have losing days. But you know if you've got the right strategy, you're going to get it in the end.
I stopped playing online poker due to a combination of the UIGEA legislation and realizing that I could make more money with less effort by betting sports.
As a sports fan, I like the one-and-done playoff setups of the NFL and NCAA, but a best-of-seven gives the favorite a much better chance of prevailing in the end.
I spent almost no time studying categories like geography and sports, even though they came up frequently on 'Jeopardy,' because I'm already strong in those subjects.
I figured, maybe one in five, one in 10 people would recognize me. But no, it's everywhere, especially in Las Vegas. I think the city's kind of embraced me which is good.
There's a lot of attention on me which can be good, it can be bad. Sometimes my daughter's acting up in public and I really wish I could become anonymous for a few minutes.
There are times when you'll only have one or two seconds to decide if you're going to bet on something and you need to be decisive. You need to do math quickly in your head.
I think if you're talking about 'Jeopardy' style, I'm not afraid to throw the deep ball, even if it might get picked off, so Deshaun Watson I think would be the best comparison.
My family and I were already living our best lives before 'Jeopardy!' called, so we mostly want to continue that while also giving back to the children of the Las Vegas community.
It's one thing to skip class to play poker, but if I'm learning how to think in the real world playing poker, then maybe that's more valuable than a college education could've been.
I don't involve personal biases in my handicapping or wagering. I bet against the Cubs in the 2016 World Series, which tainted the victory a little. It was still incredible to watch.
The fact that I win and lose money all the time helps desensitize me, so I can write down $60,000 as the Final Jeopardy wager and not be trembling at the thought of losing that money.
I think most people who bother to study 'Jeopardy!' game theory are going to arrive at similar conclusions about how to best play the game. Not everyone is going to take that step, of course.
Holzhauer Haters' is pretty catchy, but I have not encountered too many haters. I'm sure they are out there, but I don't spend my free time looking up every person's opinion of James Holzhauer.
I think the best way to quickly describe my personality is that I'm a maximizer rather than a satisficer, i.e. I want to squeeze every drop out of an opportunity rather than settle for 'good enough.'
I wouldn't recommend sports betting as a career. It requires a ton of effort and mastery of many different skills, and successful bettors are unwilling to teach you because you would be their competition.
I sketched out what I believed to be my optimal strategy for 'Jeopardy:' Play fast, build a stack, bet big, and hope for the best. In my mind, playing a seemingly risky game actually minimizes my chances of losing.
In Chicagoland, they had afternoon 'Jeopardy!' and afternoon Cubs games when they were at home, so that was basically what I would watch and it's what got me interested in Jeopardy! and sports statistics at an early age.
I get mad at football coaches who are afraid to call for a big play early in the game, you know, because they want to still be in the game at the end, and then it turns out they have no chance but a Hail Mary or something similar to that at the end.
My parents read me some typical children's books: 'Green Eggs and Ham,' 'The Little Engine That Could,' 'Peter Rabbit.' But I quickly developed a preference for nonfiction books about baseball and math, by the likes of Bill James and Martin Gardner.
I kind of didn't look at anyone else's strategy for 'Jeopardy!' I thought, I'm going to build this from the ground up... If I had never seen a 'Jeopardy!' game played before, what would I have to do to play it to maximize my winnings, maximize my chances of winning?
I've found that in an adult reference book, if it's not a subject I'm interested in, I just can't get into it. I was thinking, what is the place in the library I can go to to get books tailored to make things interesting for uninterested readers? Boom. The children's section.
When I watched 'Jeopardy!' as a kid, I would primarily watch with my grandmother. She was the most beautiful person the world has ever seen. Her first language wasn't English, so she couldn't follow along well, but she wanted to share this experience with me since she saw it was something I really liked.
My parents were both very frugal, and I think they're responsible for my attitude of always looking for good value, especially in my work. In a way, sports betting is like a big game of 'The Price Is Right:' just like I'd pay $3 for a Coke Zero but not $4, I'd lay three points on the Bears-Packers point spread but not four.