If you’re a fan of Jeopardy, you’ve no doubt heard of Arthur Chu by now. The 30-year-old came onto the scene recently and has already won four nights in a row. How does he do it? It’s all about game theory.
As Kotaku reports, Chu uses a strategy known as the Forrest Bounce. In essence, he picks harder difficulty questions at the start hoping to find the three Daily Doubles on the board. If he knows the answer, great. If he doesn’t, he has at least prevented his opponents from getting them.
Of course, this strategy has already won him his fair share of haters. Jeopardy purists believe the game should be played one row at a time with players starting from the top and moving down. Chu moves all over board, seemingly at random, and it throws off the other players as well as those watching at home.
As you can imagine, Chu has become the most talked about Jeopardy player since Ken Jennings won 74 games in a row back in 2004. While Chu admits that he’s not a super genius like Jennings, he is certainly one of the best players the game has seen in a while.
While we wait for Chu to return to Jeopardy on February 24, you can check out a recap of his exploits courtesy of our favorite Taiwanese animators:
Image via Taiwanese Animators/YouTube