Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge

Host

Alex Trebek

Announcer

Johnny Gilbert

Broadcast

February 14~16, 2011

Packager

Sony Pictures Television

The IBM Challenge was the modern Jeopardy's first exhibition tournament to and take place during episodes of the syndicated version. Featuring the three-week, two-round format as the traditional tournaments on Jeopardy!, it was held in honor of Watson and offered a $1,000,000 top prize. The event's first round ran February 14-16, 2011, and ended with the champions of all three games, as well as two non-winners with the highest scores, moving on to the finals. The three final matches were televised from February 14th-15th, with the finals airing from February 16th.

Contestants

Two fan favorite contestants (all at least a Tournament of Champions semi-finalist) from Jeopardy and Watson supercomputer. Two contestants were invited back to compete in the $1,000,000 prize, as listed below.

• Ken Jennings - (Biggest Money Winner of Season 21 and 2005 UToC 1st runner-up) Total Winnings of $3,022,700
• Watson (supercomputer)
• Brad Rutter - (2001 ToC, 2002 MDM, and 2005 UToC winner) Total Winnings of $3,270,102

Game Summary

Game	Air Date	Name	Score	Name	Score	Name	Score	Detail
Final	February 14, 2011	Ken Jennings	$4,800	Watson	$35,734	Brad Rutter	$10,400	#
	February 15, 2011							#
	February 16, 2011		$19,200		$41,413		$11,200	#
Total			$24,000		$77,147		$21,600

Trivia

• This was the first and only exhibition tournament.
• Watson wasn't connected to the Internet, so it couldn't look online for help and it rang in the same way human players do by pushing a button.
• The system that powers Watson, comprising 10 racks each of 10 IBM Power 750 servers, takes up an entire server room. The system has a memory capacity of 15 trillion bytes. Watson's hardware is cooled by two large refrigerator units.
• Watson's server room is located next door to the studio built for Watson to play in. To provide stage presence, IBM created an avatar to represent Watson, which is displayed on a flat-panel screen positioned vertically behind the podium. Based on IBM's "Smarter Planet" icon, the threads and thought rays that make up the avatar change color and speed depending on what's happening during the game. When Watson feels confident in an answer, the rays in the avatar turn green. They turn orange when Watson gets an answer wrong. The avatar speeds up and activates when Watson's algorithms are working hard to answer a clue. A response panel displayed on-screen during the game shows the top three responses from among the thousands Watson generates for every clue, along with its confidence percentage for each, and a buzz threshold. If Watson's confidence isn't higher than the buzz threshold, it won't ring in. For the exhibition match, Watson receives the clues electronically by text file the same instant they are revealed to the human players. Watson also electronically receives a signal the instant it may safely buzz in, at the same instant the signaling lights illuminate for the human players. Additionally, Watson receives the correct response electronically by text file for each clue once it has been given.