Isaac Hirsch was on a roll when he appeared on Jeopardy! earlier this month, winning nine games in a row. However, it all came crashing down when some “bad math” brought his streak to an unfortunate end.
Hirsch, a customer support team lead from Burbank, California, had amassed $215,390 over nine games before a massive wager in the last round of the July 16 game cost him dearly. Now, fans have been able to hear Hirsch’s reaction to his stinging loss.
On the latest edition of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast, producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss and former Tournament of Champions winner Buzzy Cohen played an exclusive clip of Hirsch’s comments right after his nine-game winning streak came to an end.
“Isaac, you’re looking at your math right now,” host Ken Jennings said in the clip.
“I did it wrong,” Hirsch replied. “I did my math incorrectly. Ugh.”
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“So you were aware of a situation where everybody gets it wrong, and you were trying to wager for the win in that situation?” Jennings asked.
“That is correct. Yes. Ouch,” Hirsch responded. “Literally, I was like, ‘He got it wrong! Oh my god, I’m gonna win with $1300.’ Then I looked and was like, ‘No, I’m not. Oh no!’”
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Hirsch added, “This was, I mean, certainly one of the worst ways to lose but also one of the most fitting for me because I am bad at math, so this pretty much fits with who I am.”
“If it’s any comfort, it has happened many times out here before,” Jennings said, offering some consolation. “I think I once had the contestant coordinators come over and remind me I had wagered more than I had, which, I thought I’d unlocked a whole new level of Jeopardy.”
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“I thought I calculated the right balance,” Hirsch continued. “And I did not. I just did it wrong. And boy, I don’t wanna talk about this anymore.”
After the episode aired, Hirsch took to the Jeopardy! Reddit forum where he explained his error.
“Okay, so why did I wager $14,000? The short answer is I did the math wrong,” Hirsch said. “(Although I guess it’s kind of obvious based on how I spent the first minute after the game looking at my scratch paper in horror.) I was trying to subtract 14,401 from 16,200, and somehow came up with 1300 instead of 1800 as the number I needed to arrive at if I got it wrong, hence the 14,000 wager.”
However, as Jennings pointed out, it’s not all bad for Hirsch. After all, he did walk away with over $200,000 and cemented his spot in the next Tournament of Champions. Hopefully, he’ll tune up on his math skills before then.
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