Unusual J! occurrence today

[ooboh]

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILER

On today's (11/15/2021) episode on Jeopardy!, the very first clue picked in the Jeopardy! round was the Daily Double. Does anyone know the last time that has happened? I'm guessing it probably hasn't happened in a long time, seeing as the Daily Doubles are usually hidden in the higher-valued clues ($800 and $1,000) and until very recently, contestants tend to start with the lower-valued clues.

[imhomerjay]

That’s not remotely true. Contestants never “had to” start anywhere, and daily doubles as first picks is not rare.

[mechamind]

This became a regular occurrence during Holzhauer's run, and it got really annoying.

[TPIRfan#9821]

It should be just a 1/30 chance if it was random, and not everyone starts at the $200 clue.

Sure enough, the last instance was 10/6/2021. Of course it was during Matt's run, but it still isn't that rare.

[imhomerjay]

And typically less than 1 in 30 given the truly rare top row daily double.

Picking clues outside the top-to-bottom method has been going on since, effectively, the beginning. Not sure what issue there could be.

[ooboh]

That’s not remotely true. Contestants never “had to” start anywhere, and daily doubles as first picks is not rare.

Please read my post again. I said that contestants “tend” to start in the lower-valued clues, not that they “had to.”

[ooboh]

To that end, I wonder when the last first-pick Daily Double occurred before Holzhauer's tenure on the show.

[pannoni1]

The last time a first pick Daily Double happened pre-Holzhauer was on February 28, 2019, during the All-Star Games tournament, just over a month before the Holzhauer run. 11/12/2018 during a Teen Tournament also had a first pick DD. The last occurrence during regular play before that was on the Season 35 premiere at the beginning of that season. That's over 130 regular play games without a hit, so that's a pretty significant event for that occurrence, even though only about 20% of all rounds didn't start with a top row pick from my research.

Well, we're already up to eight automatic qualifiers for the next Tournament of Champions, and so far this season, there have only been four shows without any contestants will have qualified. We didn't have the Teachers no College Tournaments last season, so I'd expect those to be coming this year (for the Feb. and May sweeps, or perhaps even in primetime), and it's possible by next November, we could have another ToC if we get enough qualifiers by the end of the season.

[Briguy]

I wouldn't have been able to answer the question, but on a related note I think I can safely bet that contestants coming across the Daily Double on the first pick of either the Jeopardy! or Double Jeopardy! dates to the earliest days of the show, when Art Fleming hosted. We will never know how often that happened then – and frankly, who cares? – because there's almost nothing left recorded and saved from that era.

Finding a Daily Double on the round's first pick is, as I see it, just a matter of luck and probability, just like everything else in game shows.

Brian