Ocean City ‘Jeopardy!’ champion wins almost $60,000 in 7th consecutive win, over $220,000 total – Press of Atlantic City

Cris Pannullo, the "Jeopardy!" champion from Ocean City, delivered his most impressive performance yet on an episode that aired Monday, firing past the $200,000 total-prize mark and securing his seventh consecutive win.

The reigning champion faced Eugene Hahm, an attorney from Oaklyn, California; and Allie Nudelman, a health care policy professional from Brooklyn, New York. Building a strong lead early and adding to it with strong bets and a relentless run on high-value questions later in the game, Pannullo racked up $44,600 at the end of the Double Jeopardy round.

Wow thats a big number heading into Final Jeopardy, host Ken Jennings said.

The $44,600 score would have been the largest of the season by itself before Pannullo added another $15,221 on top of that in Final Jeopardy. (He correctly answered that Gerber was the company to use the likeness of baby Ann Turner Cook in its famous ad campaign.) His final score on the day was $59,821.

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While good for the strongest win of the season, Pannullos performance on Mondays episode was typical of the dominant play that audiences nationwide have watched now for a collective week. Of his seven victories, six Pannullo had clinched before the Final Jeopardy round began.

The two challengers had little opportunity to make their mark amidst Pannullos onslaught of right answers. Hahm and Nudelman had only $1,600 and $3,800 heading into the Final Jeopardy round, respectively. They ended the game with respective scores of $1,186 and $3,851.

Its always hard to go up (against) a player whos really locked in on the buzzer, but Eugene and Allie acquitted themselves about as well as you could, Jennings said towards the end of the game.

Pannullo, described on the show as a customer success operations manager, used to play poker professionally. He said on Mondays episode that he also used to work for a sports-data provider to help professional soccer teams in the U.S. with their use of analytics. In earlier games, Jennings had compared Pannullo to Jeopardy James Holzhauer a super champion who won 32 consecutive regular-season matches and over $2.4 million in 2019. Holzhauer used to work as a professional sports gambler.

The game was close early, with Pannullos $4,400 score giving him a mere $400 lead over Nudelman heading into the first commercial break. The champion then ran the board, shutting the challengers out until he found the first-round Daily Double. Going all-in, Pannullo doubled his score to $12,400, correctly identifying Betty Ford as a former wife of a politician who cofounded an addiction-treatment center which she chaired until 2005. He had $14,200 by the end of the first round, with his lead over Nudelman exploding to $8,000.

With a strong first-place position, Pannullo had the security to place larger bets than he typically does in the Double Jeopardy rounds. He bet $5,000 of his $16,200 score on a Daily Double question asking for the pen name that Alisa Rosenbaum adopted after immigrating to the U.S. from Russia in the 1920s. He then bet another $5,000 of his $26,000 on a Daily Double question requiring him to know whose 1791 death in Vienna prompted centuries of speculation and dramatic conspiracy theories. Pannullo got both questions correct, answering Ayn Rand and Mozart, respectively, boosting his score to $31,000.

Later in the round, Pannullo went on a run where he correctly answered four consecutive questions each worth $2,000. (They were about the assassination of Leon Trotsky, the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hawaiian geese and barnacles.)

Pannullos titanic win put his seven-day cash winnings at $221, 901. It is an appropriate total for the champion, as it was revealed last episode that the $221 figure he often works into his wagers signifies his girlfriends birthday.

He is set to compete again on an episode to air Tuesday night and has clinched a spot in the 2023 Jeopardy Tournament of Champions.

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Ocean City 'Jeopardy!' champion wins almost $60,000 in 7th consecutive win, over $220,000 total - Press of Atlantic City