Peril! Champion James Holzhauer, winner of 20 straight matches with more than $1.5 million in earnings, has already become one of the most successful game show contestants in American history. Now he’s aiming to continue his winning streak and target all-time Ken Jennings Peril! record $2.5 million.
(It’s already worth noting that Jennings hit his record high of $2.5 million in 74 games.)
Thursday night Hozlhauer goes for his 21st straight Peril! victory against Jessica Efron Sauer and Josh Archibaldseiffer. Sauer is an accountant from Munster, Indiana, and Archibaldseiffer is a musical director/pianist from Seattle.
But already, Holzhauer has become one of the top nine American game show contestants of all time, asking the question: how Peril! does winner James Holzhauer get so good and smart at game shows?
Holzhauer, a 34-year-old professional sports player from Las Vegas, says he became a trivia expert by reading children’s books, the kind he might read to his 4-year-old daughter. Holzhauer said he found many adult books boring, but could learn children’s books faster.
“You might be able to read an adult book on a boring topic without falling asleep, but I can’t,” Holzhauer said, according to The Washington Post. “For me it was either reading children’s books – designed to engage the reader – or getting into Peril! with huge gaps in my knowledge base.”
Holzhauer said children’s books are filled with “infographics, images, and all sorts of things to keep the reader engaged.”
“I couldn’t finish a chapter of a real Dickensian novel without falling asleep.”
What are James Holzhauer’s favorite children’s books?
“The Classics Illustrated series was a great introduction to literature, and I also really enjoyed Zachary Hamby’s mythology books for teens,” he told the To post. He read his daughter where the wild things are before he was born, he said.
A native of Illinois, Holzhauer earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Illinois. He became a professional gambler rather than a mathematician because he “doesn’t mind playing big money” when he thinks he has a big advantage and has already appeared in the game show. The hunt in 2014.
At Holzhauer Peril! strategies for turning his vast trivial knowledge into steady gains is his aggressive bet.
“You can see as soon as I take control of the board in the first game, I go for the $1,000 clues every chance I get,” Holzhauer said. The New York Times. “I think the only time I deviated from that was a category on the US Senate. I’m not a politics guy, so I avoided that, but other than that, I’ll 1 $000-1000-1000 whenever I can.”
How it works Peril! winner James Holzhauer makes a living as a sports bettor?
“When I started 14 years ago, the biggest benefits were in baseball, and that’s what I focused on,” he told the Times. “But the market is really caught up with advanced stats, and they’re taking bigger bets on games like football and basketball, so I’m focusing my attention there more. The hockey that I tried to working lately. You can find some inefficiencies in team totals (how many goals will be scored in a game) and puck line (betting that a team will win by a certain margin).”