Holzhauer's 'Jeopardy!' Run Ended By UChicago Librarian

CHICAGO — Naperville native James Holzhauer's historic "Jeopardy!" run came to an end this week — and the contestant to defeat him also has Chicago ties. On Monday, the professional sports gambler made an uncharacteristically low Final Jeopardy wager, losing to University of Chicago librarian Emma Boettcher and dashing his chances of breaking "Jeopardy!" legend Ken Jennings' record for total winnings.

In the end, Holzhauer's 32-day winning streak ended, and he wound up at $2,464,216 in total winnings, just $58,484 short of the $2.52 million won by Jennings.

So who is the new champ? Boettcher, 27, wrote her master's thesis about "Jeopardy!" three years ago, according to the University of Chicago. She trailed the Naperville native by $2,600 after the first round, but managed to take the lead by correctly answering both Daily Doubles. By Final Jeopardy, she was ahead by $3,200.

Boettcher told the Chicago Tribune she was "delighted" to see the Final Jeopardy clue about William Shakespeare's time after majoring in English at Princeton University and writing her undergraduate thesis on the bard's plays.

Boettcher wagered $20,201 on the clue, "The line 'A great reckoning in a little room' in 'As You Like It' is usually taken to refer to this author’s premature death."

Both Holzhauer and Boettcher answered correctly — "Who is Christopher Marlowe?" — but Holzhauer's uncharacteristically low wager of $1,399 ended his run and Boettcher was crowned the new winner.

"What a payday!" host Alek Trebek exclaimed as Holzhauer high-fived Boettcher. "What a game. What a way to start the week."

Philadelphia native Boettcher wrote an award-winning master’s thesis titled "Predicting the Difficulty of Trivia Questions Using Text Features" at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. According to the University of Chicago:

The paper was inspired by a class she took on text mining. Because "Jeopardy!" already assigns value to bits of text, Boettcher thought it was perfect for a series of experiments to assess "if the computer can make the same assessments that a user does" based on factors like word length and syntax. That task, as she told Trebek, turned out to be "very hard to do."

She called her win "surreal," according to the university, and because she had taped the episode back in March — before Holzhauer's historic run became national news — she didn't know she was defeating a 32-time champion.

She told the university, "It’s nice to be a little part of 'Jeopardy!' history," Boettcher said. "Regardless of who I was playing, I just wanted to play a good game."

Boettcher will use her $46,801 winnings to pay off student loans and donate to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, according to the Tribune.

Meanwhile, Holzhauer, who went into Final Jeopardy trailing Boettcher with just $23,400 to her $26,600, told Action Network that his low wager was his only chance of winning — and only if Boettcher answered incorrectly.

"I knew I could only win if Emma missed Final Jeopardy, as there was no way she wouldn’t bet to cover my all-in bet, so my only concern was getting overtaken by third place, and I bet just enough to make sure of locking him out," he said. "Betting big would have looked good for the cameras, but now I turn my straight bet (Emma misses) into a parlay (Emma misses, and I get it right)."

But Boettcher's correct answer sealed Holzhauer's fate and sent him home after his history-making winning streak.

Related: How Naperville Grad Holzhauer Is Slaying On 'Jeopardy!'

Watch Boettcher's win here: