Ken Jennings

American game show contestant and author. He is the highest-earning American game show contestant of all time. Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. game show Jeopardy! with 74 wins. He also holds the record for the highest average correct responses per game in Jeopardy! history (for those contestants with at least 300 correct responses) with 35.9 during his original run (no other contestant has exceeded 30) and 33.1 overall including tournaments and special events. In 2004, Jennings won 74 consecutive Jeopardy! games before he was defeated by challenger Nancy Zerg on his 75th appearance. His total earnings on Jeopardy! are $4,522,700, consisting of: $2,520,700 over his 74 wins, a $2,000 second-place prize in his 75th appearance; a $500,000 second-place prize in the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions (2005); a $300,000 second-place prize in Jeopardy's IBM Challenge (2011), when he lost to the Watson computer but became the first human to best third-place finisher Brad Rutter; a $100,000 second-place prize in the Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades (2014); a $100,000 second-place prize (his share of his team's $300,000 prize) in the Jeopardy! All-Star Games (2019); and a $1,000,000 first-place prize in the Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time (2020).