Jeopardy! Masters is an American game show hosted by Ken Jennings (former 74-game champion and winner of The Greatest of All Time tournament) on ABC. Each season features recent notable Jeopardy! champions competing against each other in a "Champions League-style" format. It premiered on May 8, 2023. In February 2024, the show would be renewed for a second season, which premiered on May 1, 2024. In March 2025, it was announced that the show was renewed for a third season, which premiered on April 30, 2025.
The following six contestants, listed in order of finish, competed in the first Jeopardy! Masters competition:
As the three finalists, Holzhauer, Roach, and Amodio all received invitations to the season two Masters competition.
The following six contestants, listed in order of finish, competed in the second Jeopardy! Masters competition:
As the three finalists, Groce, Raut, and Holzhauer all received invitations to the season three Masters competition. However, Holzhauer declined his invitation and, therefore, dropped out of the season three Masters competition.
The following nine contestants, listed in order of finish, competed in the third Jeopardy! Masters competition:
As the three finalists, Raut, Zaheer, and Groce all received invitations to the season four Masters competition.
The tournament features six former Jeopardy! champions (nine starting in season 3) competing round-robin style, with the first season consisting of 10 hour-long episodes featuring two games each, for a total of 20 games. Initially, the producers intended to structure the tournament as a pure round-robin system with every possible combination of three players (), without eliminations. This was adjusted to a three-round structure prior to production. In the second season, the number of episodes was reduced to nine (eighteen games total), with the same overall structure. In the third season, the tournament was now a four-round structure.
Unlike traditional Jeopardy!, which is scored in dollars, all of the games in this tournament are scored in points, just like in Jep!, Super Jeopardy!, the first two seasons of Rock & Roll Jeopardy!, Sports Jeopardy!, and Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time.
The producers have also used Jeopardy! Masters to experiment with variations to the Jeopardy! format. In the first season, each round began with the revelation to the television audience of the location of that round's Daily Double(s); this did not continue in subsequent seasons.
Starting from season 3, the knockouts start with rematches of the previous year's Masters final & the current year's Tournament of Champions & Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament finals. The second round of games features the first round winners, first round 2nd places, & first round 3rd places. In all rounds except the finals, the winner of each game receives three match points, the first runner-up receives one match point, and the second runner-up or players who were eliminated from Final Jeopardy! receives no match points. Due to the nature of the match point scoring, anyone who wins a knockout game is guaranteed to advance to the quarterfinals.
After all knockout episodes, the match points are totaled; the top six contestants advance to the Quarterfinals, while the other three are eliminated from the competition.
The quarterfinals consist of several round-robin matches of two games each; in each episode, three of the contestants play each other in the first game, and the remaining three play in the second game. The second game of each episode except for the first pairs up the winners from the previous episode against another randomly-selected contestant who has not already played against both winners. Starting from season 3, match points from the Knockouts carryover to a combined match point total, and the first round of quarterfinals games features the top 3 players in knockout points in game 1 and the remaining players in game 2.
After all quarterfinal episodes, the match points are totaled; the top four contestants advance to the semifinals, while the other two are eliminated from the competition.
There were seven quarterfinal episodes in the first season, six episodes in the second season and three episodes in the third season.
The four remaining contestants play each other round-robin over four games, with each player sitting out one game, but the point structure is the same as the previous rounds. Match points from the Knockouts and Quarterfinals do not carry over and will reset to 0. The three highest-ranked players move on to the finals, while the lowest-ranked player is eliminated.
The three remaining players play each other in a two-game match, as is standard in the final round of most Jeopardy! tournaments. Players who end the Double Jeopardy! round with zero points or a negative score in either game will be eliminated from Final Jeopardy! that game and their score for that game is recorded as zero points. The player with the highest combined score over the two games is declared champion. Furthermore, the three players will be automatically qualified in the next edition of the tournament, though they have the option to decline the invitation and drop out of the tournament for any reason.
Should either the knockouts, quarterfinals or semifinals end in a tie for match points, the following tie-breaking criteria are used, in order:
The winner of each game and the final is highlighted in bold.