Ogas VS Jennings: Who Wins “Grand Slam”?

08 Sep

Posted by Alex Davis as GSN, Grand Slam, Opinion, Reader Input

Edit: I’ll have my final thoughts, some ideas for a new season, and, for lack of a better term, “good will messages”, on Monday. We won’t devote a separate article on the championship until then, as to not spoil people. If you’d like to be spoiled, feel free to go to the comments.

GSN’s popular summer series Grand Slam comes to a close with the championship game today, Saturday, September 8th at 7PM ET. The first contender: Jeopardy! super-champion with a 74-game winning streak and over $3,000,000 in total prize winnings to date. He was only one win away from being the most winning contestant in worldwide game show history. That man is Ken Jennings. The last finalist: the brain science graduate student who was almost the first $1,000,000 winner on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in four years if he pulled the trigger and uttered those two magic words: “Final Answer”. The opponent is Ogi Ogas.

Both have something to prove. Ogas was visibly shaken when he did not win the million dollars. Jennings would probably still be on Jeopardy! today and have beaten every record on earth if a few mental handicaps didn’t occur in his final game. The finale of Grand Slam will truly be filled with competition unlike anything seen on television. Ogi has already defeated Brad Rutter. Can he defeat Ken Jennings? The semi-finals really showed what each is capable of.

With Ogi Ogas versus David Legler, David never had much of a chance. Ogi stayed calm, cool, collected, and rarely missed a beat. The same happened with Ken Jennings against Michelle Kitt. No offense to either losers, but both were basically mental bitchslaps. The stage is set and the final match is just days away. Look for some gameplay changes, like a fifth round which could be a huge advantage in gaining a massive lead. However, it could just as easy take away a lead. We will be showing some video clips of Ken Jennings and Ogi Ogas throughout this week. Ogas VS Jennings: who do you think will win Grand Slam and why? Pre/post game thoughts?

27 Responses

MrTVAMFM
1
September 8th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

Wow. Just wow. Do it again next season, GSN.
Quwen Qyiz
2
September 8th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

Darn it, I really wished Ogi won. He’s much better then Ken.
Mike
3
September 8th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

Dennis and/or Amanda said that Ken was the champ for 2007. I hope that means there is a distinct possibility that Grand Slam will return and possibly it will be an annual series. It’s among the best original shows from GSN.

I was rooting for Ogi as well. When I heard there was a Contemporary Knowledge category, I had a gut feeling Ogi would have problems.
Alex Davis
4
September 8th, 2007 at 10:40 pm

Yes, congratulations to Ken and sorry to Ogi. As incredible as this series has been, I felt they dropped the ball with the contemporary knowledge round. Just adding a round to pad time wasn’t a great idea in my mind. I would have thought this regardless who won the round. This entire show has wanted to seem like a sporting event for game show contestants and fans. I don’t see any sport adding an extra period during the championship. Regardless, it was extremely entertaining, congratulations to all, and can’t wait to see 2008 Grand Slam.
Quincy Hughes
5
September 8th, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Ken absolutely earned this win, and Ogi Ogas is to be commended for a hell of a competitive final! That could have gone either way, but the contemporary knowledge round and the time cushion it gave Ken may be what did Ogi in. I only hope the contestants were aware of this additional round beforehand, and by that I mean before the first round. It would be rather rotten if the finalists were told before that taping, “By the way…”

The first two rounds were HOT! Super exciting stuff. GSN has a great show that I hope returns!
Quincy Hughes
6
September 8th, 2007 at 11:00 pm

Ken absolutely earned this win, and Ogi Ogas is to be commended for a hell of a competitive final! That could have gone either way, but the contemporary knowledge round and the time cushion it gave Ken may be what did Ogi in. I only hope the contestants were aware of this additional round beforehand, and by that I mean before the first round. It would be rather rotten if the finalists were told before that taping, “By the way…”

The first two rounds were HOT! Super exciting stuff. GSN has a great show that I hope returns!
Rob
7
September 8th, 2007 at 11:07 pm

” I don’t see any sport adding an extra period during the championship.”

Baseball, for years, had best-of-5 early round series leading to a best-of-7 final. :)

If anything, adding the Pop Culture… um… Contemporary Knowledge round smacks of “Stop Ogi”, so I would hope one of the commenters who participated in Grand Slam can speak to the question above about whether the added round was known to the contestants from the beginning. I am *not* making an accusation here — just the opposite, I’m looking to head one off before anyone gets any ideas…

Bring on Grand Slam 2008!
Alex Davis
8
September 8th, 2007 at 11:09 pm

“Baseball, for years, had best-of-5 early round series leading to a best-of-7 final. :)”

Haha, really? You learn something new every day. I’m a hockey man, not baseball. I never knew that little fact. Thanks for that!
davec
9
September 8th, 2007 at 11:10 pm

I agree. Having the extra category just “show up” really changes the dynamic. On the flip side, would have Ogi made it even past the 1st or 2nd round had the “Contemporary Culture” round been there the whole tournament? It just makes it hard to really know, had Ken & Ogi played a “standard” GS game, would it have ended differently. I would have thought if they were trying to pad the game, that they would have just lengthened each round to 2 minutes, or even 1:30 per player per round.
spp138
10
September 8th, 2007 at 11:12 pm

Congrats to Ken and good job to the overly arrogant Ogi. One point I want to bring up is that the Contemporary Knowledge round did NOT do Ogi in, although it contributed to it. Keep in mind that Ken went into the final round with a 55 second lead and came out of it with nearly 1 minute 30 on his clock.

Regardless, this was the most entertaining thing I’ve watched in a long time. I was absolutely enthralled by the incredible lightning paced back in forth action in this game. Again congrats to both worthy and amazing competitors, and GSN, you better bring this one back.
davec
11
September 8th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

Comparing best 3/5 vs best 4/7 in a sport is a lot different than what happened here with Grand Slam.

A better comparison would be if in the World Series, instead of being best 4 of 7, its now best 5 of 9, with the 3rd and 7th games being Whiffleball instead.
rarejoule
12
September 9th, 2007 at 12:38 am

Congratulations, Ken! The final match was the first I watched from the stands and as I saw it unfold, I was in complete awe. My first thought was “The right people are in the finals.” I thought both men played extremely well and was on the edge of my seat through the first two rounds. I was so impressed with their knowledge and speed. I’m proud of Ogi for staying the course and defeating all higher seed opponents. I hope that people watching tonight got a look at the real Ogi, who is quite personable and speaks humbly.

It was explained to us before taping began that the last game would have the added Contemporary Knowledge round. I don’t understand why this match differed in this way since it made the game non-standard to me. I think it should have gone one way or another - either the round existed in each of the previous games or it didn’t show up in the final.

Anyone got suggestions for curing Grand Slam withdrawal? You could head over to the new Grand Slam fan site… linked to my name…

MK
lobster
13
September 9th, 2007 at 3:18 am

bah! :p I think that they had a few questions left over from WSOPC and threw ‘em on here.. Why astupid Pop Culture cat?? If they were trying to pit the smartest people against each other, why not a real category like science or geography? The “general knowledge” already includes bits and pieces of pop culture .. oh well.. Good show, Ogi.. you put up a good fight and we’ve enjoyed hearing about your preparation tactics.. if what Amanda indicated is true (of a GS2) I hope they invite you back..

And a note to Michelle, Ken, Ogi, Ed and the others.. don’t be a stranger just ‘cuz GS is over .. we’ve enjoyed having all of you guys post ’round here..

cheers!
LObs
Daniel Westrick
14
September 9th, 2007 at 9:55 am

I watch the finals This Morning (Taped it from last night) and even if you take out the comtempt. round, KEN JENNINGS would still have won because he would had only a 5 to 6 second advantage.

And Round 1 - That round was considered by win A DRAW (Ogi only kept .18 seconds) Towards the end, both were like answering the questions very fast.

After two rounds - Ogi only had a 3 second lead.

Oh, I like Dennis Miller’s comment after round 3 where he said, “Ken made Ogi his be-atch”

And I think that they should bring back Grand Slam for 2008, but do the seeding different.
Marc Power
15
September 9th, 2007 at 10:13 am

The Cons:
I will say that if there was something else there besides Contemporary knowledge it would have been a much closer game the ending was kinda anti-climatic after a while. The problem is that since Ken built up a huge lead in the new cat it threw Ogi off and he couldn’t get it back together. notice he didn’t fair overly well in words & letters either. If they had done the keyword round or had a bse of 2 minutes in the final round in would have been better. Not to make excuses for Ogi he did great! It was a little dissapointing for Ken to win becuase Ken already has more than $3m and an extra $100K doesn’t mean that much to him (Notice he didn’t seem THAT excited when Amanda handed him the trophy). whereas Ogi who has won only $500K the prize money would have meant more and maybe softened the blow from not answering the big one on WWTBAM.

Pros:
I’m still blown away by that first round LESS THAN A SECOND! and about 3 seconds (i think) in the 2nd round. One of the great things about Grand Slam when both contestants are down to less than 10 seconds you really start to hold your breath and it really felt like it was going to happen every round. GSN did a reat job promoting the finals, not a single clue as to how they would fare against each other whereas in the past some promos have shown the clocks with a significant difference.

this defintiely needs to come back in 2008 with some returnees and some newbies, like say for instance the 8 quarter-finalists this year and 8 others (no offence to the players who were eliminated before that.) and next year I would like to see a 3rd place game and the runner-up and 3rd place people getting some money as well say $25,000 for the runner-up and $10,000 for 3rd place.
Joey
16
September 9th, 2007 at 11:19 am

The format from British-based Monkey changed a bit when it came to America…

“There are five rounds: General Knowledge, Numbers & Logic, Contemporary Knowledge, Words & Letters, and the Final (an amalgam of the first four). An additional round has been added for the final: Keywords which is questions based around a particular word given to contestants 24 hours before their match.” (”Grand” was the word used in the finals, I believe.)

I think the comparison between 5 game series - 7 game series in Baseball makes complete sense here. This game is much more psychological and mental than it is factual/trivial. No matter what category is presented, players should be able to adapt quickly and roll with the punches. How many people threw in the towel simply when they found out who their competition was? Stamina is also a big part of the game, as well.

The players were aware of the fact that there would be an added pop culture round to the finals. It was in the rules briefing that they went over Tuesday night, I believe, before taping occurred Wednesday - Friday.

Had Americans used the British format, would Ogi have made it this far? Would Ken, who played Victor in the first round? The whole game might have changed. However, this format seemed to work wonderfully as I was entertained through and through. I hope you all were, too.
Ogi Ogas
17
September 9th, 2007 at 3:05 pm

Buzzerbloggers:

I posted a lengthy (you’ve already seen how length I can be on this blog) commentary about the finals on the new Grand Slam fansite:

http://www.grandslamshow.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8
(My commentary is my third posting in the thread… just skip the first two or you’ll be reading all week!)

Also, I posted some comments about the addition of the pop culture round here:

http://www.gsn.com/buzz/showpost.php?p=1317778&postcount=259

But I can’t post here without offering some BuzzerBlog-exclusive content, so let me address the “What if there wasn’t a pop culture round” question. First, let me acknowledge that I think it’s completely fair they added the pop culture round, as I noted in my GSN posting, above. And because I viewed my exhaustion as the primary reason for my loss, rather than the existence of the pop culture round (as noted in my Arena posting, above), you may be surprised to hear than I never once engaged in any “What if there was no pop culture round” speculation on my own. (Instead, I’ve been indulging in “What if we played at 11am instead of 11pm?” self-torture.) But since so many people have commented on it — many rather generously supporting me — I thought I would consider it once, the way you might consider what Ann Coulter would look like without any clothes on, once.

So taking out the pop culture round creates two important changes:

1. I get a switch back, giving me a switch advantage.
2. Ken goes first in the final round.

Let’s also assume the word round stays exactly the same, or we’re going to start branching off into too many side-speculations.

So we start the final round with Ken with a 6.5 second advantage–but he goes first, and I’m up by a switch. I don’t know, that seems like a pretty even setup to me. In fact, I’d have to say that I might even have a microscopic advantage, since the “average” question takes 6 seconds to hear and respond to (meaning we basically start the round even), and I’ve got a switch I can drop on Ken at will. And I was generally pretty good in my switch use.

Now we know that Ken beat me in the final round by about 30 seconds, which would surely seem to indicate that even if we started the final round even, he would still have won. And I refuse to admit that I gave up or felt intimidated or hopeless in the final round, so I’m not going to claim that if we started even I would’ve been better off psychologically. But I think we would all agree that starting the final round of the Grand Slam championship with Ken and I dead even and only ~65 seconds on each of our clocks would absolutely have been in contention for the greatest game show moment–no, the greatest game show episode–of all time.
l.e.
18
September 9th, 2007 at 6:42 pm

GSN isn’t showing repeats anytime soon, it seems. I can’t believe I missed it yesterday…
Andrew
19
September 9th, 2007 at 7:11 pm

so ogi, did you get any sort of consolation?
The Great Butler
20
September 9th, 2007 at 8:15 pm

As soon as I saw the added Contemporary Knowledge round, I know plenty of people would get their panties in a wad claiming Ogi got cheated.

This whole thing reminds me of how people through a collective hissy fit when John O’Hurley lost on Dancing with the Stars and forced ABC to run a pretty much rigged rematch just so he could win. (I say it was rigged because all the demand for John to win was what caused it, and all the people who demanded a rematch—in a long forgone conclusion—would then vote for him. His opponent had no chance from the beginning of the special match to win. Another similar incident would be how Survivor used the “America’s Tribal Council” to award Rupert a million just because of his massive popularity)

Ken earned his win, and Ogi did a damn good job but just ran out of steam. Even Ogi himself has refused to blame his loss on the slightly altered rules. A lot of people need to take an example from Ogi, who has been the most gracious loser I’ve ever seen. Even calling him the loser doesn’t seem fair considering how well he did.
Neville
21
September 9th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

BUtler, I agree. Anyone who gets so far in a contest of champions is definitely not a loser :)
David Howell
22
September 10th, 2007 at 8:29 am

I don’t think the extra pop culture round was necessarily critical. It didn’t kill off Ogi so much as it killed off the spectacle in a manner that couldn’t have been predicted.

But as with Jeopardy!, Ken came through by being assured on everything from Shakespeare to Snoop Dogg, and rather a lot more in between in this format too. And he’ll probably take some pride in beating Brad’s conqueror - which is what I hope Ogi is remembered as, rather than ‘the nearly man of game shows’ as I fear he will.
Scott
23
September 10th, 2007 at 9:09 am

Next year (Michael Davies, are you listening?) — a few changes, and more game, less in between chatter.

1. Change the Numbers and Logic round to “Numbers” — include not only mathematical answers / problems, but have the answers all be numerical (i.e., how many games was Ken Jennings’ winning streak on Jeopardy!; what year did Richard Nixon resign?).

2. Don’t allow switchbacks on the same question. They will be more valuable and more strategic if you prevent a player from switching back the same question. This would dynamically change the game play, in a good way.

3. Keep the contemporary knowledge round, but excise those sorts of questions from General Knowledge (which, oddly enough, everyone considered Pop Culture until the Ken-Ogi final).

4. Make the final round a real “mixed” affair, but start each player with 2 minutes instead of 1 minute. More emphasis on the final round, more chance of catching up from behind.
Scott
24
September 10th, 2007 at 9:11 am

In a prior post I somewhat vindictively rooted for Ken to win because Ogi was coming off as so arrogant…I just could not take it anymore. Let me now wish Ogi well not only for a fantastic and breathtaking first 2 rounds, but also for his humility in achieving second place (no small order there). I doubt anyone else could have given Ken a better run for the championship.
lobster
25
September 10th, 2007 at 11:18 am

say what you will but the addition of pop culture category cheesed up the game a little, didn’t it? This is supposed to feature the smartest vs the smartest, and so I maintain, how is knowledge of Jay Z’s clothing line representative of superior intellect? Here you have two steel-trap minds going head to head on questions of intelligence, high-pressure math questions, sculptors, authors — and so the mere mention of Beyonce brings locomotive brake squeals to my ears :D .. rips the needle off the record.. the ultimate gameshow buzz kill.. i know the point was to show “well-roundednesss” but isn’t it more impressive to see these genius-level experts rattle off answers about quadratic formulas and cotangents? :p
Scott
26
September 10th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

Lobs, I appreciate your view that Grand Slam played “up” to the audience (as does Jeopardy and WWTBAM). But remember that even those games have a fair dose of pop culture (as did other games represented, such as Greed, Twenty One, and Weakest Link). It seemed strange to have this suddenly “new” round — but as Ken Jennings stated on his blog today, the final General Knowledge round had no pop culture in it at all. Did this give Ken a conceivable advantage in that later round? Perhaps, but it also gave Ogi an advantage he hadn’t had before in the General Knowledge round. The contestants knew the format in advance, and Ken absolutely killed in the final Mixed Round anyway.
Chris
27
September 13th, 2007 at 2:55 pm

Im glad jennings won, ogas just pissed me off how he would shut his eyes and not smile. At least jennings smiled and had a good time.