“Jeopardy!” champion James Holzhauer carved another notch in his bedpost Tuesday night.
The professional sports gambler emerged victorious during a 29th straight episode of the storied game show, ending the match with $59,381.
The grand total accumulated by the seemingly invincible 34-year-old from Las Vegas now stands at $2,254,938.
Holzhauer is currently the runner-up to “Jeopardy!” legend Ken Jennings in two categories: number of regular-season games won and money earned during regular-season play. During his historic 74-game winning stream in 2004, Jennings racked up $2,520,700.
For his part, Jennings called Holzhauer’s run “astounding” on “Good Morning America.”
“For 15 years, I have thought somebody was going to make a run at this record, because I always knew it could be done,” Jennings said. “I was there. I saw it happen. What I did not expect was somebody could make a run at the cash record in, like, a third the time.”
The current champ is $265,792 shy of Jennings’ sum. Holzhauer has been averaging about $80,000 per game; he will overtake Jennings in about four more days if he can maintain his current pace.
“Who needs Powerball when you have 28 days on ‘Jeopardy!’?” joked host Alex Trebek, who is battling pancreatic cancer, at the start of Monday night’s face-off between Holzhauer, Jim-Bob Williams (a therapeutic humorist from West Virginia) and Sara Feeney (a stay-at-home mom from Michigan).
During the part of the show where Trebek makes small talk with each contestant, he teased Holzhauer about a time when he attempted to jumpstart his wife’s car and it started smoking.
Trebek then poked fun at the 29-day champion: “Quite often, we’ve discovered that people who are very bright aren’t quite so good when it comes to fixing ordinary things.”