Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions

The Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions was a special fifteen-week single-elimination tournament that aired during the twenty-first season of the syndicated game show Jeopardy! that began airing on February 9, 2005 and concluded on May 25, 2005, covering 76 shows in total. The tournament involved 145 contestants, all of whom were winners of past tournaments or past five-time champions, and was designed to produce two contestants who would face off in a three-game, cumulative-score final against legendary Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, who had won the most money in Jeopardy! regular play history and who had set a new all-time game show winnings record with US $2,522,700. Those three contestants would then play in a three-game final for the largest prize the show has ever offered: an unprecedented grand prize of U.S. $2,000,000. After four rounds, the tournament's field of 144 past champions was winnowed to two: Brad Rutter and Jerome Vered. Rutter had set the previous all-time Jeopardy! prize money record in the 2002 Million Dollar Masters tournament, while Vered had set a single-day winnings record in 1992 that stood for twelve years until Jennings broke it.