It was the opportunity of a lifetime…not once but twice. We told you about Alan Dunn in last year’s January issue as he became a 5-time Jeopardy champion and earned over $120,000. It also earned him a spot in the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions this past summer.
This 60-year old ALTA member from Johns Creek got the call in June from the contestant coordinator. “It was good news and bad news. The good news was I’m in the tournament. The bad news is my first round was against Jeopardy James,” says Dunn. For those of you who don’t watch the show, Jeopardy James is James Holzhauer, who won over $2.46 million during his prolific run in 2019.
Dunn was holding his own for the first few rounds of the game show and managed to pull within $800 of Holzhauer, but then Holzhauer went on a major run, never looked back, and Dunn ended up losing. What he gained, however, is a tremendous group of friends who have this common bond. “We all share this uniqueness and have similar interests in obscure facts and knowledge of different subjects.”
Dunn says it was a lot of fun, and the people are phenomenal. As a side note, Holzhauer won the Tournament of Champions, which aired in Atlanta in November. It was a tremendous rematch, as he fended off Emma Boettcher, a Chicago librarian. She remains the only contestant to ever beat him, as she ended his run 32-game winning streak last year. Holzhauer’s career winnings on Jeopardy now total over $2.7 million, the third most in the show’s history.
