American game show winnings records
Encyclopedia
This article lists American game show winnings records and goes into the history and people who have held them. Through the years there have been number of big winners as American game show
s competed for viewers with ballooning prizes.
From the Golden Age of Television
the overall – and longest held – record was set by Teddy Nadler ($264,000) in 1957 and was not bested until 1980 by Thom McKee
($312,700). Just before the end of the century John Carpenter
won $1,000,000 on Millionaire
. A few years later, Kevin Olmstead won the accumulating Millionaire jackpot of $2.18 million; he was then supplanted by Jeopardy!
phenom Ken Jennings
in November 2004 with $2.5 million from 75 games. In 2005, Brad Rutter
overtook Jennings with a total of $3.2 million by winning the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions (defeating Jennings head-to-head in the process). Rutter competed against Jennings and Watson
, an IBM supercomputer, in the 2011 Jeopardy! IBM Challenge. Rutter placed third, winning $200,000, half of which was donated to charity. Jennings won $300,000 ($150,000 of which was donated to charity) in the same tournament for finishing second. When combined with $500,000 he won on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
in 2008, Jennings' total has reached $3,773,414.29 as of February 2011, again propelling him to the top of the overall winnings list.
in 1987. A contestant during the Winners' Board era of the show, O'Brien won all 11 games he played in, winning 10 prizes off the board plus a $50,000 bonus for winning an 11th consecutive game. That, plus over $20,000 in winnings in Tournament of Champions play, gave O'Brien a grand total of over $173,000 in cash and prizes.
, who won $110,237 on Press Your Luck
in 1984. Larson achieved his record by memorizing the show's board patterns. He repeatedly hit the board's money-and-a-spin squares, and his game had to be split into two episodes (which aired Friday, June 8 and Monday, June 11, 1984 after being taped on May 19) because his turn caused the game to go well over the show's half-hour allotted time. In 2003, Game Show Network
produced a documentary about the event.
In 2006, Larson's record was broken by Vickyann Chrobak-Sadowski on The Price Is Right
, who also set a regular show record in the process on the show's 35th season premiere. She won $147,517 in cash and prizes, including both Showcases.
The record for overall winnings on American game shows has changed hands quite a few times over the years. Although the fifties had their share of big winners (Herb Stempel
and Charles Van Doren
of Twenty One
infamy being two of the most notable), the biggest winner of them all was Teddy Nadler in the 1956–57 television season, who set a record that would stand for the next two decades by winning $264,000 on The $64,000 Challenge.
It wasn't until 1980 that Nadler's record fell. During the summer of that year, a US Naval officer named Thom McKee
began a run on Tic-Tac-Dough
that carried over into the following season. Since champions on Tic Tac Dough played until they were defeated, and games on the show could end in ties with the pot carrying over, McKee was able to keep building his total as long as he kept playing and winning (which wasn't true of many other shows). McKee won $312,700 in cash and prizes in 43 games, which included eight cars (on Tic Tac Dough and its sister show, The Joker's Wild
, a contestant automatically won a car after every fifth game they won).
In 1999, McKee was passed by Michael Shutterly, who was the biggest winner in the first airing of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
in the United States. Shutterly was the first contestant on the show to get to the 15th and final question, but elected to walk instead with $500,000, which made him the highest winner in game show history.
While McKee was the biggest solo winner until 1999, nine couples on The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime
won the show's top prize of $1,000,000 (in a combination of prizes and a long-term annuity) during the show's run in syndication from January 1986 to September 1987. However, this program had no solo players.
climbed to the top without using any lifelines, save for a phone call on the final question to tell his father he was going to win the million dollars. After Carpenter answered the final question, which concerned Richard Nixon's
appearance on Laugh-In in 1968, host Regis Philbin
called the answer "the final answer heard 'round the world," then proclaimed Carpenter the show's (and worldwide format's) first millionaire.
Carpenter's record stayed until the following year. In early 2000, Rahim Oberholtzer, a contestant on the revival of Twenty One, won four games in his appearances on the show, along with $120,000 in the show's "Perfect 21" bonus round, for a total of $1.12 million. (Maury Povich proclaimed him "the TV Game Show king" for surpassing Carpenter's mark.)
Oberholtzer's record did not last long. Late in its run, the Fox show Greed
began bringing back some of its previous winners to try for an extra $1 million. Curtis Warren, who was part of the first team to win $1,000,000 on the show (of which his share was $410,000), was one of the contestants brought back to do so on February 12, 2000. After answering an elimination question, Warren was given a question about TV shows that had been made into movies, with 8 choices (of which he had to identify the four correct answers). He successfully did so, giving himself $1,410,000 and the record for the time being (although his record was actually higher than what was reported, based on his winnings on Sale of the Century
and Win Ben Stein's Money
prior to his win on Greed).
Warren's record was even shorter lived than Oberholtzer's had been, lasting only four days.
Three days before Warren's big win, a contestant named David Legler on Twenty One
began a run to the top. Four days after Warren's win, the run continued, with Legler earning a grand total of $1,765,000 in six wins to surpass Warren's total and become the third contestant in a span of two months to top $1,000,000 on a game show. (Shortly after Rahim Oberholtzer's win, Twenty One changed its payoff structure, which is part of the reason why it took Legler 5 wins to reach $1 million in winnings and 6 to top the record instead of the four it took Oberholtzer to top Carpenter's record.)
Legler held the record for well over a year. As 2000 ended and 2001 began, the producers of Millionaire decided that it had been too long (five months) since their top prize had been won, and instituted an accumulating jackpot which added $10,000 to the grand prize amount for each game it was not won. Kevin Olmstead took the hot seat and claimed the top prize on April 10, 2001, winning a jackpot of $2,180,000. Olmstead became the first contestant to top $2 million in total winnings on a game show and supplanted Legler as the all time leader.
In 2004, ABC launched an ultra high-stakes version of Millionaire entitled Who Wants to Be a Super Millionaire, with a $10 million (US) top prize. Two separate Super Millionaire series aired, one in February and one in May of that year. However, despite the higher stakes and the potential for someone to top the all-time record for winnings, the largest prize awarded was $1,000,000 won by Robert Essig.
Exactly one week after Super Millionaire came to an end, Ken Jennings
of Salt Lake City, Utah, became the new champion on Jeopardy!
This June 2, 2004 episode was the first in a long winning streak for the software engineer, made possible due to a change at the beginning of that season (the show's twentieth on air), eliminating the longstanding rule limiting consecutive appearances for a champion to five. With no limit to his appearances, Jennings began to break many game show records. As his streak continued deeper into the 21st season, Jennings was inching closer and closer to Olmstead's record. With his 59th consecutive win on October 25, 2004, Jennings joined Olmstead as the only two game show contestants at the time to win over $2,000,000 on a quiz show. It took Jennings six more wins to top Olmstead's record, which he accomplished in his 65th consecutive win. Jennings finished the day with $45,099 and a new record total of $2,197,000.
Jennings won nine more games before his streak came to an end on November 30, 2004. He had extended his record total to $2,520,700 at the time of his defeat, after which he was awarded an additional $2,000 for finishing in second place per Jeopardy! rules. Shortly after Jennings' defeat, Jeopardy! decided to see how he would fare in tournament play. On February 9, 2005, the show launched its Ultimate Tournament of Champions
, inviting back 144 other past champions to compete over the next three months in a five-round single-elimination tournament with a $2 million grand prize. The field included the highest-winning five-time champions and winners of some previous tournaments, though not all invitees were able to participate. Jennings received a bye
into the finals of the tournament, where he faced semi-final winners Jerome Vered
and Brad Rutter
in a three-game, cumulative total match. Vered had set a single-day scoring record during his appearance on the show in the early 1990s, while Rutter had won the 2002 Million Dollar Masters tournament and had held the show's winnings record before Jennings broke it. Rutter was also one of two contestants in the tournament who could surpass Jennings' lifetime total by winning the top prize (Bernie Cullen, who was eliminated in the prior rounds of the tournament, was the other on the basis of his being a top prize winner on Millionaire in 2001).
In the tournament's three-day final, Rutter handily defeated Jennings and Vered to win the tournament and $2,000,000, and in the process he supplanted Jennings as the winningest all time American game show contestant. Including the $1.18 million he had won in his previous Jeopardy! appearances (five regular season games, a Tournament of Champions win, the Masters win, and three matches in the earlier rounds of the UToC), Rutter's total stood at $3,255,102 in cash, while Jennings was now second with $3,022,700 having gained an additional $500,000 for his second place finish in the tournament.
Jennings slowly began to chip away at Rutter's record, first by winning $714.29 in 2006 as part of the Mob on 1 vs. 100. (Rutter also participated in a later Mob on the show, and was eliminated without winning any money; both also participated in a Last Man Standing match, and neither won any money; Rutter was eliminated first, and Jennings on the last question.) A year later Jennings won the Grand Slam tournament and the $100,000 top prize by defeating Ogi Ogas
(who defeated Rutter in the quarterfinals) in the final. Finally, on October 10, 2008, Jennings passed Rutter by winning $500,000 on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
. The record total, which includes a $150,000 prize earned for finishing second in the Jeopardy! IBM Challenge, aired on February 14-16, 2011, now stands at $3,773,414.29. (Jennings was awarded $300,000 for the appearance but donated half the prize to charity -- VillageReach.)
Game show
A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...
s competed for viewers with ballooning prizes.
From the Golden Age of Television
Golden Age of Television
The Golden Age of Television in the United States began sometime in the late 1940s and extended to the late 1950s or early 1960s.-Evolutions of drama on television:...
the overall – and longest held – record was set by Teddy Nadler ($264,000) in 1957 and was not bested until 1980 by Thom McKee
Thom McKee
Thom McKee is a former United States Navy officer who was a long-running contestant on Tic Tac Dough, an American game show, in 1980. He set a number of game show records for the time, appearing on forty-six episodes of the series and winning $312,700 in cash and prizes...
($312,700). Just before the end of the century John Carpenter
John Carpenter (game show contestant)
John Carpenter became the first millionaire on the United States version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on November 19, 1999. He held the record for the largest single win in United States game show history, until it was broken by Rahim Oberholtzer who won $1.12 million on...
won $1,000,000 on Millionaire
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (US game show)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is an American television quiz show which offers a maximum prize of $1,000,000 for correctly answering 14 consecutive multiple-choice questions of random difficulty. Until 2010, the format required contestants to correctly answer 15 consecutive questions of increasing...
. A few years later, Kevin Olmstead won the accumulating Millionaire jackpot of $2.18 million; he was then supplanted by Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
phenom Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings
Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings III is an American game show contestant and author. Jennings is noted for holding the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and as being the all-time leading money winner on American game shows...
in November 2004 with $2.5 million from 75 games. In 2005, Brad Rutter
Brad Rutter
Bradford Gates "Brad" Rutter is the biggest all-time money winner on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and the second biggest all-time money winner on a game show....
overtook Jennings with a total of $3.2 million by winning the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions (defeating Jennings head-to-head in the process). Rutter competed against Jennings and Watson
Watson (artificial intelligence software)
Watson is an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's first president, Thomas J...
, an IBM supercomputer, in the 2011 Jeopardy! IBM Challenge. Rutter placed third, winning $200,000, half of which was donated to charity. Jennings won $300,000 ($150,000 of which was donated to charity) in the same tournament for finishing second. When combined with $500,000 he won on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is a television game show format based on asking grade-school level questions to adults, hosted by Jeff Foxworthy...
in 2008, Jennings' total has reached $3,773,414.29 as of February 2011, again propelling him to the top of the overall winnings list.
Cumulative records
The daytime all-time winnings record (for a cumulative run on a show) is held by Tom O'Brien, a contestant on Sale of the CenturySale of the Century (US game show)
Sale of the Century is an American television game show which debuted in the United States on September 29, 1969, on NBC daytime. It was one of three NBC game shows to premiere on that date, the other two being the short-lived Letters to Laugh-In and Name Droppers. The series aired until July 13,...
in 1987. A contestant during the Winners' Board era of the show, O'Brien won all 11 games he played in, winning 10 prizes off the board plus a $50,000 bonus for winning an 11th consecutive game. That, plus over $20,000 in winnings in Tournament of Champions play, gave O'Brien a grand total of over $173,000 in cash and prizes.
Single-day record
The single day record, for many years, was held by Michael LarsonMichael Larson
Paul Michael Larson was a contestant on the American television game show Press Your Luck in May 1984 that aired on TV in June 1984. Larson's claim to fame was his winning $110,237 in cash and prizes, at the time the largest one-day total ever won on a game show...
, who won $110,237 on Press Your Luck
Press Your Luck
Press Your Luck is an American television daytime game show created by Bill Carruthers and Jan McCormack. It premiered on September 19, 1983 on CBS and ended on September 26, 1986. In the show, contestants collected "spins" by answering trivia questions and then used the spins on an 18-space game...
in 1984. Larson achieved his record by memorizing the show's board patterns. He repeatedly hit the board's money-and-a-spin squares, and his game had to be split into two episodes (which aired Friday, June 8 and Monday, June 11, 1984 after being taped on May 19) because his turn caused the game to go well over the show's half-hour allotted time. In 2003, Game Show Network
Game Show Network
The Game Show Network is an American cable television and direct broadcast satellite channel dedicated to game shows and casino game shows. The channel was launched on December 1, 1994. Its current slogan is "The World Needs More Winners"...
produced a documentary about the event.
In 2006, Larson's record was broken by Vickyann Chrobak-Sadowski on The Price Is Right
The Price Is Right (U.S. game show)
The Price Is Right is an American game show which was created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. Contestants compete to identify the pricing of merchandise to win cash and prizes. The show is well-known for its signature line of "Come on down!" when the announcer directs newly selected contestants to...
, who also set a regular show record in the process on the show's 35th season premiere. She won $147,517 in cash and prizes, including both Showcases.
1950s–1999
Herb Stempel
Herbert Milton "Herb" Stempel is a television game show contestant and subsequent whistle blower on the fraudulent nature of the industry, in what became known as the quiz show scandals...
and Charles Van Doren
Charles Van Doren
Charles Lincoln Van Doren is an American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s...
of Twenty One
Twenty One (game show)
Twenty One is an American game show which aired in the late 1950s. While it included the most popular contestant of the quiz show era, it became notorious for being a rigged quiz show which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of United States Senate investigations...
infamy being two of the most notable), the biggest winner of them all was Teddy Nadler in the 1956–57 television season, who set a record that would stand for the next two decades by winning $264,000 on The $64,000 Challenge.
It wasn't until 1980 that Nadler's record fell. During the summer of that year, a US Naval officer named Thom McKee
Thom McKee
Thom McKee is a former United States Navy officer who was a long-running contestant on Tic Tac Dough, an American game show, in 1980. He set a number of game show records for the time, appearing on forty-six episodes of the series and winning $312,700 in cash and prizes...
began a run on Tic-Tac-Dough
Tic-Tac-Dough
Tic-Tac-Dough is an American television game show based on the pen-and-paper game of tic-tac-toe. Contestants answer questions in various categories to put up their respective symbol, X or O, on the board. Three versions were produced: the initial 1956–59 run on NBC, a 1978–1986 run initially on...
that carried over into the following season. Since champions on Tic Tac Dough played until they were defeated, and games on the show could end in ties with the pot carrying over, McKee was able to keep building his total as long as he kept playing and winning (which wasn't true of many other shows). McKee won $312,700 in cash and prizes in 43 games, which included eight cars (on Tic Tac Dough and its sister show, The Joker's Wild
The Joker's Wild
The Joker's Wild is an American television game show that aired at different times during the 1970s through the 1990s. Contestants answered questions based on categories that were determined randomly by a mechanism resembling a slot machine....
, a contestant automatically won a car after every fifth game they won).
In 1999, McKee was passed by Michael Shutterly, who was the biggest winner in the first airing of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (US game show)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is an American television quiz show which offers a maximum prize of $1,000,000 for correctly answering 14 consecutive multiple-choice questions of random difficulty. Until 2010, the format required contestants to correctly answer 15 consecutive questions of increasing...
in the United States. Shutterly was the first contestant on the show to get to the 15th and final question, but elected to walk instead with $500,000, which made him the highest winner in game show history.
While McKee was the biggest solo winner until 1999, nine couples on The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime
The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime
The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime is an American game show which offered a $1 million grand prize to winning contestants. Based on a late 1970s unsold game show pilot titled The Letter Machine, the show aired in syndication from January 6, 1986 until September 11, 1987...
won the show's top prize of $1,000,000 (in a combination of prizes and a long-term annuity) during the show's run in syndication from January 1986 to September 1987. However, this program had no solo players.
1999–present
It was during the second season of Millionaire in the United States that the show crowned its first million-dollar winner. On November 19, 1999, John CarpenterJohn Carpenter (game show contestant)
John Carpenter became the first millionaire on the United States version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on November 19, 1999. He held the record for the largest single win in United States game show history, until it was broken by Rahim Oberholtzer who won $1.12 million on...
climbed to the top without using any lifelines, save for a phone call on the final question to tell his father he was going to win the million dollars. After Carpenter answered the final question, which concerned Richard Nixon's
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
appearance on Laugh-In in 1968, host Regis Philbin
Regis Philbin
Regis Francis Xavier Philbin is an American media personality, actor and singer, known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. Philbin is often called "the hardest working man in show business" and holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a television camera...
called the answer "the final answer heard 'round the world," then proclaimed Carpenter the show's (and worldwide format's) first millionaire.
Carpenter's record stayed until the following year. In early 2000, Rahim Oberholtzer, a contestant on the revival of Twenty One, won four games in his appearances on the show, along with $120,000 in the show's "Perfect 21" bonus round, for a total of $1.12 million. (Maury Povich proclaimed him "the TV Game Show king" for surpassing Carpenter's mark.)
Oberholtzer's record did not last long. Late in its run, the Fox show Greed
Greed (game show)
Greed is an American television game show that aired on Fox from November 4, 1999 until July 14, 2000. The game consisted of a team of contestants who answered a series of multiple-choice questions for a potential prize of up to $2 million...
began bringing back some of its previous winners to try for an extra $1 million. Curtis Warren, who was part of the first team to win $1,000,000 on the show (of which his share was $410,000), was one of the contestants brought back to do so on February 12, 2000. After answering an elimination question, Warren was given a question about TV shows that had been made into movies, with 8 choices (of which he had to identify the four correct answers). He successfully did so, giving himself $1,410,000 and the record for the time being (although his record was actually higher than what was reported, based on his winnings on Sale of the Century
Sale of the Century
Sale of the Century is a television game show format that has been screened in several countries in various incarnations since 1969. The show found its biggest success in Australia, where it aired weeknights from 1980 to 2001...
and Win Ben Stein's Money
Win Ben Stein's Money
Win Ben Stein's Money is an American television game show that ran from July 28, 1997 to January 31, 2003 on the Comedy Central cable network with episodes airing until May 8, 2003. It featured three contestants who competed in a general knowledge quiz contest to win the grand prize of $5,000 from...
prior to his win on Greed).
Warren's record was even shorter lived than Oberholtzer's had been, lasting only four days.
Three days before Warren's big win, a contestant named David Legler on Twenty One
Twenty One (game show)
Twenty One is an American game show which aired in the late 1950s. While it included the most popular contestant of the quiz show era, it became notorious for being a rigged quiz show which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of United States Senate investigations...
began a run to the top. Four days after Warren's win, the run continued, with Legler earning a grand total of $1,765,000 in six wins to surpass Warren's total and become the third contestant in a span of two months to top $1,000,000 on a game show. (Shortly after Rahim Oberholtzer's win, Twenty One changed its payoff structure, which is part of the reason why it took Legler 5 wins to reach $1 million in winnings and 6 to top the record instead of the four it took Oberholtzer to top Carpenter's record.)
Legler held the record for well over a year. As 2000 ended and 2001 began, the producers of Millionaire decided that it had been too long (five months) since their top prize had been won, and instituted an accumulating jackpot which added $10,000 to the grand prize amount for each game it was not won. Kevin Olmstead took the hot seat and claimed the top prize on April 10, 2001, winning a jackpot of $2,180,000. Olmstead became the first contestant to top $2 million in total winnings on a game show and supplanted Legler as the all time leader.
In 2004, ABC launched an ultra high-stakes version of Millionaire entitled Who Wants to Be a Super Millionaire, with a $10 million (US) top prize. Two separate Super Millionaire series aired, one in February and one in May of that year. However, despite the higher stakes and the potential for someone to top the all-time record for winnings, the largest prize awarded was $1,000,000 won by Robert Essig.
Ken Jennings
Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings III is an American game show contestant and author. Jennings is noted for holding the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and as being the all-time leading money winner on American game shows...
of Salt Lake City, Utah, became the new champion on Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
This June 2, 2004 episode was the first in a long winning streak for the software engineer, made possible due to a change at the beginning of that season (the show's twentieth on air), eliminating the longstanding rule limiting consecutive appearances for a champion to five. With no limit to his appearances, Jennings began to break many game show records. As his streak continued deeper into the 21st season, Jennings was inching closer and closer to Olmstead's record. With his 59th consecutive win on October 25, 2004, Jennings joined Olmstead as the only two game show contestants at the time to win over $2,000,000 on a quiz show. It took Jennings six more wins to top Olmstead's record, which he accomplished in his 65th consecutive win. Jennings finished the day with $45,099 and a new record total of $2,197,000.
Jennings won nine more games before his streak came to an end on November 30, 2004. He had extended his record total to $2,520,700 at the time of his defeat, after which he was awarded an additional $2,000 for finishing in second place per Jeopardy! rules. Shortly after Jennings' defeat, Jeopardy! decided to see how he would fare in tournament play. On February 9, 2005, the show launched its Ultimate Tournament of Champions
Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions
The 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 all...
, inviting back 144 other past champions to compete over the next three months in a five-round single-elimination tournament with a $2 million grand prize. The field included the highest-winning five-time champions and winners of some previous tournaments, though not all invitees were able to participate. Jennings received a bye
Bye (sports)
A bye, in sports and other competitive activities, most commonly refers to the practice of allowing a player or team to advance to the next round of a playoff tournament without playing...
into the finals of the tournament, where he faced semi-final winners Jerome Vered
Jerome Vered
Jerome Vered is a Studio City, California writer, publicly known for his record-setting success as a contestant on the U.S. television game show Jeopardy!-Biography:...
and Brad Rutter
Brad Rutter
Bradford Gates "Brad" Rutter is the biggest all-time money winner on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and the second biggest all-time money winner on a game show....
in a three-game, cumulative total match. Vered had set a single-day scoring record during his appearance on the show in the early 1990s, while Rutter had won the 2002 Million Dollar Masters tournament and had held the show's winnings record before Jennings broke it. Rutter was also one of two contestants in the tournament who could surpass Jennings' lifetime total by winning the top prize (Bernie Cullen, who was eliminated in the prior rounds of the tournament, was the other on the basis of his being a top prize winner on Millionaire in 2001).
In the tournament's three-day final, Rutter handily defeated Jennings and Vered to win the tournament and $2,000,000, and in the process he supplanted Jennings as the winningest all time American game show contestant. Including the $1.18 million he had won in his previous Jeopardy! appearances (five regular season games, a Tournament of Champions win, the Masters win, and three matches in the earlier rounds of the UToC), Rutter's total stood at $3,255,102 in cash, while Jennings was now second with $3,022,700 having gained an additional $500,000 for his second place finish in the tournament.
Jennings slowly began to chip away at Rutter's record, first by winning $714.29 in 2006 as part of the Mob on 1 vs. 100. (Rutter also participated in a later Mob on the show, and was eliminated without winning any money; both also participated in a Last Man Standing match, and neither won any money; Rutter was eliminated first, and Jennings on the last question.) A year later Jennings won the Grand Slam tournament and the $100,000 top prize by defeating Ogi Ogas
Ogi Ogas
Dr. Ogi Jonathan Ogas is a cognitive neuroscientist, science book author, and game show contestant.- Life and works :...
(who defeated Rutter in the quarterfinals) in the final. Finally, on October 10, 2008, Jennings passed Rutter by winning $500,000 on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is a television game show format based on asking grade-school level questions to adults, hosted by Jeff Foxworthy...
. The record total, which includes a $150,000 prize earned for finishing second in the Jeopardy! IBM Challenge, aired on February 14-16, 2011, now stands at $3,773,414.29. (Jennings was awarded $300,000 for the appearance but donated half the prize to charity -- VillageReach.)
Top ten winnings list
| Rank | Name | Total winnings | Show(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ken Jennings Ken Jennings Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings III is an American game show contestant and author. Jennings is noted for holding the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and as being the all-time leading money winner on American game shows... |
$3,773,414.29 | Jeopardy! Jeopardy! Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories... , $3,172,700 |
Jennings won $2,522,700 in his original run on Jeopardy!, $500,000 for his second place finish in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions The 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 all... ., and $300,000 ($150,000 of which was donated to charity) in the 2011 Jeopardy! IBM Challenge. |
| 1 vs. 100, $714.29 | ||||
| Grand Slam, $100,000 | ||||
| Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (U.S. game show) Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is an American quiz game show on Fox. It is produced by Mark Burnett and is hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. The show premiered as a three-day special which began on February 27, 2007 with the first two shows each a half-hour in length... , $500,000 |
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| 2 | Brad Rutter Brad Rutter Bradford Gates "Brad" Rutter is the biggest all-time money winner on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and the second biggest all-time money winner on a game show.... |
$3,470,102 | Jeopardy! Jeopardy! Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories... , $3,370,102 |
Rutter's total includes $55,102 during his initial appearance on Jeopardy! in 2001, $100,000 in 2002's Tournament of Champions, $1,000,000 for winning the Million Dollar Masters tournament in 2002, $2,115,000 for winning the Ultimate Tournament of Champions Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions The 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 all... in 2005, and $200,000 ($100,000 of which was donated to charity) for finishing third in the 2011 Jeopardy! IBM Challenge. |
| Million Dollar Mind Game, $100,000 | ||||
| 3 | Kevin Olmstead | $2,207,000 | Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (US game show) Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is an American television quiz show which offers a maximum prize of $1,000,000 for correctly answering 14 consecutive multiple-choice questions of random difficulty. Until 2010, the format required contestants to correctly answer 15 consecutive questions of increasing... , $2,180,000 |
Olmstead's win occurred during the progressive jackpot shows on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2001. Following this win, Olmstead held the record as the biggest winner in American television for over three years until it was broken by Ken Jennings. |
| Jeopardy! Jeopardy! Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories... , $27,000 |
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| 4 | Sandra Diaz-Twine Sandra Diaz-Twine Sandra Diaz-Twine is the $1,000,000 winner of the seventh season of Survivor, Survivor: Pearl Islands and the winner of the 20th season in Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains; she is the show's only two-time winner... |
$2,000,000 | Survivor Survivor (U.S. TV series) Survivor is an American version of the Survivor reality television game show, itself derived from the Swedish television series Expedition Robinson originally created in 1997 by Charlie Parsons. The series premiered on May 31, 2000 on CBS... |
Diaz-Twine's total includes her prize for being Sole Survivor on Pearl Islands Survivor: Pearl Islands Survivor: Pearl Islands is the seventh season of the United States reality show Survivor. It was filmed in 2003 and debuted in the United States on CBS on September 18, 2003.... and her prize for Sole Survivor on the all-star series Heroes vs. Villains, each prize being $1,000,000 in cash. Highest ranking reality contest Reality television Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded... winner, and most winnings by a woman. |
| 5 | Ed Toutant | $1,871,000 | Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (US game show) Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is an American television quiz show which offers a maximum prize of $1,000,000 for correctly answering 14 consecutive multiple-choice questions of random difficulty. Until 2010, the format required contestants to correctly answer 15 consecutive questions of increasing... , $1,860,000 |
Toutant was another contestant during the progressive jackpot shows on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2001. After missing a question which was later revealed to be flawed, Toutant was invited back to continue playing for the jackpot at the same level he was playing for during his original appearance. Toutant was able to complete the remaining questions and win a jackpot of $1.86 million. |
| Jeopardy! Jeopardy! Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories... , $11,000 |
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| 6 | Ashlee Register | $1,795,000 | Duel Duel (U.S. game show) Duel is an American game show hosted by Mike Greenberg that first aired from December 17 to December 23, 2007 on ABC. The show aired as a week-long six-episode tournament at 8:00 PM from Monday through Friday with the finale on Sunday.... |
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| 7 | David Legler | $1,765,000 | Twenty One Twenty One (game show) Twenty One is an American game show which aired in the late 1950s. While it included the most popular contestant of the quiz show era, it became notorious for being a rigged quiz show which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of United States Senate investigations... |
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| 8 | Curtis Warren | $1,546,988 | Greed Greed (game show) Greed is an American television game show that aired on Fox from November 4, 1999 until July 14, 2000. The game consisted of a team of contestants who answered a series of multiple-choice questions for a potential prize of up to $2 million... , $1,410,000 |
Warren won $410,000 during his initial appearance on Greed and later won an additional $1,000,000 during a Million Dollar Moment contest. |
| Sale of the Century Sale of the Century (US game show) Sale of the Century is an American television game show which debuted in the United States on September 29, 1969, on NBC daytime. It was one of three NBC game shows to premiere on that date, the other two being the short-lived Letters to Laugh-In and Name Droppers. The series aired until July 13,... , $136,288 |
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| Win Ben Stein's Money Win Ben Stein's Money Win Ben Stein's Money is an American television game show that ran from July 28, 1997 to January 31, 2003 on the Comedy Central cable network with episodes airing until May 8, 2003. It featured three contestants who competed in a general knowledge quiz contest to win the grand prize of $5,000 from... , $700 |
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| 9 | John Carpenter John Carpenter (game show contestant) John Carpenter became the first millionaire on the United States version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on November 19, 1999. He held the record for the largest single win in United States game show history, until it was broken by Rahim Oberholtzer who won $1.12 million on... |
$1,125,000 | Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (US game show) Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is an American television quiz show which offers a maximum prize of $1,000,000 for correctly answering 14 consecutive multiple-choice questions of random difficulty. Until 2010, the format required contestants to correctly answer 15 consecutive questions of increasing... |
Carpenter was the first top-prize winner on the U.S. version of Millionaire and won $250,000 in the Champions of Millionaire tournament, half of which was split with a charity. |
| 10 | Adam Rose | $1,153,908 | The Price Is Right The Price Is Right (U.S. game show) The Price Is Right is an American game show which was created by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. Contestants compete to identify the pricing of merchandise to win cash and prizes. The show is well-known for its signature line of "Come on down!" when the announcer directs newly selected contestants to... |
Rose was the first millionaire on the prime-time $1,000,000 Spectacular. Total includes a $1,000,000 double showcase win bonus, two showcases, a $20,000 cash prize for winning the Grand Game pricing game, and winning an item up for bids in One Bid. |