Former poker pro and 2015 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions…um…champion continued his trivia prowess last month, winning a $20,000 prize on the popular HQ trivia app. And according to a tweet Jacob made earlier this week, he still has not been paid.
HQ trivia (as well as its spin-offs, HQ Sports and HQ Words) are in game show format with a host. Players are asked progressively more difficult multiple-choice trivia questions and those who make it through them all without getting any wrong share the prize pool.
Alex Jacob was one of five winners on June 10th to answer 25 questions in a row, each of whom was awarded $20,000 in the “Jackpot” game. Good stuff!
On Monday, though, Jacob tweeted out an appeal to his Twitter followers, writing, “Guys, I need your help. I won $20,000 on @hqtrivia on June 10 and still haven’t heard anything about payment. Sadly, I don’t think they’re going to pay. Please RT to tell HQ they should honor their jackpots. If I’m wrong, I’ll happily delete this & give $100 to someone who RT’d!”
He later tweeted that he has received several requests for interviews on the matter, but that he “would honestly rather just get paid and not have to do any of them.”
Payment Should be Easy, But it Hasn’t Been
This is not the first payment controversy having to do with HQ trivia. Some winners have simply been unable to cash out; those using the iOS app had their cash out button grayed-out, while Android users were told they needed one more cent in their balance to cash out. Additionally, players used to need to have a $20 minimum balance to cash out via PayPal and were required to have earned that $20 within 90 days.
One problem with that: most winnings in HQ trivia are less than one dollar, so meeting those requirements was near impossible. Fortunately, the company that owns the game changed the rules early last year and now there is no minimum balance required to cash out.
That still doesn’t help Alex Jacob, who would like his $20,000.
Jacob’s Jeopardy! Strategy was Unorthodox
During his Jeopardy! run in which he won $151,802 and then another $250,000 in the Tournament of Champions, Jacob was one of the game show’s earlier practitioners of the “bounce around the board” strategy, hunting for Daily Doubles. He was very aggressive when he did find them, accumulating scores that couldn’t be overcome in Final Jeopardy! almost every game.
The strategy is often frustrating to both viewers and opponents, as it keeps people off-balance and doesn’t let them get comfortable with one category. It is a high-risk, high-reward strategy that wins very big when it works. Recently, it was used to perfection by James Holzhauer, who won 32 games in a row and $2,462,216. Both totals were second all-time to Ken Jennings, but Holzhauer’s average score of $74,673 was more than double Jennings’. Holzhauer beat the previous single-episode record of $77,000 an amazing sixteen times.