J!ToC 2009

Right, so the promised post on the Jeopardy! tournament of Champions.
My rooting interest is (surprise, surprise) Larissa Kelly, the Grad student from (San Solito?) California, (arguably - Jerome Vered) the third most successful Jeopardy! contestant of "all time" (scare quotes are there because "all time" in this context is only a few decades) behind Ken Jennings and the "all-time" leader, Brad Rutter. She's rather less-contestedly the most successful female ever on the program, and her gender almost certainly has something (though definitely not everything) to do with my rooting interest. Of course, I also think she WILL win - she is incredibly talented, and as of the time of the writing of this post, I know that she's into the finals (of course it's all taped, so technically she's already either won or... well, not lost really, more... not won).
Interesting things about the ToC are the wild card slots in the first round which make the betting strategies significantly different, the higher difficulties, and of course the two-day final, which is really the closest to a long-term "normal" game state that is ever achieved (excepting the three-day final of the Ultimate ToC), and also leads to a very interesting Final Jeopardy on day one and Double Jeopardy on day two - and possibly an intense Final on day two, as we had last year where it was just crazy close. Gotta love the ToC!