Mina Kimes Opens Up About Her Impressive Jeopardy! Strategy

ESPN's Mina Kimes once again proved that she's smarter than the average NFL analyst with a rather shocking win over Katie Nolan and Lisa Ann Walter during her appearance on Jeopardy!, securing the win on Final Jeopardy. After her big win, she decided to explain how she was able to pull off a 28-3-like comeback and get the win.

The Final Jeopardy question was "The name of this virtual assistant was inspired by an ancient library once said to contain all the world's knowledge." The answer was Alexa, which only Nolan got right. Kimes guessed Claude while Walter guessed Babylon.

Taking to social media yesterday, Kimes explained that she used the strategy of assuming first place (Walter) would get the question wrong and wager a lot of money on it. Most importantly, she reasoned that first place would have to wager a lot of money to stave off her potential comeback.

"I was able to win last night on the Celebrity Jeopardy! semifinals despite playing a pretty awful game, honestly, including Final Jeopardy. My brain completely glitched. However, I won really because of wagering strategies. I got some questions about it so I figured I would explain what I did here," Kimes said.

"Your only chance of winning in second place is if first place is wrong. Otherwise, you're out. So you have to operate from that place. And if you bet nothing, if you're right, you win if they're wrong. If you're both wrong, you still win because they had to bet so much to cover you. So it's the logical thing to do. Somehow, it's still very scary when you're up there to bet very little money, but it is the logical thing to do. Second place should always do that if they're over two-thirds of the way through," Kimes added.

How it played out

Kimes had $8000 and wagered exactly $2210. Her wrong answer left her with $5790. Walter had $9600 but wagered $7000, falling to $2600 when she got the wrong answer. Nolan, who had been in third place, had $5100 but wagered no money on the final question, allowing Kimes to eke out the win.

It wasn't exactly a flawless strategy though since it didn't account for Nolan at all. Had Nolan wagered a mere $700 or more on her answer, she would have won the whole thing.

Nevertheless, fans applauded her correct use of game theory to secure the win:

"Yeah, you played correctly... Katie (expletive) up. There was no reason for her to bet 0. In fact 2901 is what she should have bet to at least cover you if you get it wrong and Lisa got it wrong. (Please don't tattle on me to Katie, I'm very fond of her)," one user remarked.

"I feel like we should be grateful that Mina Kimes uses her superior intellect to win Jeopardy and talk about football. She could be a Justice League-level threat if she really wanted to," wrote another.

"Mina nails it here. Many really don't understand how critical wagering strategy is. In fact, many contestants don't either and it's unfortunately led to losses when it should have been a win. Perfect wager and it paid off. Congrats!!" former Jeopardy! champion Aaron Levine said.

It's a strategy that more Jeopardy! contestants may learn from going forward.

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This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 7:34 AM.