‘Jeopardy!’ Player Explains Why She Should Have Rethought Final Wager

Dan Clarendon May 17, 2025, 12:30 pm

Erin Hoard on the May, 16, 2025, episode of 'Jeopardy!' — Jeopardy!/YouTube

Hindsight is 20/20, as Erin Hoard said on Reddit after losing her Jeopardy! lead in the final round of the episode airing on Friday, May 16.

Hoard went into the Final Jeopardy! round in first place, with a score of $16,000, while competitors Mitch Loflin and Brandon Monsman had scores of $13,800 and $8,300, respectively.

The Final Jeopardy! category was “National Monuments,” and Hoard wagered $11,601, a cover bet that would have put her in front of Loflin if they’d both delivered the correct response.

But Friday’s Final Jeopardy! was a triple stumper. A: “Also called ‘Great Gray Horn’ & ‘Bear’s tipi,’ this site in the western U.S. was made a national monument in 1906.” Q: “What is Devils Tower?” And because he didn’t go all in, Loflin won the game, ending up with a score of $8,400 compared to Hoard’s $4,399 and Monsman’s $2,300.

On Reddit after the airing of Friday’s game, Hoard shared her regrets about her gameplay.

“I know that, mathematically, I made the right [Final Jeopardy!] wager, but when I got back to the hotel that night and then remembered that earlier that day in the green room, Mitch had mentioned a distaste for gambling, I really wished I’d rethought it a bit first!” she wrote.

In the Reddit thread, a Jeopardy! fan said Hoard “made the right call” to cover an all-in wager from Loflin, and Hoard agreed. “Yes, getting it right and losing would have been a total punch in the gut, so if I had to lose, this was the way to do it,” she wrote.

Hoard also responded to another Reddit commenter who said they were “annoyed” that Hoard only bet $3,000 on her Daily Double wager during the Double Jeopardy! round, instead of going all in with $6,600.

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“With the caveat that I was in a bit of a fugue state at the time so my memory may not be entirely accurate, what I recall of my thought process was that with time running out, I didn’t want to risk getting too out of reach if I missed it, but still wanted to put myself in good position going forward if I got it right,” Hoard wrote. “The [Daily Double] was just as I was coming out of a stretch where I was off on my buzzer timing, and I didn’t know I was going to go on quite the run in the back half of [Double Jeopardy!] that I did. Hindsight is 20/20 and all, though. Had I known then what I know now…”

Even so, Hoard said she enjoyed her moment on the Alex Trebek Stage. “And after fairly regular auditions since 2004, I’m so glad I finally got to do it!” she added.

And one fan said that Hoard’s Coryat score — i.e. her score with wagering discounted — puts her in Second Chance territory, so maybe this isn’t the last we’ve seen of this logistics receiver from Las Vegas, Nevada.

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