‘Jeopardy!’: Scott Riccardi Breaks Silence After His Shocking TOC Finals Loss

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Jeopardy! super champion Scott Riccardi has a lot to say about his somewhat shocking loss in the Tournament of Champions against Paolo Pasco.

Pasco, from San Diego, California, won three games in a row, securing his title as Tournament of Champions winner. He is only a six-game winner, whereas Riccardi won 16 games and became the highest winning contestant of Season 4 with $458,000, but it wasn’t enough to become the ultimate champion.

The two of them went up against TJ Fisher, from San Francisco, California. Pasco won due to finding the Daily Doubles and going all in on them. Now, Riccardi is speaking out about his competitors and his time on the game show, along with photos of the finalists and all of the TOC competitors.

“Thank you to every one of my fellow contestants, the entire Jeopardy! team, all my friends and family, and everyone who watched and supported me throughout this unforgettable Tournament of Champions experience,” he wrote on Instagram on February 8.

“It was truly an honor to share the green room, the stage, and the streets of Culver City with such an unbelievably kind and witty group of competitors who I will be forever grateful to have met.”

 

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“I never expected that the nerves of taking the stage for a terrifying finals matchup could give way to so much fun and laughter, all while playing the best game in the world. A huge congratulations to Paolo, a truly deserving, effortlessly funny, and always humble champion who played unstoppable game after unstoppable game onstage and who consistently goes out of his way to uplift and acknowledge his fellow competitors on and off the stage,” Riccardi continued.

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“Another big shoutout goes out to my other fellow finalist and runner-up, TJ, whose buoyant positivity and clever asides delighted everyone in the studio and, two months later, delighted everyone at my and certainly everyone else’s watch parties. And of course, major props to Tom [Devlin] and Allegra [Kuney] for playing an absolutely breakneck semifinal game which genuinely could have been won by anyone, and for which I will never take my Daily Double luck for granted. All the other contestants (and WHAGs!) are among the most incredible and smart people I’ve ever met.”

Riccardi, from Somerville, New Jersey, ended by saying there is a lot more than he didn’t say, but he can’t express how “amazingly surreal” it was to live out his Jeopardy! dream in the past year.

Although the engineer’s time on the show came to a close during the TOC, Riccardi will most likely be invited back to an upcoming Jeopardy! Masters of Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament, due to his incredible gameplay in the regular season.