Jeopardy! Masters rookies prove to be a threat to 'final boss' James Holzhauer

While Jeopardy! Masters 2024, the second-ever version of the special Jeopardy! tournament featuring six of the game show's best players, returns four of the original six contestants from the inaugural edition in 2023, it was the pair of Jeopardy! Masters "rookies," Victoria Groce and Yogesh Raut, who made the biggest statement in the premiere episode on May 1. They not only proved they belong among the best of the best, they steamrolled the competition, including defending champion and self-proclaimed Jeopardy! Masters "final boss" James Holzhauer.

After making it to the finals last year, the trio of Holzhauer, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach automatically qualified for this second edition of Jeopardy! Masters. Also returning is record-setting Jeopardy! contestant Amy Schneider, who was a producer's pick for the tournament. To join their ranks, Raut won the most recent Tournament of Champions and Groce prevailed (over Schneider and previous Jeopardy! Masters contestant Andrew He) in the inaugural Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament (Jennings and company are still trying to make "JIT" happen).

While viewers may not be as familiar with Raut and Groce, they have impressive credentials. Raut beat the largest Tournament of Champions field ever to claim his spot, and as we learned during the game, has previously gone up against Holzhauer at national trivia tournaments. For Groce, while she only won one game in her initial Jeopardy! appearance back in 2005, she ended David Madden's 19-game winning streak; then she became a trivia fixture as one of the chasers on ABC's other game show, The Chase. Still, if there were any doubts about how they'd fare against Jeopardy! Masters vets, those were quickly put to bed.

Groce and Raut both dominated their games. Groce beat Amodio and Roach by more than 20,000 points each, while Raut had similar success against Holzhauer and Schneider, beating them both by about 19,000 points. They were the only ones in their game to get any of the Double Jeopardy clues right and were uncatchable heading into Final Jeopardy.

When looking at the stats for the games that Jeopardy! provides, Groce was by far the best performer of the night. She had the highest buzz-in percentage, beating her competitors 59% of the time, had the most correct response of the entire six-person field with 26 and the highest percentage of correct responses (96%), missing only one, the Final Jeopardy, which didn't even matter for her game.

Jeopardy! fans were certainly impressed by her performance:

So, the Jeopardy! Masters leaderboard after the first two games has Groce and Raut at the top after earning three match points each for their wins (Groce currently holds the tiebreaker based on correct responses). Holzhauer and Roach earned one point for their second place finishes and Amodio and Schneider are at the bottom with no points based on their last place finishes in the initial games.

Can Holzhauer reestablish his long-held dominance? Can Amodio, Roach and Schneider make moves of their own? Jeopardy! Masters returns on Monday, May 6, and will air on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays the weeks of May 6 and May 13 on ABC (streaming next day on Hulu) for you to watch and find out.