The Best of the Best: Game Show Champeens.

Yesterday, GSN premiered the new game show Grand Slam, which is a straight-up trivia contest featuring the biggest winners on other game shows. There are 16 contestants seeded in a single-knockout tournament. Some of them include Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter from Jeopardy!, John Carpenter and Kevin Olmstead from Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, among others. With that in mind, I would like to list the five greatest game show champions that I have seen on TV.

Ken Jennings - Jeopardy!
Haul - $3.02 Million

Who doesn't know him, he's the guy who went on a 74-game tear and won $2.4 Million over four months. It was game 75 where this happened...



Nancy came in last the next game.

Brad Rutter - Jeopardy!
Haul - $3.255 Million

This guy won it the hard way. Back when he played, there was the five-game rule. He then won the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, the Jeopardy! Million Dollar Masters Tournament, and the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions, where he beat Ken in the championship game.


Note: I couldn't find any Brad Rutter Jeopardy! clips, this one is for a local game show he hosted in Pennsylvania. His game against Ken is on the Jeopardy! DVD.

John Carpenter - Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Haul - $1.25 Million

Now, who could not forget this?



I certainly couldn't, it was on the GSN champions marathon leading up to the Grand Slam Premiere ;)

Kevin Olmstead - Jeopardy and ...Millionaire
Haul - $2.207 Million

I don't remmber him on Jeopardy, but back when ...Millionaire ran a progressive jackpot, he finally picked up the lot after it reached $2.18 Million



Vicky-Ann - The Price is Right
Haul - $147,517



Ok, she doesn't class well with the rest of these winners, and The Price is Right doesn't require a lot of skill to play, but still, that's a pretty good haul, and in fact, the biggest prize total in the show's history for its daytime episodes.