Former ‘Jeopardy!’ champion Alex Jacob runs deep in WSOP’s ‘Millionaire Maker’

The category is “POKER PLAYERS.”

Answer: The winner of the 2006 United States Poker Championship, this one-time poker prodigy left the tournament grind after getting burned out and went on to gain recognition for his unconventional, yet successful, style as a contestant on “Jeopardy!”.

Who is Alex Jacob?

Jacob, the 2015 “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions winner, returned to the World Series of Poker this summer for the first time in three years and finished 52nd in the $1,500 buy-in “Millionaire Maker” No-limit Hold ‘em event.

The “Millionaire Maker,” which drew 7,190 entrants and will award seven-figure payouts to the first- and second-place finishers, continued Monday night at the Rio Convention Center. The tournament concludes Tuesday with the remaining players set to begin at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

“It’s good to be back,” the 31-year-old Jacob said during the first tournament break. “The poker community, I’ve been getting a lot of love about the ‘Jeopardy!’ thing. It’s really nice. Everyone’s really supportive and pumped about it, so that’s really cool.”

Jacob graduated from Yale in 2006 and quickly became one of the top tournament pros with more than $2.6 million in live tournament earnings, according to Global Poker Index’s Hendon Mob Poker Database. In addition to his victory at the USPC as a 21-year-old, Jacob cashed in 25 events and made four final tables at the WSOP between 2006 and 2012.

But after playing in the WSOP Main Event in 2013, Jacob stepped away from the poker table.

“I kind of lost the love of it, lost the passion a little bit,” he said.

Jacob started working as a currency trader in Chicago in 2014 before leaving his job late last year. The resident of Greensboro, North Carolina, currently is working for a startup that created a quiz app called Trivia Monster.

Jacob was a six-time champion on “Jeopardy!” and earned nearly $150,000 before winning the show’s $250,000 Tournament of Champions in November.

But it was his unorthodox way of playing that made him such a memorable contestant and rankled avid watchers of the show.

”I was kind of expecting a little bit of hate,” Jacob said. “I was plesantly surprised on Twitter and on the internet. The majority were really positive.”

Rather than working from the lowest to highest value in a single category, Jacob jumped around the board in search of the “Daily Double.” When he found it, Jacob often bet the maximum and was able to build insurmountable leads heading into “Final Jeopardy!”

Host Alex Trebek called Jacob’s run to the Tournament of Champions title “the most dominant performance by anyone in any of our tournaments.”

“I think a lot of people just appreciate a fresh approach to the game, someone who is playing it a little differently and just looking at it a different way,” Jacob said. “My background in poker and being a professional games player, you take it a little more seriously in terms of the strategy of it.

“I think a lot of people just go on and they kind of see it as a question-and-answer game and that’s it. ‘I’m going to know what I know and we’ll see if that’s good enough.’ I really wanted to make sure I maximized everything I could.”

Jacob was in 77th place with 124 players remaining when the “Millionaire Maker” resumed Monday. He doubled up twice in the first two hours of play but soon found himself short-stacked and was eliminated when he ran into his opponent’s pocket queens.

Jacob, who took home $21,635 in prize money, said he expects to return in July for the Main Event.

“Any time you play Day 3 of a World Series event, that’s when it really gets fun,” Jacob said. “You start to taste it a little bit. That’s why everyone plays poker tournaments, to run deep. It’s definitely the most exciting part. I’m just having fun.”

Contact reporter David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidSchoenLVRJ