Read: Jeopardy wasn’t designed for a contestant like James Holzhauer

“I’ve got to give Jeopardy immense credit, and The Chase U.S.A.,” Labbett told me. “In Britain or Australia”—where The Chase still airs—“James would not have made it onto television, because he’s just too damn good. They would never have him on.”

Labbett said that Holzhauer has “the unholy trinity” of Jeopardy skills. First, he has deep trivia knowledge. In training for competitions such as Jeopardy, trivia experts typically memorize lists of presidents, world capitals, and the like—unchanging bodies of knowledge that will pay dividends in competition. Holzhauer seems to have mastered these, but Labbett is impressed by his grasp on more topical categories of information, such as sports, pop music, film, and TV. “He doesn’t appear to have any [subject-area] weaknesses, which is very rare—a genuine all-rounder,” Labbett said.

Developing expertise like this requires a sharp memory, but also a ton of work. Labbett told me that before he became a father, he would spend 30 to 70 hours a week honing his knowledge in some capacity or another. His methods vary: Studying might mean browsing random pages on Wikipedia, watching TV (to stay current), or reading 30 consecutive pages from a reference book.

Holzhauer’s second advantage, as Labbett sees it, is the speed of his recall. “Good quizzers often need a couple of seconds to think of the answer,” Labbett told me. “James doesn’t.” This is a skill that’s not as responsive to practice, and it’s a valuable edge in a game that prizes quickness. So is a proficiency with Jeopardy’s finicky buzzers, which many contestants struggle to time correctly. Holzhauer’s mastery of the buzzer is what allows him to get in ahead of other contestants, even when all three of them might know the correct response.

The third element of the trinity is Holzhauer’s mind for strategy. When in control of the board, he rarely hesitates to pick his next clue—often doing so with an eye for Daily Doubles, tiles that essentially let players wager as much of their money as they’d like—and calibrates his bets without much apparent anguish.

“I know a lot of very good trivia players who would never be able to work out the complex wagers that he does on the Daily Double, because they just wouldn’t be able to think as fast as that,” Labbett said. The ability to make such on-the-fly calculations, Labbett noted, doesn’t necessarily overlap with trivia expertise—trivia usually doesn’t require people to do math on the spot.

What’s helpful to Holzhauer in this regard is his professional background. He is a Las Vegas–based sports gambler, and as such is comfortable not just making risk-benefit calculations, but also putting significant amounts of money on the line. Jennings, during the first 14 episodes of his 74-game, $2.5 million run 15 years ago, placed an average wager of $2,700 on Daily Doubles and $6,175 on Final Jeopardy (the show’s last clue, on which everyone bets). Holzhauer, meanwhile, has averaged $9,879 on Daily Doubles and $26,686 on Final Jeopardy as of Tuesday night. (Episodes of Jeopardy are usually taped months in advance.)