Celebrity Tournaments
While the focus of this site has always been top-notch, regular season contestants, the increasing popularity of the Celebrity Tournaments has led me to do a page on those events.
The first Celebrity Tournament was held in late 1992 (although the copyright date on the episodes says 1993). The very first Celebrity game champion was Carol Burnett (she defeated Donna Mills and Regis Philbin). The format hasn't changed much over the years; the tournament lasts for one week and features three different celebrities each day, with a bonus for the big winner of the week. In the first tournament, the week's biggest winner was Cheech Marin.
All celebrities play for charity. There is a $10,000 minimum to each charity, which has had to be given out on numerous occasions. Later, a $5,000 bonus was added to the winner's score, as some incentive to try to win the game (too frequently, all three would take home the $10,000 minimum).
All contestants get to play Final Jeopardy!, even if their scores are zero or negative. On one occasion, the leading minus sign of a score was simply dropped; later, token house money (like $500) was given to the players.
The celebrity tournaments continued to air once a year until the 1996-97 season, during which there were two (disjoint) weeks of tournaments. Beginning with these tournaments, celebrities began taping clues for Video Daily Doubles to be used during the regular season.
During the 1997-98 season, two more celebrity tournaments were held: the first was dubbed Power Players Week, aired from Washington, D.C., and featured notables from the world of politics and journalism. Later, a second tournament was held (back in L.A.) called the Celebrity Invitational; it featured celebrities who had previously been on the show and done well.
During the 1998-99 season, there were multiple "Celebrity Days" in which three contestants, usually tied together by some common thread (sports stars, news reporters, etc.) played a single game for charity. This happened at least half a dozen times that year, many times on a Friday.