Back to the buzzer

Oceansider John Krizel was sitting in a Starbucks, sipping his passion tea lemonade, when he received a phone call he had only vaguely been expecting.

“I knew it was kind of coming, and it was in the back of my mind,” said the 25-year-old, who now lives in Washington, D.C. “But it was never something I thought about much. But when I saw the caller ID, I thought, ‘Well, this is it.’ It was a cool

call to get.”

The call was from a television producer in California. Krizel was informed that he had made it to the Tournament of Champions on the popular quiz show “Jeopardy!”

The Tournament of Champions is a special two-week event on the show that pits the year’s 15 top contestants against one another. “We start by looking at how many shows they won,” said Maggie Speak, a contestant producer for the show. “If you had a four-time champion with $100,000 and a three-time champion with $150,000, the four-time champion is going to get in.”

Krizel was deemed among the top 15 contestants over the past year. When he competed in March 2010, he won four games and amassed $105,204 in winnings.

“[The contestants] are not really selected,” Speak explained. “They’ve earned their place in this tournament.”

The first five episodes of the tournament are the quarterfinals. The five winners from those shows, plus four other highest-winning contestants, advance to the semifinals on the next three days. Then the winners of those three episodes duke it out in a two-day final competition. The winner receives $250,000.

In late September, Krizel flew out to California to tape the show. Though the tournament will air over two weeks, it took only two days to tape. Krizel — who is not allowed to reveal how he did — spent Sept. 26 and 27 in the “Jeopardy!” studios in Culver City. The shows will air Nov. 2 through 15. The quarterfinal round in which Krizel began the competition will air on Friday, Nov. 4.

He said that competing in the Tournament of Champions was different from his first experience on the show, when he didn’t really know what to expect. This time, however, he knew he was up against some stiff competition.

“Any of the people there were capable of winning the whole thing, which was daunting,” he said. “I came in prepared to be nervous, but everyone there was very nice and very cool and legitimately rooting for each other. So it was a good atmosphere.”

The first time Krizel was on the show, he was living in West Virginia and working at AmeriCorps. He has since finished his AmeriCorps program and is looking to become a history teacher in Washington. “Having the Jeopardy money is nice,” he said. “It’s a nice cushion.”

He later added, “The whole thing — having won four times — was just a ridiculous blur. Being around the other people that were there, I just didn’t feel like I was on their level. It’s a real honor and a real incredible experience for me just to be there.”