From Jeopardy! to The Chase there’s no catching Brad Rutter when it comes to game shows about knowledge, and who he can outsmart to become a champion.

Now Brad is known to be the Jeopardy! Champion with the most money earning over $5 million dollars from the regular season, a tournament of champions and the GOAT championship, that is a lot of games for a 5-time undefeated champion.

Now as one of the greatest to play the game of Jeopardy! him alongside his fellow GOAT’s James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings have become a team of chasers, the contestants have to face each chaser to ‘the bank’ and if they do not get caught they win the game.

This fast-paced, ruthless game has succeeded in season one, and now in season two Brad and his fellow GOAT’s have added another member to help chase the contestants, Mark Labbett an original member of the British version of The Chase. We got to chat with Brad about being a Chaser, Jeopardy! and season 2 of The Chase!

The Chase has been renewed for a second season, what can you tell us about it so far that makes this new game show one of the contenders for being America’s favourite?

BR: First of all, it’s fast-paced: we can get through 166 questions in the course of an hour. But there’s also a lot of tense, dramatic moments in the individual, multiple-choice round, so we have the best of both worlds. And it’s fun to see how regular people who think they have a game stack up against the trivia professionals.

So far, many times you, James, and Ken have managed to Chase down the contestant, do you think Season 2 will have a harder roaster to chase down?

BR: The staff did a great job finding contestants for Season 1, but we were shooting in the middle of the pandemic so that limited the pool they could draw from to an extent. With things opening up somewhat since then, I’d expect that we’ll see even more good players.

Being a Jeopardy! Champion gives you rank when it comes to the Chase, what does it feel like when you cannot chase your opponent?

BR: Don’t get me wrong, it’s disappointing, but the cool thing is that on this show, if a team wins, they really have to earn it, so if they do, it proves they were really good.

How does it feel knowing that Jeopardy! 3 Greatest of All Time players are now on a team, one of them being named the actual GOAT?

BR: It’s fun for us because we enjoy hanging out, as much as we like to talk trash on each other. But the contestants better watch out!

Now that you, James, Ken, and Mark are on the same side, do you still have competition between you all even when considered to be teammates on The Chase?

BR: It’s a funny dynamic because we’re rooting for each other, but at the same time we all want to do better than the other three. Even so, when we see one of us get a bad break or blow a question that we should have known, there’s a lot of sympathies there because it happens to all of us from time to time.

Moving on from Jeopardy! A game where there is always a winner, what is it like mostly/always defeating someone on the show and they walk away with nothing?

BR: Everyone knows the deal going in, and I think that ends up giving us contestants who are real trivia aficionados who want to match wits with one of the best quiz players in the world. It really raises the stakes, too–a lot of times the Final Chase comes down to a matter of seconds with a bunch of money on the line.

Many people might think that getting multiple-choice options makes the game a little bit easier, in what way is the Chase a hard show to compete on?

BR: The writers do a great job of coming up with multiple-choice questions where it’s unlikely that you’ll know the answer cold and you usually have to do some deductive reasoning to figure it out. It’s a different skill from the Cash Builder and Final Chase rounds, so a lot of times there will be a contestant who didn’t necessarily kill it in the Cash Builder but can outrun us to get back for the Final Chase.

When Chasing a contestant, what is your thought process for when you really do not know the answer to the question?

BR: First, I’ll look for some kind of clue to find a way in. Usually, if it’s about a word I’m not familiar with, there will be a Latin or Greek root that will give me an idea of what it means. But if I really have no idea, I’ll go with the answer that’s the most surprising or counterintuitive because that might be the reason they’re asking it in the first place. And you usually can’t go wrong with picking the one that’s funniest.