'Hero-Villain' Arthur Chu Shares Plans for 'Jeopardy!' Winnings

By Katie Kindelan March 13, 2014

No one can say controversial "Jeopardy!" champ Arthur Chu wasn't strategic while rolling to 11 straight wins on the TV game show.

Now that Chu has been dethroned - defeated in a pretaped episode Wednesday night by a former synchronized swimmer from Michigan - the "Jeopardy! villain" says he plans to be just as strategic off-air with his nearly $300,000 in winnings.

"The main thing is I don't want to do anything crazy or stupid," Chu, 30, said today on "Good Morning America." "I've been very strategic so far so I want to be strategic in the future.

"I did talk to my wife," he said. "We do want to go to China. She's never been. I want to see relatives that I haven't seen for a very long time [and] maybe start thinking about buying a house in the future."

Chu, an insurance compliance worker and voice-over actor from Broadview Heights, Ohio, has a lot to think about after rolling to the third-biggest cash winnings in the history of the long-running game show.

READ MORE: 'Hero-Villain' 'Jeopardy!' Contestant Returns

His streak, known as the #ChuChuTrain, came to a halt only after another player, new champ Diana Peloquin, gave Chu a taste of his own medicine, using many of the unconventional strategies that the game theory-loving Chu used throughout his winning run.

Chu became a hero to some and villain to others by skipping around the board when picking his squares, rather than playing them in sequence as most players conventionally have done on "Jeopardy!"

Chu says he used the 30 days between when he got the call from "Jeopardy!" that he was selected as a contestant to the time when he actually taped his first show to take advantage of the show's huge following.

"I went online and there's a huge community of 'Jeopardy!' fans, past 'Jeopardy!' champions who just talk about this stuff, just sit around and discuss the games as they come on every night," Chu said on "GMA." "You get to immerse yourself in that culture and you find out about strategies like that and you just put together the pieces."

Chu, who also became known for live tweeting his winning streak, played his strategy through to the end, betting it all in Wednesday's episode on both the final "Double Jeopardy" question and the "Final Jeopardy!" clue, which he answered incorrectly, leaving him with $0.

Though Chu walked away without another victory in his hands, the longtime champ made it clear on Twitter that he was going to be OK.

And even though Chu has been outspoken when it comes to explaining, and defending, his "Jeopardy!" tactics, he revealed he's ready to talk even more, announcing he'll be holding an "Ask Me Anything" session on the social media site Reddit.