> The Jeopardy! match with Watson was essentially rigged due to the computer’s superhuman reaction time.
From many anecdotes I've heard from previous Jeopardy contestants, buzzer technique is more than half the battle. That's part of the reason Ken Jennings was able to go on winning as long as he did - he continuously refined and developed better intuition for when to buzz.
Many contestants (a large portion of whom likely participated in college Trivia Bowls and were seasoned trivia buffs) could answer the vast majority of Jeopardy clues with relative ease.
The reason for this is that Jeopardy, in order to have household appeal, cannot legitimately engage in an increasingly difficult arms race for its questions - it has to have a capped ceiling in terms of clue difficulty.