The Chase Season 3: Get First Look at Key Art, Meet the Quintet of Chasers

BUZZY COHEN

Cohen first took America by storm in 2016, with 10-game run (how quaint!) on Jeopardy!, where his broad knowledge base and irreverent sense of humor made an indelible mark. In 2017, he won Jeopardy!‘s Tournament of Champions, making gutsy bets and sharing a playful attitude with host Alex Trebek and fellow contestants. (Jeopardy! even showcased his win in its 35th anniversary book.)

Cohen returned in 2019 as one of the captains for Season 35’s “All-Star Games,” where he stood aside such luminaries as future Chasers Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. In 2021, Cohen was tapped to guest host the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, and he topped many prognosticators’ lists (FWIW!) to become the show’s permanent host.

VICTORIA GROCE

Growing up in Georgia, Groce from an early age competed in all kinds of academic competitions, including academic bowl, Mathcounts and Odyssey of the Mind. In 2005 she competed on Jeopardy!, where she ended David Madden’s 19-day winning streak.

Since the mid-2010s, Groce has been heavily involved in the international quizzing community. She is one of two people to have finished in the Top 10 of the LearnedLeague Championship each of the last three years, and one of three Americans ever to make the podium at the World Quizzing Championships (finishing in third place in 2020). She played on the winning American team for the 2021–22 Quizzing World Cup (which is not the Quidditch World Cup, I keep reminding myself as I type that sentence), and at the 2021 World Quiz Awards, she was named World Quizzer of the Year, based on her dominant performance in individual and team quiz leagues over three continents.

As a Chaser, Groce will be dubbed… “The Queen.”

BRANDON BLACKWELL

Like many who went on to become quizzer pros, Blackwell grew up in Queens watching game shows. By the time he turned 20, he had appeared on three different quiz shows and won more than $400,000 — including $43K from a 2012 turn in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? seat and several hundred thousand dollars from a 2012 appearance on Million Second Quiz.

In 2014, Blackwell joined the American circuit, and in 2016 he made his debut internationally at the Quiz Olympiad in Athens, where he won two medals (including one in the world speedquizzing discipline). In 2017, Blackwell left the American trivia scene to train in the UK, where he played for some of the top quiz clubs in the world. In addition to two fourth-place finishes in the British Quizzing Championship pairs competition, he won multiple London Open medals and a President’s Cup in the Quiz League of London. He is also one of the highest-scoring players of all-time on University Challenge, a British quiz show that some say dwarfs Jeop! with its difficulty.

Blackwell (aka “The Lightning Bolt”) is still a regular in high-level quiz competitions outside the U.S., and he currently plays for one of the highest-ranked quiz teams in the world — a team whose star player is none other than… fellow Chaser Victoria Groce.

BRAD RUTTER

An original Chaser on ABC‘s revival, Rutter grew up watching Jeopardy! every night with his parents in his hometown of Lancaster, Pa. He <made his first Jeopardy! appearance while he was still a student at Johns Hopkins University, walking away after a five-game run with $55,102 and two Chevrolet Camaros.

The five-day champion title secured him a spot in Jeopardy!‘s 2001 Tournament of Champions, which he also won. Rutter went on to claim the main prizes in the 2002 Million Dollar Masters Tournament, the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, the 2014 Battle of the Decades Tournament and the 2019 Jeopardy! All-Star Games. He also competed in ABC’s highly rated Jeopardy! The Greatest of All-Time primetime tournament, in 2020.

JAMES HOLZHAUER

Another member of the ABC revival’s original Chaser team, Holzhauer barely graduated from the University of Illinois with a math degree in 2005. But while in college, he built a bankroll playing online poker, then decided to risk it all on baseball bets. Soon, he was making his living entirely by gambling on sports.

Holzhauer’s first game show appearance was on a 2014 version of The Chase, where he defeated Mark “The Beast” Labbett by a record margin. In 2019, Holzhauer went on a historic Jeopardy! winning streak; his total winnings of more than $3 million trails only future Chasers Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on the all-time list.

In January 2020, Holzhauer competed alongside Jennings and Rutter in ABC’s Jeopardy! The Greatest of All-Time primetime tournament.

Which Season 3 Chaser are you most excited to see challenge The Chase‘s contestants?