When we last left our heroes, Watson and the undefeated Jeopardy champion Brad Rutter were tied for the lead with $5,000 apiece. Ken Jennings, meanwhile, trailed with $2,000. Watson had some shaky moments in the early stages of Round 1, but kept it together enough to stay on top and frustrate the Mormon Machine. Let’s rejoin the action…

Early on in the match, Watson went on a spree, correctly answering questions about diseases and classical music left and right. After running its score up to $14,600 (and denying the other two even a chance to chime in), Watson hit the “Daily Double.”

Unlike Monday night, when it could only wager a max of $1,000, Watson had some freedom to play around with his money total. How much did it risk? $6,435. That drew a solid laugh from the crowd and prompted Trebek to proclaim, “I won’t ask. I won’t ask.” Predictably, Watson produced the correct response (a question about architecture).

And then, Watson hit a hiccup. It picked the category dealing fine art, and was asked the following: “In May 2010 5 paintings worth $125 million by Braque, Matisse & three others left Paris’ Museum of this art period.”

Latching on to the the keywords “3 others,” Watson answered “Picasso.” The correct response, which required the contestants to complete the museum name, was “modern art.” But the other two were as puzzled by the clue as Watson was, thinking they had to name a more specific era. So no harm no foul.

A couple of questions later, Watson hit the “Daily Double” again, this time in the fine art category. This time around he wagered $1,246. While it understood what the clue was asking for this time (the city from which some art was stolen), his confidence percentages were shockingly low across the board, which his most confident response (in this case Baghdad) coming in at 32%. He even went as far as to mention it was guessing before answering. But Watson got it right.

From there, it was mostly a trivia bloodbath. Jennings and Rutter could hardly get a word in, as Watson wiped out the board full of clues regarding hedgehogs, Cambridge university, and terms including the words “church” or “state.” By the end of double Jeopardy, Jennings and Rutter could only give the camera looks which sat somewhere between vexed and nonplussed. That’s because Jennings had $2400, Rutter had $5400 and Watson had $36,681.

For Final Jeopardy, the three challengers were given the category “U.S. Cities” asked to name the city which has one airport named after a WWII hero and another named for a WWII battle. Jennings and Rutter both answered correctly with Chicago. What was Watson’s answer? Take a look at the top image. It was totally confused to the point where it didn’t consider the restrictions set by the category itself.

But how much did it wager? In typical Watson form, he only bet $947, likely realizing it could wager $0 and still win. So while there’s still a whole other round to be played tomorrow night the truth is that with $4800 and $10,400, respectively, Jennings and Rutter will be hard-pressed to catch up to Watson’s $35,734. Barring a catastrophic meltdown, tomorrow night’s show will be a victory lap, celebrating the triumph of machine over man.

But now that we’ve been able to watch Watson in action for an entire round, we have a better idea of his strengths and weaknesses when it comes to answering open-ended questions.

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