There's ####### strategy to this???
Also, what makes one 'good on the buzzer'?
The buzzer is the single most important aspect of the game. Mastering the buzzer almost guarantees victory.
The only reason "Watson" beat humans in the game is because it was plugged into the buzzer delay system itself and could always ring in first and never mis-time the trigger.
Ok. But what's the strategy? Do you need to time it off a cue? Are you locked out if you buzz to early or too many times?
Alex reads the clue aloud. At the very instant he's done speaking the last syllable, a person triggers the system to allow people to buzz in. There's an element of human error there. Some randomness and variance. It's like when a basketball team has to get off a shot in 1.3 seconds and the timekeeper has to start the clock just as the inbounds pass touches a hand. If you time it just right, you'll push the button just a nanosecond after the person has allowed you to buzz in, but you have to be 'in the zone' and in sync with the guy who's triggering it. It's not a producer, IIRC, I think it's just a PA, basically some 22-year-old kid one step up from the interns.
If you miss and buzz early, you're locked out for at least 1 second. It might be 1.5 or 2.0 seconds, not sure. But it hurts. It's basically giving up control to the other players.
When the PA hits the button to open up the buzzers, lights come on at the sides of the board to tell players it's time to ring in. If you actually wait to see the light and register it in your vision, it's too late.
"Watson" had the edge because his trigger was hard-wired into the system. As soon as the button was pushed to allow the players to ring in, it got a signal (sent at the speed of light) to his programming that said "if you know the answer, ring in", and it could obviously respond as fast as his processor could process it and send the signal back (at the speed of light). He was impossible to beat off the buzzer.
The best players
scan the entire clue as soon as the screen comes up. Hit the big words and search their minds for the answer. Decide on their guess. All before Alex is done reading. Then, they intensely focus on the last 2-3 words of the clue and wait for Alex to get there, read along, and try to time the cadence along with the PA hitting the button. Like how a drag racer will time the 3-2-1-go lights.
If you actually wait to hear the whole clue, you'll never win a game.