Trivia aficionado junior Nico Martinez recently competed for the $250,000 top prize in “Jeopardy!”’s not-so-trivial Tournament of Champions. Martinez was invited to participate after winning a $100,000 prize and top honors in “Jeopardy!”’s 2005 College Championship last November.

Martinez cannot reveal the results of the competition until it airs May 8 to May 19. The episode on which he appears will air on May 12.

The Tournament of Champions is an annual two-week competition during which 15 champions from the preceding season face off in threes over the course of five quarter-final rounds, three semi-final rounds and a two-day cumulative final. This year’s entrants either had to win at least three individual shows this season or accumulate more than $100,000 in earnings, according to Martinez. Additionally, each year’s College Championship winner is guaranteed an invitation to the Tournament of Champions.

“It was a little bit different from doing the college show because you had such an eclectic mix of people,” Martinez says. “There were some people who were young and some in their late 50s. You had guys who had won 20 games in a row, then people like me who had just won tournaments, so it was different in that not everybody was about the same age. It was a little bit more uptight in the green room [a lounge onset in which participants relax before taping].”

However, Martinez’s girlfriend, senior Becky Garza, says she felt he handled the pressure well. Garza traveled to Los Angeles along with her family, Martinez’s family and one of Martinez’s close friends to watch the taping on April 10 and 11.

“It was really fun to get to go see how they tape it, but it was also really nerve-wracking because you have to watch everyone else go and be totally quiet,” Garza says. “I don’t think he was nervous at all, though. I really think he just likes to play the game so much that when he goes up there he isn’t nervous — he just loves it.”

Martinez says he found the experience enjoyable.

“The contestant coordinators try to keep a pretty loose atmosphere,” Martinez explains. “My feeling going into it was I’d already done really well — better than I expected in the first place — so this was just sort of like the sugar on top of everything. I was even less expected to win this because I don’t think a college student has ever won the Tournament of Champions.”

Although Martinez says he was relatively relaxed about the tournament, his friends recall that he studied hard for the competition. Junior Ari Neumann, Martinez’s roommate, helped him review trivia before his appearance in the College Championship.

“He studies a lot out of a trivia book that he has,” Neumann says. “He reads the book so much that the binding is falling apart.”

Martinez also took time out of his spring break to prepare for the tournament.

“He really only heard he was going on the show a month and a half ago, so he was working with books and looking up different things he was weak on,” Garza says. “During spring break we went on a trip to Cabo San Lucas and everyone teased us because all day Nico would be studying one of his trivia books or else I’d be asking him questions. Everyone teased us that that was what Stanford kids did over spring break.”

According to Garza, Martinez’s sister helped him brush up on pop culture, which he considers his weakest subject. Martinez also changed the way he studied pop culture for the Tournament of Champions, as opposed to the college contest.

“The biggest difference is that I tried to learn about pop culture that would be more geared toward adults — older TV shows, older movies and older music,” Martinez explains. “For the college show they’d try to keep the pop culture pretty recent, but when you have the Tournament of Champions with 40-or-50-year-olds, they’re going to want music from the 70s and movies from the 50s.”

Garza says Martinez represented himself very well.

“I’ve always been impressed by how much he knows, but I’m proud of him mostly because of how humble he is and how hard he works without people noticing,” she says. “He’s the kind of person who would never tell you how much he’s studying or about all of his awards or achievements even though he’s a really successful person. I couldn’t be prouder.”

Martinez says his experience with Jeopardy! has given him a positive taste for game shows.

“There’s always a chance I’ll get to go back on Jeopardy! if they have another ultimate tournament, but if any other quiz show comes around, I’ll be there trying out for sure,” he says. “My mom wants me to go on The Amazing Race, but I don’t know about that.”