Student Wins €183,000 | Joost van Wijngaarden Story

What would you do if you won a ton? It happened to Joost van Wijngaarden through a cleverly played game One against 100. Now, eight years later, he looks back on his winnings. How does life as a game show winner fare for him?

May 2018, next to presenter Caroline Tensen, Van Wijngaarden is at an exciting turning point during the recording day. Opposite him sits a final opponent, his so-called escapes the student has already used. A question about dating apps comes in, the moment when the candidate uses his doubler. The room lights up, applause and a cheering voice from Tensen: Van Wijngaarden wins €183,000.

Joost Van Wijngaarden, then a student of communication sciences and chairman of the Nijmegen Student Sports Council, ‘always loved pub quizzes’ at many Nijmegen café or association activities. He made his television debut in 2018. Bee One against 100, a candidate tries to outsmart a hundred opponents in various trivia rounds and thus win a sum of money. In the selection, in which he answered a hundred other quiz questions, he managed to qualify for a broadcast in the stands, the start of his great TV adventure.

Tension to cut

During the first day of recording, on the edge of his bleacher seat, Van Wijngaarden managed to go far in many quiz rounds. That gives a great opportunity to come forward, he explains: ‘Every time a candidate drops out, they select one of the remaining ones from the stands to come forward.’ During the last change of candidates of the first day of recording, he fell flat and emerged from the stands as a candidate.

However, there was no time to finish his entire game that recording day. ‘I only played five questions in January,’ Van Wijngaarden explains, ‘the rest would be moved to the next recording day.’ However, in his case, this only took place in May, as it was broadcast in the last episode of the season. ‘For four months I knew that I was at the front and had nineteen opponents. Back then I only watched TV game shows, took part in pub quizzes and played Wikipedia games. Everything to slightly increase the chance of winning.’

And that win came. If you have a question about a dating app HappnVan Wijngaarden knew that he might have a chance of outsmarting the last one in the stands. ‘My opponent was Hans from Groningen, a man of fifty who was mainly involved in sports, you immediately get a cliché image,’ he smiles, ‘I never believed that he would be involved in dating apps.’ He made his decision to use the doubler ‘in a split second’, and it turned out to be the right one. With a large bonus achieved at the last minute, Van Wijngaarden’s winning amount stood at €183,000, leaving him with a net profit of approximately €130,000.

‘You just hope that your life continues normally’

On the day of the broadcast, Van Wijngaarden rented theater room C on campus for all his family and friends to watch the episode together. These, not entirely unexpectedly, made a huge splash. “I asked them at the end of that day to hopefully treat me the same as they did the week before.” Van Wijngaarden explains that he also had some insecure feelings about winning the prize: ‘I was afraid that everyone would constantly see me as the one with money. In the context of student life, others may only have a hundred euros to spend a week, and you have a hundred and a half euros in your account. I was hoping not to be told, “Well, you can have a treat.”

Fortunately, Van Wijngaarden did not experience many subliminal comments, apart from his cycling teammates who made an awkward joke here and there, after which he left. On the other hand, he received most requests for money online: ‘I received all kinds of investment advice, start-up investments and crowdfunding campaigns on LinkedIn. In addition, many messages came in on Facebook. Some from vague, old connections but also from people I had never met and who had gotten my details online. So I got all kinds of girls messaging me asking to meet up sometime. I could tell from the time that they didn’t send this until after I won my prize. Of course I didn’t respond to that, I had a girlfriend.’

Fortunately, all the fuss quickly subsided for Van Wijngaarden. He shrugs: ‘You are the center of attention for a week, but then your entire environment, including online, goes back to normal.’ Yet his TV debut followed him for a while: ‘Everyone you see again after a long time keeps asking about it, so I had to tell the same story continuously for six months, but actually I only enjoyed it. It was a life-changing event, like the birth of a child or a wedding, and I can also be proud of it.’

Nice reserve

Now, eight years later, the amount he won has mainly been a great support. He used the prize money to pay off his student debt, buy new shoes – at the insistence of his then girlfriend – and a new racing bike, but otherwise put it aside, which he later used to partly pay off his house. Van Wijngaarden graduated in the summer after his success. ‘You can’t always live on that amount of money,’ he explains, ‘I just had to finish my studies and go to work.’ In the, for some, uncomfortable period between studies and first job, the money turned out to be a nice reserve: ‘I could relax and look for what I liked. I was able to move from a number of voluntary coordination positions to a permanent job through self-employed jobs, which was a luxury I would not have had otherwise.’

In retrospect of the past eight years, the bright spot that day in May did not change everything for Van Wijngaarden. The former student takes a last sip of his hot chocolate: ‘I think my life would have been pretty much the same if I hadn’t won this. Nothing changed with friends or family, and the effect slowly seeps away. It turned out to be more of a confirmation, the icing on the cake of an already successful year. A moment that you will take with you for the rest of your life.’