Only the Jeopardy winner receives his winnings to make the show more competitive.  The second place contestant gets $2000 and third place receives $1000. On the Fleming version, contestants would occasionally decide that they only wanted to win a certain amount of money, and stop ringing in when they reached that amount, instead of attempting to become a returning champion. Others would refuse to write down a question for Final Jeopardy! if another contestant had a significant lead.