Yahoo Finance Jeopardy! Champion Matt Amodio Earns Top 10 Spot Among Highest-Winning Contestants Ever
Jeopardy!
Matt Amodio has joined the coveted list of Jeopardy! champions.
The 30-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut is ranked among the greats of the show after winning his seventh consecutive game on Thursday. The Yale Computer Science Ph.D. student beat out fellow contestants Dana Rosner and Bryan Cracchiolo, bringing his total winnings to $268,800.
The win gives Amodio a top 10 spot on Jeopardy!'s highest winnings list in the show's Hall of Fame, sitting in ninth place below Arthur Chu's $297,200.
"The nature of being a Ph.D. student is spending money, not making money. So it's the most I've made in a while," Amodio told Hartford Courant of his earnings.
The highest-winning Jeopardy contestant of all time is Ken Jennings, who won $2.5 million during his legendary 74-game run in 2004. Next up is James Holzhauer, who won $2.4 million during his 32-game streak in 2019.
Jeopardy!
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Following his fifth win — which brought his earnings to $147,800 — Amodio discussed his streak during a post-game interview with Sarah Whitcomb Foss, who asked him to choose his favorite moment on the show.
"I knew that once you do it once, that's just such a great accomplishment. Nobody can ever take that away from you," he said of his very first episode, adding that having a Jeopardy! title is "music to my ears."
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With two weeks remaining of the current season, Amodio looks to continue his streak on the show, currently hosted by LeVar Burton.
Following the death of beloved host Alex Trebeck — who died in November 2020 after a battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer — numerous stars, including Aaron Rodgers, Today's Savannah Guthrie, Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper, have stepped in to guest-host Jeopardy!. Following Burton, CNBC's David Faber and Fox sportscaster Joe Buck are set to close out the season.
