Congrats are in order for Jeopardy! contestant Matt Amodio. He won his 33rd victory on Friday, Oct. 1, surpassing James Holzhauer’s previous record. Amodio is an Ohio native and current Ph.D. student majoring in computer science at Yale. He and Holzhauer were previously tied.
Ahead of his milestone, Amodio competed against two other graduate students: Thomas Dai, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Samantha Wells of Urbana, Illinois. He took on a strong lead with $10,400 by the end of the first round. He continued leading as the game progressed. By Final Jeopardy, he’d earned $35,400, nearly seven times Wells’ earnings.
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Despite the feat, Amodio still has other records to beat. He has to beat Ken Jennings’ 74-game record, which Jennings set in 2004, as USA Today reports.
“Ken’s always been the face of ‘Jeopardy!’ to me, so when I think of ‘Jeopardy!,’ I think of him,” Amodio said in an official statement. “To (be) right behind him is a surreal experience.”
He followed it up with a Tweet, giving Jennings his props writing, “On this day 17 years ago, Ken Jennings began Season 21 as a 38-day champion. He would go on to win another game or 36. We would have to wait until 2020 to see him crowned, but we all knew he was the #Jeopardy GOAT in 2004. Long live the Ken!”
He also gave Holzhauer a shoutout prior to beating his record, writing, “I have the chance to remind everybody how much better than me @James_Holzhauer is in literally every way,” he wrote. “It would be an honor to be unfavorably compared to a person I admire so much!”
As for how Amodio is so great at trivia, he shared his secrets this past August. “On a regular basis, I just fall into a rabbit hole of Wikipedia links, (and) every article opens up 20 more things that I have questions about it,” he said at the time. “This is just how I spend my day, or my nights when I’m done working.”
