Matt Amodio is our current “Jeopardy!” champion, but he hasn’t exactly been a shining star during every single Final Jeopardy.
Amodio tends to bet pretty low numbers in order to stay safe during that final, high-stakes round. Certainly, amongst some pretty close calls and wrong answers, it’s been a good move for him.
Matt Amodio Monumental Moment
Yesterday, he went into that final round with a total of $31,800, which was a pretty hard number for the other contestants to beat. The question for Final Jeopardy was, “Saying he ignored warnings of enemy vessels, the British Admiralty sought to blame William Turner, this ship’s last captain in 1915.”
Amodio, similar to many other past Final Jeopardy rounds, really thought through his answer. It’s always evident with his writing on his answer card. One answer is clearly written, but there’s also commonly a scratched-out answer nearby.
On Friday, Amodio first wrote Titanic as his answer, which is very much incorrect. Luckily, the correct answer flew to mind during those 30 seconds and he eventually came up with Lusitania.
Even current guest host Mayim Bialik was scared for Matt Amodio and his crossing-off-antics. She said, “Unbelievable. That is monumental. Titanic had us scared for a second there.”
Matt Amodio responded that he was also glad that the correct answer finally came to him. “Glad we have 30 seconds to think it through sometimes.”
While picking the correct answer for Final Jeopardy is always monumental, especially for Amodio, he also set one other massive milestone yesterday. He hit the 28-game mark and has also crossed over the one-million-dollar mark with a grand total of $1,004,001. His win yesterday was $48,800 added to the jackpot, which definitely helped him reach that million dollars.
Plans for that ‘Jeopardy!” Money
He is behind only Ken Jennings ($2,520,700) and James Holzhauer ($2,462,216) in overall earnings.
“This was beyond my wildest dreams going in. I knew it was a possibility, but I thought it was a very remote possibility, and to have it actually happen is unbelievable,” Amodio said in a press conference, according to Cleveland.com.
He said earlier in his outstanding and ongoing “Jeopardy!” run that he had some plans for all the money. He said, “I’m a Ph.D. student (at Yale) and I’m used to spending more money than I make by a fair margin. It’s going to feel nice to have a nest egg or a rainy day fund I wouldn’t have necessarily had otherwise.”
He’s likely earned a lot more spending money than he was expecting to, however. He likely has even more plans for his money now that he has reached the one-million-mark.
Matt Amodio has been captivating audiences with his outstanding knowledge of trivia. His streak has overlapped with two different seasons and a lot of drama for “Jeopardy!” and the network amidst all the Mike Richards controversy. He’s also had six different hosts reading the clues since he started the show, but that has done little to affect his game.
