Jeopardy champion Matt Amodio is one of the top 10 highest-winning contestants ever

Matt Amodio moved into a whole new category of Jeopardy champions after his first seven wins.

The champ racked up $74,000 on the July 29, 2021, episode of the quiz show, bringing his total winnings to $268,800. At the time, that placed Amodio, a Ph.D. student from New Haven, Conn., among the top 10 highest-winning Jeopardy contestants ever (not counting tournaments). As of that episode, he moved up to No. 9, between 12-time winner Seth Wilson's $265,002 total and 11-day champion Arthur Chu's $298,200.

Asked to pick a highlight of his run in a post-game interview with Jeopardy's Sarah Whitcomb Foss, Amodio chose his first victory on the show. "Once you do it once, that's just such a great accomplishment," he said. "Nobody can ever take that away from you."

Amodio displayed a strategy reminiscent of previous Jeopardy high-rollers including Chu and James Holzhauer, which includes picking high-value clues first and betting big on Daily Doubles. It's paid off handsomely, with runaway scores that earned Amodio more than $100,000 in just three games. By the end of his 38-game winning streak, Amodio earned $1,518,601, placing him at No. 3 on the list of highest winnings for regular-season play and No. 4 of the top 10 highest-grossing Jeopardy winners ever.

Of course, as other Jeopardy contestants know, being a successful champion doesn't necessarily make you beloved by the show's fans. Some viewers have called Amodio "the most annoying contestant ever" due to his habit of saying "what's" for every response, rather than "who is" when naming a person. (Per the rules of Jeopardy, responses simply need to be phrased in the form of a question, regardless of the pronoun used.)

The highest-winning Jeopardy contestant of all time is still official GOAT Ken Jennings, who won over $2 million during his legendary 74-game run in 2004. In the no. 2 slot is Holzhauer, who fell just $56,485 short of Jennings' total during his 32-game winning streak in 2019. The two faced off in 2020's Jeopardy: The Greatest of All Time tournament, and feature on ABC's The Chase.

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