The day – The “Jeopardy! Connecticut champ Matt Amodio is ninth highest-earning player in show history – so far

On Thursday night, here’s what we know about 30-year-old Yale PhD student Matt Amodio. student who lasted an entire week on “Jeopardy!”, winning seven games.

“I signed a confidentiality agreement,” Amodio says, “and I’m keeping it.”

The Courant caught up with the brilliant fact-laden Amodio over the phone on Friday afternoon. As it was last week on his first episode of “Jeopardy!” broadcast, he was with his parents in Cleveland. The family watched “Jeopardy!” carefully, but this is nothing new. Amodio has never known a time when he didn’t watch the famous quiz every night.

Here is a glimpse into the mind of someone who plays “Jeopardy! “For real on TV:” In yesterday’s game, they mentioned a mountain. They gave the name of the mountain in Italian. Now I know a bit of Latin, which can be close to Italian, so I knew that meant Mount Deer. But there is no Mount Deer, so my mind kept telling me “Don’t say Mount Deer”. Don’t say Mont Deer. While I was trying to resist it, I missed other clues that clearly showed it was the Matterhorn. “

“That’s why I tried to avoid reading comments about myself online,” says Amodio. “They say, ‘How didn’t you know that? I knew it!’ But you try to do it on this stage with the buzzer in your hand.

Entire articles on the Internet have been written about Amodio’s penchant for framing questions with the word “what” when “who” might be more appropriate – for example, “What is Updike?” He respectfully says “no comment” on this issue, as he doesn’t want to inadvertently offend anyone or have their feelings misinterpreted. He takes issue with those who have suggested his verbal tics mean he doesn’t take gambling seriously.

“I’m a huge ‘Jeopardy’ fan,” Amodio says. “I watched it almost every day for all the decades that I have lived. I was looking at it before I knew what it was. If you rank “Jeopardy! Fans, I would like to think I would have a strong case for being No. 1.

His “Period! The earnings have already changed his life. “As a doctoral student. student, I spent money, I didn’t earn any, and my career decisions must also have been based on money. Now I have the luxury of making these decisions based on what I want to do. Post-doctoral positions tend to be underpaid, but salary doesn’t matter as much now. I can stay in academia.

Amodio explains that he mainly studies “neural networks”, an element of artificial intelligence, admitting that “my interest is not necessarily in practical applications. I like to learn math and statistics. Now I can be the weird mathematician in a tweed suit.

The “Jeopard! The experience only took Amodio away from his studies at Yale a few days earlier this year, he says, as the show records multiple episodes at a time. In fact, he sees appearing in the series as a validation of the immense amount of time he regularly spends learning random facts. “I usually waste whole nights reading Wikipedia pages. What changed was that I started to think “I have to remember this”. You can ask me questions about it. The big problem was keeping my mind calm.

Amodio told The Courant last week that he’s generally averse to risk as a person, but plays “Jeopardy!” requires you to bet large sums of money on the outcome of questions (answers, technically) that have not yet been asked. In its first week of broadcasting, Amodio was praised by some viewers for its firm and decisive bets. “He’s the statistician in me,” he says. “If I thought about the consequences, it might end differently. This is the best way to strategize for my gain. But I hate it. I feel like I’m Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, boldly walking up the cliff, through the air.

The two guest hosts he appeared with were “awesome,” Amodio says. “You don’t have the opportunity to socialize much with the hosts. But they were very nice, interested in the candidates. I love Robin Roberts and I love LeVar Burton, who is an icon in my mind. When asked if he knew Burton better in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Reading Rainbow” or “Roots”, he replied, “‘Reading Rainbow’, but that’s what I mean . He’s an icon in a number of different ways. He’s great. My brother wanted me to give him all these “Next Generation” quotes.

Amodio has not been in New Haven for a while due to the pandemic. He hopes to return in the fall. When asked about a few of his favorite haunts or people in town, he’s afraid to list them out for fear of ‘leaving someone out’, but wants to pay homage to quiz nights at the Playwright Pub on Whitney Avenue in Hamden. “If I’m a trivia legend now, this is where it happened.”

Does he plan to travel with his earnings?

“No, I am a homebody,” he said. “It would actually help me on ‘Jeopardy!’ if I was traveling more. ”I was missing a question about a place and I would ask another candidate“ How do you know? ”and they would say“ I was there last year. ”

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of being a “Jeopardy!” champion is that it gives a good appearance to the academic field chosen by Amodio.

“I hope people don’t learn the lesson that these are unnecessary facts. It’s about the power to learn and the mindset it gives you.

“Danger!” broadcast locally on WTNH.