Matt Amodio won his second game of the 2025 Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament on Thursday, March 6, meaning he won the entire tournament. He played against Roger Craig and Juveria Zaheer and is now speaking out about his first tournament win.
The champion appeared on the Inside Jeopardy! Podcast the day after his win to talk about his fellow competitors, how he practiced, and what’s next for him. Amodio had finished in third and sixth on Jeopardy! Masters, so winning feels good, he shared.
Podcast host Sarah Whitcomb-Foss asked Amodio how he felt going into the competition going up against 26 other Jeopardy! greats. Out of the contestants, Amodio had only ever played against Amy Schneider and Jonathan Fisher.
“I didn’t feel great about it,” he shared. “There were some people that I’ve been a big fan of and then some I didn’t know but wowed me. Knowing how much talent was in this pool, I did not expect that it would end up like this.”
Cohost Michael Davies asked the champion if there was any difference to his approach in this tournament compared to regular Jeopardy!. Amodio shared that he was mostly doing the same thing, but he knows he’s in “tournament life” forever and has to “raise the obscurity level on the trivia.” He added that he is going to have to brush up on the pop culture questions.
The JIT winner said that with his full-time job as a quantitative researcher, studying for Jeopardy! will have to “take a back burner.” He added, “But it will never be further back from that because it’s just fun. I am obsessed with learning and knowledge, so it’s just a pleasure to have extra reason to do this.”
About his win, Amodio said that he had “some good buzzer mojo” and “the winds of fate” behind him. “I got some key correct things when I needed it,” he said.
However, in game one, the game show contestant admitted that he didn’t feel like it was going “all that well” as it was happening. “With two very talented people next to me, I felt like I was on a knife’s edge,” Amodio said.
At the beginning of the tournament, Amodio shared that he was trying to be the game show’s new villain. Davies asked him if he is going to play into that the next time he competes. Amodio said that he might have to grow a handlebar mustache and “find some train tracks to tape a damsel in distress to.”
To wrap up the conversation, Whitcomb-Foss asked the player what he had learned from his Jeopardy! journey. “I’ve learned to enjoy it, whatever it is. It’s easier to enjoy it when you win, but you never know how it’s going to come out,” he said.
“Don’t take it personally. Sometimes, it just doesn’t go your way. It’s not an indictment of you as a human being. And also, don’t get too big for your britches,” he concluded.
Amodio will compete on Jeopardy! Masters coming up in the next few months.
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