Matt Amodio just finished a streak of 38 wins (and last night's loss) on Jeopardy, earning $1,519,601. That's the 2nd-longest Jeopardy! streak, beating James Holzhauer's 32-game winning streak.
He's a 5th-year computer-science PhD candidate at Yale, who works in a computer science lab with neural networks and genetics. His hobby is reading Wikipedia pages, and that's how he gained so much knowledge.
One way he saved mental energy during games was by saying WHAT'S for any question, even when it should be WHO'S or WHEN'S or WHERE'S. He also skipped first names, which avoids careless mistakes. For example, if the answer was "She's the current host of Jeopardy!" he would ask "What's Bialik?" instead of "Who is Mayim Bialik?"
There's a
great interview with him at Yale, from mid-streak.
I’m glad that they show the category titles on the camera - otherwise you would see the huge smile on my face whenever American history comes up - that's my wheelhouse. Then, when I see things like celebrity marriages, I cringe a little bit.