Amy Schneider Makes Jeopardy! History Again By Becoming Its Highest-Earning Woman Of All Time
December 28, 2021Trans Jeopardy! champ Amy Schneider – an engineering manager living in Oakland, California – has become the show’s highest-earning female contestant of all time.
As of last Friday, she has won 18 consecutive victories, bringing her total winnings to $706,800. In doing so, she beat the women's record set by Larissa Kelly, who won $655,930 in regular-season play and Jeopardy! tournament appearances, Newsweek reported.
Kelly congratulated Schneider in a December 24 tweet which read, “Well, it was fun to hold a Jeopardy record for a few years…but it’s been even more fun to watch @Jeopardamy set new standards for excellence, on the show and off. Congratulations to Amy on becoming the woman with the highest overall earnings in the show’s history!”
In response to Kelly’s tweet, Schneider replied, “Thanks so much, I’m honored to be in your company, and I look forward to some day watching the woman who beats us both!”
Kelly then responded, “I hope there will be a long line of such women, but you are certainly setting the bar extremely high for them! (And holy hell, that’s *before* any tournaments…can’t wait to see the fireworks to come!)”
According to LGBTQ Nation, Schneider first gained fame amongst LGBTQ+ Jeopardy! fans by becoming the show’s new champion during Trans Awareness Week. Her win defeated five-time champion Andrew He.
“I genuinely couldn’t believe it,” Schneider wrote on Twitter after her first win. “After 30+ years of watching, and 10+ years of trying to get on, I’d actually won Jeopardy!”
After winning five episodes in a row, she qualified to compete in the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, a yearly tournament between the show’s 15 contestants that won in the most episodes. She was the first out trans contestant ever to do so.
However, she’s still many victories away from breaking the second-place record for most consecutive wins: 38, set by Matt Amodio in 2021. The first-place record was set by Ken Jennings’ 74-win streak in 2004.
In a November editorial for Newsweek, Schneider wrote, “It’s a strange thing to think that I have made history as the first trans person to qualify for the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. It was inspirational for me to see transgender contestants on the show before I became a contestant and I hope that I am now doing that same thing for all the other trans Jeopardy! fans out there…I hope I have given them the opportunity to see a trans person succeed.”
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