How 'Jeopardy!' legends Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach prepared for tournament

It’s the “Jeopardy!” matchup we’ve been waiting for: Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach throw down in a no-stakes exhibition game Tuesday, making their Tournament of Champions debut.

Participants include winners of at least four games since 2020's Tournament of Champions, as well winners of college, professors and second-chance tournaments. Schneider, Amodio and Roach received byes in the bracket and will each battle a pair of quarterfinals winners for the semifinals, beginning Wednesday with Schneider. Amodio plays Thursday, and Roach Friday.

Finals begin Nov. 14, and the first contestant to win three games will be awarded the $250,000 grand prize.

Schneider, who trails only tournament host Ken Jennings in consecutive games won (40 compared with Jennings'  74),says she was excited to return, but also intimidated. She was accustomed to competing against contestants who "had never played before," but now, "everyone I was going up against didn't just have experience, they'd won a bunch."

Amodio and Roach won an impressive 38 and 23 games, respectively.

Roach predicts exhibition game viewers will "be just eating it up. We all had a lot of fun. We all had moments where we really shone in the game."

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Tuesday's game coincides with the second anniversary of Alex Trebek's death from pancreatic cancer. The show dedicated a category to the longtime host, whom Amodio equates to "the Santa Claus of my childhood, the Easter Bunny."

Ahead of their friendly faceoff, USA TODAY chatted with the "Jeopardy!" legends about their tournament strategy, returning to the stage and how the quiz show has changed their lives. (Edited for length and clarity.)

Question: How did you prepare for the Tournament of Champions?

Matt Amodio: I think of preparing for "Jeopardy!" as something I do just by nature of my curious self. I hear about something I don't know in the world and want to go learn more. So I didn't focus on preparation so much as just imagining what kind of thing am I running into that they might ask about?

Mattea Roach: I started taking it a bit more seriously six weeks in advance, which was twice as long (as my first "Jeopardy!" run). I mostly did a lot of the same things in terms of just reviewing old games on the J! Archive. People have set up really ingenious ways of doing online practice games, and so I figured I might as well do some of those.

Amy Schneider: Mostly, it was the same stuff that I've been doing prior to my first run, just going through old games and looking for things I didn't know. I did practice writing down Final Jeopardy! answers, because the act of writing it down had thrown me off. I was just visualizing all of the scenarios that might happen.

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Did you alter your playing strategy?

Amodio: I don't think there's anything I could do to change it that would make it better. So I stuck with the same strategy.

Roach: I knew I wanted to wager bigger on Daily Doubles, because there were going to be some really big wagerers in this tournament. The other thing, too, is changing a bit the way I attack the board. I did want to try picking from higher values first.

Schneider: Not a lot. I did (decide) to be more conscious of looking for Daily Doubles and keeping that more at the top of my mind. But for the most part, it all seemed to work fine the first time, so I didn't want to mess with it too much.

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Did you feel rusty at all?

Amodio: I did feel rusty. Practicing at home just can never replicate the stress of being on the stage with the lights and everybody staring at you.

Roach: It is a little bit like riding a bike. But it takes a little while to get comfortable up there again. It was also nice that Matt, Amy and I had the exhibition match, which was a noncompetitive game. I was really worried about blowing the exhibition match and then having that affect my game playing the next day.

Schneider: Actually, a little bit. It took me longer than I expected to get back into the really, really focused state.

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What did you think your chances of winning it all were going into the tournament?

Amodio: I went in saying, don't judge your success on winning it all or not. Just try to acquit yourself well, play well and you can be happy with the outcome no matter what.

Roach: Very slim. I believe that there are players in this tournament who are better at "Jeopardy!" than me, and doing the finals over a best-of-seven series minimizes the influence of luck.

Schneider: Not as good as everybody kept telling me. I have people all the time being like, “Oh, you're going to crush it.” And I'm like, “That's really not helping me out, actually.” I went there (trying) to win. I definitely thought that I was capable of it, but I really just I didn't know.

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How has your "Jeopardy!" winning streak changed your life?

Amodio: I am continuing on my path to become a professor, and I got my Ph.D. So some parts of my life I'm trying to keep focus on, but it's become harder because there's this huge “Jeopardy!” component. I get stopped in the streets, which is surreal because I'm a shy, nerdy guy, so I'm not used to having strangers come up and say, “Can I take a picture with you?”

Roach: I'm not living high on the hog. I live in my same apartment. I did take a little vacation for the first time in a couple years. You never want to be the person who wins the lottery and then five years later is deeper in debt than they were before. My life has changed in ways that are going to continue making themselves known to me over the next couple of years, like the decision to not go to (law) school right away and to pursue other opportunities. I'm hosting a podcast now (The Backbench), which I would never have had the platform (to do).

Schneider: The biggest thing about it is hearing from other trans people about what it's meant to them. It's something where I always felt like living in the Bay Area, things were kind of easy for me, and I felt like I should be giving back to my community more. "Jeopardy!" has given me the chance to really do that, and it means a lot to me.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions: Why Amy Schneider felt intimidated