‘Jeopardy!’ champ Amy Schneider becomes 1st woman to surpass $1M mark
Way to go, Amy Schneider!
The "Jeopardy!" contestant continued to make history on Friday's episode when she became the first woman ever and fourth person in the game show’s history to earn more than $1 million in non-tournament play.
Schneider, who is currently on a 28-game winning streak, racked up $42,200 on Friday, bringing her total winnings to $1,019,001.
She joins the show's hall of famers Matt Amodio, who amassed a total of $1,518,601 on "Jeopardy!" over the course of 38 games; James Holzhauer, who earned $2,462,216 on the game show after 32 victories; and Ken Jennings, who is known for his cool 74-game winning streak that made him $2,520,700 richer.
“It feels amazing, it feels strange,” Schneider said of making more than $1 million on the game series. “It’s not a sum of money I ever anticipated would be associated with my name.”
Schneider has gained a lot of attention on "Jeopardy!" for being the first transgender contestant to ever place in the show's Tournament of Champions. She currently holds the record for the most consecutive wins by a woman after she beat the 2014 record that was previously set by Julia Collins.
“Julia Collins won 20 games and so this is my 20th game and so I just wanted to wear a sweater in tribute,” Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, California, said on the show in December. “She was definitely one of my favorite ‘Jeopardy!’ champions.”
Although Schneider is making a lot of leaps and bounds in the LGBTQIA+ community, she said that she doesn't want her fans to only focus on her being a "trans woman."
“The fact is, I don’t actually think about being trans all that often," Schneider tweeted in November, "and so when appearing on national television, I wanted to represent that part of my identity accurately: as important, but also relatively minor."
"But I also didn’t want it to seem as if it was some kind of shameful secret,” she continued. “While it’s gratifying to know that people didn’t necessarily know I was trans until they read about it, I do want people to know that aspect of me. I think being trans is really cool!”