Jeopardy! has a new millionaire, Amy Schneider
Schneider, currently on a 28-game win streak, is the fourth Jeopardy! champion to break the million dollar mark in non-tournament play
Aux News Amy Schneider
Part of the dream of Jeopardy! is its tantalizing promise of transforming a life’s worth of useless accumulated knowledge into cold, hard cash. Nowhere else in our society can memorization of facts about Ivy League schools or impractically long rivers be instantly translated into thousands of dollars on the go; very few car dealerships accept “I know all the Best Picture Oscar winners since 1956" as the functional equivalent of a down payment on a new Honda.
This weekend, Jeopardy! added a new name to its very small list of the very biggest winners, with contestant Amy Schneider—“An engineering manager from Oakland, California”—becoming only the fourth contestant ever to break the $1 million prize money mark in regular play. (Contestant Brad Rutter, whose original run on the show pre-dated the rule allowing winners to stay on indefinitely, continues to hold the winnings record when the show’s various tournaments are taken into account.)
Schneider is currently on a 28-game streak, having first taken up the far-right champion’s podium late last year. Most of those have been so-called “lock” games, i.e., ones where Schneider so thoroughly beat her opponents before Final Jeopardy that the final question became moot. (That being said, she sailed past the million mark by nailing a tricky Thor Heyerdahl question that both of her opponents on Friday missed.)
Schneider is the second contestant, after Matt Amodio, to make more than $1 million on the show since the death of Alex Trebek in late 2020. It’s not entirely clear why the show’s winnings have escalated so much in recent years, although plenty of contestants seem to be following in the footsteps of James Holzhauer—a professional gambler with a taste for going heavy on the Daily Doubles to stretch his swiftly insurmountable leads over opponents.
Schneider is currently just four games short of cracking Holzhauer’s win record, although she’ll have to hang in there quite a bit longer to catch up with Amodio, who won 38 consecutive games last year. (Ken Jennings, currently hosting the show, still reigns supreme at 74.) In terms of money, she has a long way to go just yet; Amodio ended his run with $1,518,601, while Holzhauer and Jennings both left the show with more than two million dollars apiece.
37 Comments
She’s awesome. I loved watching both her and Matt last year with two *very* different styles/mannerisms and I am very much looking forward to the TOC this year!
Imagine being the 11-win guy who beat Matt and going into TOC as the #3 seed.
What a matchup that’ll be. I don’t know who to root for.
Easy: Amy, who has the courtesy not to refer to a human as a “what”.
what an absurd quibble to have, even moreso to assert it has anything to do with courtesy.
That’s that guy? Fuck him. He sucks
Calm down, you’re gonna pull something.
This is a joke, right?
Yeah, I found that very off-putting about him. I stopped watching during his run because he rubbed me the wrong way.
Did anyone else get the sense that Mayim Blalik genuinely disliked Amodio? She used to repeat the more complete version of his answer after he finished and I always felt like I could detect annoyance in her voice.
Absolutely. Whereas Ken seems super excited about Amy.
This upcoming Tournament of Champions would be INSANE. We already have 4 super champions THIS season (Matt Amodio, Jonathan Frasier, Andrew He, and now Amy Schneider).That would be the most interesting matchups since the Greatest of All Time Tournament between Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings, and James Holzhauer (even though Ken won that quite handedly).
Im so proud of this woman. Style, intelligence, iron skin. I found Matt kinda dull personality wise although I’m happy he made it far as he did. Amy? One of the most enjoyable people to watch since I don’t know, bartender Austin? Hope she breaks all the records, from one lady to another I say fuck yeah!
She has such grace and positivity to her. She comes off as very sweet. Matt, he was a great player, but I feel like he got SO focused on winning the game that he would just turn off his personality. I’m looking forward to seeing them meet in the ToC but I’ll be rooting for Amy.
I couldn’t agree more. She makes it seem effortless and she’s so charming and upbeat despite a lot of things going on in her life. That tournament will be truly something.
Good for her, but I’m hoping next season we get fewer superchamps. I miss watching actual competitive Jeopardy.
Well you can’t really control the quality of contestants. Its purely random like a daily double.
Yep and even Amy had maybe 3 or 4 or 5 games that’s quite competitive toward Final Jeopardy! Sometime they just have to be lucky to get close enough to have chance of winning.Amy utilize her lucks and skills very effectively, that’s what kept her run alive. She’ll lose eventually, though its the matter of when and how.
Jeopardy contestants are like a box of chocolates.
I like a good superchamp, but they’re really something that best comes along every few years. The bing-bang-boom of James, Matt and Amy is a bit much (especially with Jonathan, a superchamp in his own right, between the latter two). My favorite Jeopardy games are the ones where all three contestants are within a few thousand dollars of each other when they’re making their final wagers.
Remember when it was kept to five days…
Men are so awesome they make even better women.
Nice of you to write the headline directly to Amy.
unlike Kotaku.
All AV Club headlines should be written that way.“Enemies become wary allies in Succession, Amy Schneider”
She’s been a delight. Really incredibly competitor. I love watching superchamps; every Jeopardy competitor is fantastic, so seeing someone dominate is even more impressive.
Schneider is currently on a 28-game streak, having first taken up the far-right champion’s podium late last year.
I did a double take because I understood it as Jeopardy recently having a Nazi champion.
I’m just imagining the show slinging them a bunch of passive-aggressive WWII questions:“The clue is ‘This was the dumbest decision in the European Theatre’.”“What was Britain failing to surrender?”“Ooooh, I’m sorry. It was ‘Pissing off the Soviet Union.’ Pissing off the Soviet Union – that’s what we were looking for.”
Also, there are only three contestants. Isn’t the “far-right champion’s podium” the only one on the right? The one next to it is in the center.
“Stage left podium” would’ve been a less crazy way to say it.
Jennings is pretty good in the role. I hadn’t really watched him until this clip. Looks like he’s a good fit anyways. Wonder how far Amy will go with it. By the looks of the other players winnings, she dominates.
“I know all the Best Picture Oscar winners since 1956″Only since ‘56? That ain’t getting you nowhere. Us Oscar nerds can easily name every one since the beginning.
The 1940 Oscars were wild! Gone With The Wind vs. Wizard of Oz vs. Mr Smith Goes to Washington!First awarding of the Special Effects Oscar! First Black actor to win an Oscar!
If it was anyone else would have an article for it? What’s that? No? The only important part is that she’s trans and nothing else? Then tell me why I should care about the meat of the story if you obviously don’t.
What are you complaining about here?
That the only story in here that Gawker cares about is “trans woman exists.” They couldn’t give two shits about Jeopardy or the achievement for that matter given how they wished the show would vanish off the face of the earth last year.
The loss of Trebek was somewhat softened by some incredible runs (with Amy still going strong). Hopefully people who tuned in to see how they would handle Trebek’s passing stuck around to watch some great players.