It's been quite a year for Jeopardy!, and another champion has just made history.
Amy Schneider continued her impressive streak on Friday's Jeopardy!, and her winnings now total $1,019,600 after 28 games. This makes her the first woman to ever win more than $1 million on the quiz show.
Schneider has been making history throughout her Jeopardy! run. She previously became the first transgender contestant to qualify for the show's Tournament of Champions, and she holds the records for most money and most consecutive games won by a woman.
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Now, Schneider is just the fifth person to win over $1 million on Jeopardy!, and the fourth to do so during regular-season play. Ken Jennings won $2.5 million during his 74-game winning streak in 2004, while James Holzhauer won $2.4 million in 2019, and Matt Amodio won $1.5 million in 2021. Brad Rutter also won nearly $5 million on the show when tournaments are taken into account.
During one of her Jeopardy! episodes in November, Schneider wore a pin for the transgender flag, and she reflected afterward, "I didn't want to make too much about being trans, at least in the context of the show. I am a trans woman, and I'm proud of that fact, but I'm a lot of other things, too!" By December, she pointed out that "I'd noticed that everyone who had ever won as much money as I did, went on to win at least a million dollars, and I liked the sound of winning a million dollars!"
Schneider's run comes during the same season that Matt Amodio scored the second-longest Jeopardy! winning streak ever, and Jonathan Fisher, who defeated Amodio, won an impressive 11 games. "Season 38 has certainly been the season of the super-champions," Jennings noted. After the show was embroiled in controversy over its selection of a new host, it's finally the kind of drama producers can be happy with.
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