‘Jeopardy!’ champ Amy Schneider becomes fourth person to break $1 million in winnings

Only three people in “Jeopardy!” history had ever broken $1 million in winnings — until Amy Schneider came along.

Schneider became the fourth person in show history Friday, Jan. 7, to earn more than $1 million in non-tournament play. After her 28th victory, the champ brought her total winnings up to $1,019,000.

“It feels amazing, it feels strange,” Schneider said in a news release. “It’s not a sum of money I ever anticipated would be associated with my name.”

Schneider joins the ranks among Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer and Matt Amodio. Jennings /still/ holds the top consecutive games record, with a 74-game streak, and the record for highest winnings, with more than $2.5 million.

Schneider, however, was outpacing Jennings’ average winnings per game by $3,000, McClatchy News reported.

She is now just under half a million dollars behind Amodio’s third-place record of $1,518,601, which she would surpass if she wins another 14 games and her average winnings hold steady. He similarly broke the $1 million mark on his 28th game during his streak last year.

The engineering manager from California has made history on the game in more ways than one.

After winning her fifth consecutive game, Schneider became the first transgender person to qualify for the show’s annual Tournament of Champions. Last year, Kate Freeman was the first transgender contestant to win a game on the show.

She thanked Freeman and other trans competitors who were “blazing the trail for her.”

“The handful of trans contestants that had been on before, I had seen them, and it was really meaningful at that time to see trans people succeeding at this thing that I really wanted to succeed at,” she told SF Gate. “What’s great is feeling like I’m now providing that same service for other trans people out there.”

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