Amy Schneider breaks second-place “Jeopardy!” record for consecutive wins
Amy Schneider broke yet another “Jeopardy!” record on Monday, knocking fellow star Matt Amodio out of the second-place spot for consecutive wins on the quiz show. Schneider, the first woman to earn $1 million in winnings on the show, has now won 39 games and $1,319,800.
Like many of her games, Schneider dominated throughout Monday’s show, finding and correctly answering two Daily Doubles and ending the first two rounds $33,000 ahead of the competitor in second place. A wrong answer in the category of “U.S. Museums” in Final Jeopardy cost her $25,000, but she still left the episode with an additional $12,600.
The win comes weeks after she broke James Holzhauer’s third-place record of 32 games. When asked by current host Ken Jennings how it felt to beat Holzhauer, Schneider said beating him had become “a target of mine” after she began to do well on the show.
Amy Schneider is shown on the set of
Jennings is now the only person standing between Schneider and the top spot. But Jennings, who went on a historic winning streak in 2004, is still far ahead with 74 consecutive wins. Schneider is in fourth place — behind Jennings, Holzhauer and Amodio — for the total amount of money won in regular-season play.
Schneider is also the first transgender “Jeopardy!” contestant to qualify for the Tournament of Champions, and is the highest-earning female contestant in the show’s history.
In an interview with “Good Morning America” on Monday, Schneider said her favorite thing about her “Jeopardy!” experience has been “being on TV as my true self, expressing myself, and representing the entire community of trans people, and just kind of showing a different thing than maybe some people have seen, of just being a smart, confident woman and, you know, just doing something super normal like being on ‘Jeopardy!’”
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The highest-earning Jeopardy! winners of all time
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CULVER CITY, CA - JULY 14: Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, (L) poses contestant Ken Jennings after his earnings from his record breaking streak on the gameshow surpassed 1 million dollars July 14, 2004 in Culver City, California. (Photo by Jeopardy Productions via Getty Images)
On January 7, 2022, Jeopardy! contestant Amy Schneider became the fourth person in the game show’s history to surpass $1 million in regular season winnings—and the first woman to do so.
It’s hard enough to make it onto Jeopardy!, let alone win a game. But a small group of contestants has exceeded that goal many times over by taking home record-breaking prizes. Below, you can see which players made Jeopardy! history both in single episodes and their entire run.
Fans of the game show should recognize some names in the Jeopardy! Hall of Fame. Ken Jennings is at the top with the greatest cumulative winnings, excluding tournaments. He racked up $2,520,700 during his historic 74-game run in 2004.
Despite claiming numerous Jeopardy! superlatives, Jennings (who writes Mental Floss’ weekly Kennections quizzes) doesn’t appear on the list of highest single-game winnings. All 10 spots on the ranking are held by James Holzhauer, who smashed the program’s records with his bold betting strategy. In the episode that aired on April 17, 2019, he earned $131,127 in one game.
Unlike other game shows, it takes more than luck to become a Jeopardy! all-star. After reading the lists of the highest overall winnings and highest single-game winnings below, check out these secrets of past Jeopardy! contestants.
What is the most amount of money won on Jeopardy?
HIGHEST REGULAR-SEASON PLAY WINNINGS
Ken Jennings // $2,520,700
James Holzhauer // $2,462,216
Matt Amodio // $1,518,601
Amy Schneider // $1,019,600
Jason Zuffranieri // $532,496
David Madden // $430,400
Julia Collins // $428,100
Matt Jackson // $411,612
Austin Rogers // $411,000
Arthur Chu // $297,200
HIGHEST SINGLE GAME WINNINGS
James Holzhauer // $131,127
James Holzhauer // $130,022
James Holzhauer // $118,816
James Holzhauer // $110,914
James Holzhauer // $106,181
James Holzhauer // $101,682
James Holzhauer // $96,726
James Holzhauer // $90,812
James Holzhauer // $90,812
James Holzhauer // $89,229
A version of this story ran in 2021; it has been updated for 2022.
This article originally appeared on Mental Floss and is written by Michele Debczak.
Amy Schneider moves into 2nd place on all-time ‘Jeopardy!’ wins list, surpassing Matt Amodio
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Jeopardy! contestant Amy Schneider is breaking records.
Schneider surpassed Matt Amodio’s 38-game winning streak on Monday’s show, putting her in the No. 2 spot on the game show’s all-time consecutive wins list. Her winnings now total $1,319,800.
Making it extra exciting, the engineering manager from Oakland, Calif., is now only behind megachamp Ken Jennings on the winners list — and he was hosting the show for her big win. (Jennings has been splitting hosting duties with Mayim Bialik.)
“It still feels unreal,” Schneider said in a show press release. “Knowing that I had this chance, I was definitely thinking about it. Then Ken,” who set the record for 74 consecutive wins in 2004, “said it, and I thought, ‘Alright, I just accomplished this huge thing’ and it was pretty great.”
Jeopardy! contestant Amy Schneider won her 39th consecutive game on Monday, bumping Matt Amodio from the No. 2 spot on the show’s all-time consecutive wins list. Ken Jennings remains No. 1 with 74 straight wins. (Screenshot: Jeopardy via Instagram)
Amodio, who is now bumped to spot 3 on the list, just set his record for 38 consecutive wins in October. Schneider and Amodio will face off in the next edition of the Tournament of Champions, a yearly two-week Jeopardy! tournament featuring 15 players who’ve won the most games, later this year.
“It’s going to be an honor playing against you, and it’s going to be a tight competition,” Amodio said in a message to Schneider.
Schneider previously set a record for being the first woman to surpass $1 million in winnings on the show.
Schneider talked about her big run in her first live interview with Good Morning America on Monday. While she discussed her buzzer technique and what Jeopardy! fame has been like, the game show star, who is transgender, said the greatest part of this experience has been representing the trans community on TV.
“The best part for me has been being on TV as my true self, expressing myself and representing the entire community of trans people,” she said. “And just kind of showing a different thing than maybe some people have seen, of just being a smart, confident woman and just doing something super normal like being on Jeopardy!.”
Amy Schneider ties Matt Amodio’s second-place “Jeopardy!” record for consecutive games won
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Amy Schneider continued her climb up the “Jeopardy!” leaderboard on Friday, tying Matt Amodio’s second-place record for consecutive wins. Schneider, the first woman to break $1 million in winnings on the quiz show, has now won 38 games and $1,307,200.
To win her 38th game, she beat out an office manager from Georgia and a PhD student from Wisconsin. She found and correctly answered two Daily Doubles, and cruised into “Final Jeopardy” nearly $29,000 ahead of her second-place competitor. A correct answer about “Mountains” gave her another $20,000, bringing her winnings for the day to $54,000.
The win comes just a week after she broke the third-place record held by fellow “Jeopardy!” great James Holzhauer. When asked how it felt to have caught up to Holzhauer, Schneider said beating him had become “a target of mine” after she began to do well on the show.
She also spoke about beating Holzhauer on Twitter, writing that “One thing that may or may not be coming across is just how much fun I was having during all this! The winning is nice, sure, but it was also just a rewarding experience to be so focused on one particular thing.”
By the end of today’s @Jeopardy, I will have interviewed Amy 38 times. You can learn a lot about someone in almost 40 mini-conversations! pic.twitter.com/wxw7sDBzbs — Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) January 21, 2022
Now, only one “Jeopardy!” great — current host Ken Jennings — stands between her and the longest consecutive win streak. But Jennings is still far ahead, having won 74 games during a historic run in 2004. Schneider is in fourth place for the total amount of money won in regular season play, behind Jennings, Holzhauer, and Amodio.
Schneider is also the first transgender “Jeopardy!” contestant to qualify for the Tournament of Champions, and is the highest-earning female contestant in the show’s history.
New Orleans teacher goes on ‘Jeopardy!’, gets crushed by champion, loves it anyway
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For Dimitri Apessos, a WWOZ disc jockey and eighth grade mathematics teacher in New Orleans, appearing on the “Jeopardy!” game show on Wednesday was a dream come true. Even if his wardrobe choices had been called into question. Even if it seemed to be all over in the blink of an eye. And even if he came in third among three contestants, and won the absolute minimum amount of money possible, a $1,000 consolation prize.
It was still the thrill of a lifetime. After all, Apessos had watched the television show “religiously” since he was a kid, and had regularly applied to be a contestant for, like, 12 years, filling out the 50-question form time and time again with no success.
Finally, last year, out of the blue, he got the “golden email” apprising him that he’d made the first cut. Then, he passed the second and third rounds, too. It was like something out of “Slumdog Millionaire,” he said: The answers popped into his mind like magic.
The next thing he knew, he was jetting to Los Angeles to record an episode, maybe two - however many he would manage to win.
For those readers who, like most of Apessos’ 13-year-old students, have never heard of “Jeopardy!”, it’s a nightly televised trivia contest that comes on in New Orleans at about dinnertime. Most viewers can’t keep pace with the brainiac contestants, who somehow know what lies west of Uzbekistan, and if an echidna lays eggs or delivers live offspring and who is referred to as the Goddess of Pop. Stuff like that, only sometimes harder.
One of the charming challenges of the game is that the answers must be stated as questions. Like, the host might say “This U.S. president, popularly known as LBJ, was in the White House in 1964, when Jeopardy! first aired.” And the smarty pants contestant correctly answers, “Who was Lyndon Baines Johnson?”
The winning contestant gets to return the next night, accumulating thousands of dollars of winnings as he or she progresses. Only the top dog gets to take home the winnings, however.
Apessos said the show records several episodes back to back, so contestants are supposed to bring lots of changes of clothes. Apessos, who lives in Faubourg Marigny, took “sweaterish” fall garments that he thought were seasonally fashionable. To his chagrin, the show’s wardrobe dude said his clothing made him look like an “unmade bed.”
Then there was the Vicks VapoRub. Apessos had blown out his voice trying to teach his students the Pythagorean theorem or some such incomprehensible math thing. He had a scratchy throat, so he applied some of the aromatic ointment, which left oil stains on his shirts.
In the end, he only had one TV-suitable outfit, a black shirt and black blazer that made him look sharp but a little dour, like Johnny Cash.
Sadly, it didn’t matter that he only had one outfit, because he wouldn’t need a second.
Apessos is 44 years old. He was born in Greece and made his way to New Orleans 22 years ago, with in-between stops in New York City and elsewhere. In addition to trying to impress tweens at Morris Jeff Community School with the importance of balancing equations, he hosts a Sunday music show on ‘OZ, where he curried familiarity by calling himself Your Cousin Dimitiri. He spins samples of splintery acoustic blues, croaking folk songs, country when it was really country and all sorts of retro Americana. He’s been doing it for more than a decade and has a following.
He’s a smart guy, a lifelong information magnet, charming and quick - a perfect “Jeopardy!” contestant.
Still, he was doomed. As he sat in the makeup chair before his appearance, a crew member announced he would be facing Amy Schneider, who had already won 35 consecutive episodes and banked more than a million bucks.
She was the Red Baron; he was Snoopy. She was Cassius Clay; he was Sonny Liston. She was the iceberg; he was the Titanic. By the time the “Final Jeopardy!” round arrived, the contest wasn’t even close. Apessos had accumulated $6,200, corporate lawyer Ashley Chow had $6,800 … and Schneider had $32,800.
As Apessos watched the episode in solitude Wednesday, his memory of the defeat mellowed. He might have gotten crushed, but he did answer all the questions in one category: “How Are We Even Related.” That’s something.
He fondly recalled that the members of the “Jeopardy!” crew were everything he’d hoped they would be: serious, conscientious and kind. Except maybe the wardrobe dude. Plus, his appearance had been an auspicious occasion: It was the anniversary of legendary “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek’s death, which everyone treated with due solemnity.
And, he thought, if you have to get steamrolled, why not get steamrolled by one of the winningest champions ever, right?
“It was really kind of wonderful,” Apessos said. And after the airing, he said, some of his students expressed admiration. “They said, ‘I saw you on television, I watched you with my grandma.’”