Amy Schneider, a man presenting himself as a woman, has won the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions less than a year after his impressive 40-game winning streak.
Schneider, a former software engineer, won the whole tournament on Monday after winning three games and wagering $13,000 on the “Final Jeopardy” challenge for a winning score of $28,600 in the last game, according to People.
“I feel amazing,” the 42-year-old Schneider said following the victory. “Earlier in the finals, I had this sudden moment of seeing myself and being like, ‘I’m on stage in the Tournament of Champions finals,’ and that was crazy. And I won! It’s a great feeling.”
Schneider faced off against software developer Andrew He and associate professor of operations research Sam Buttrey in the Tournament of Champions. Schneider had previously faced He in season 38 of Jeopardy! when he ended his five-game winning streak.
“I both wanted to [compete against He] and was afraid of facing him again,” Schneider said in a statement. “I knew he was one of the top competitors in the field. He was definitely someone that I knew could beat me because he very nearly did before, and he did a couple of times here as well.”
“Any of the three of us really could have won if a very small number of things had gone differently,” he continued. “I’m glad we got a really fair chance to test our skills against each other, and I’d love to play him again someday, somehow.”
“Jeopardy!” contestant Amy Schneider poses after winning a hard-fought “Jeopardy!” tournament of champions in an episode that aired Monday, Nov. 21, 2022. (Tyler Golden/Sony Pictures Television/Courtesy of Jeopardy Productions, Inc. via AP)
Even though Schneider is a man, the media hailed him as “the most successful female contestant in Jeopardy! history” with his 40-game winning streak. Ken Jennings still holds the record title for most wins with a whopping total of 74 victories.
Schneider became the first transgender contestant of Jeopardy! to qualify for the show’s “Tournament of Champions” in December of last year, winning 10 consecutive games after taking home $380,200. In a previous Twitter thread, Schneider, who wore a transgender flag pin on the show, said he wanted to be known for “other things” and did not want to be known just for being transgender.
“I didn’t want to make too much about being trans, at least in the context of the show,” wrote Schneider. “I am a trans woman, and I’m proud of that fact, but I’m a lot of other things, too!”
“The fact is, I don’t actually think about being trans all that often, 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.”