Amy Schneider has won 39 games on ‘Jeopardy!’ — and keeps moving up the leaderboards

Update on Jan. 26: Amy Schneider’s streak came to an end after 40 consecutive wins. Read more about what ended her run here.

Amy Schneider has continued a historic winning streak on “Jeopardy!” and is climbing up the show’s leaderboard among its all-time greats.

Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, California, has won 39 straight games on “Jeopardy!” as of Jan. 24. That streak has moved her past Matt Amodio for the second-most consecutive wins in the show’s history. Up next — Ken Jennings, who won 74 games in a row in 2004.

Her $1,319,800 in winnings rank her fourth in the show’s history of regular season prizes.

“It still feels unreal,” Schneider said. “Knowing that I had this chance, I was definitely thinking about it. Then Ken said it, and I thought, ‘Alright, I just accomplished this huge thing’ and it was pretty great.”

Here’s what to know about Schneider, who fulfilled her “quest for a million” in her 28th show

Her experience on the show

Schneider doesn’t want to just defeat her competition, she wants to build insurmountable leads. Entering the Final Jeopardy! round, she has had double the earnings of the second place contestant in many of her matches.

“It’s relaxing, I guess. You can kind of let the tension go from the time in there,” Schneider said of building her large leads. “I want to keep doing runaways.”

Schneider told SFGate.com her strengths are in geography and history topics, while pop culture is a weaker spot.

You can even catch Schneider recapping each day’s episodes on Twitter. After a Nov. 25 episode, she mentioned “the one thing that sucks” about her winning streak is other contestants having to lose.

And after a recent game — one a little too close for Schneider’s liking — she suggested it may be time to “go back to being boring” with the runaway victories that have become her norm.

But her success on the show is still “surprising” to Schneider, a California resident by way of Ohio.

“You know, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t think I could do good,” Schneider said. “But this has just been so much better than what I thought I would do.”

A transgender icon

By 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 SFGate.com. “What’s great is feeling like I’m now providing that same service for other trans people out there.”

Viewers spotted Schneider wearing a trans flag pin in an episode in November, which she said she did as a “message of support” to the transgender community.

“Hopefully I can send a positive message to the nerdy trans girl who wants to be on the show too,” Schneider told KGO.

Many people have voiced their support for Schneider as she continues to make history on the show as a transgender contestant.

By the numbers

Schneider is averaging $33,841 in her 39 victories, slightly behind Jennings’ average from when he won 74 games in a row in 2004.

During the Dec. 2 episode, she surpassed Julia Collins and David Madden to move into the show’s top five in regular season winnings. The following day, she surpassed Jason Zuffranieri.

As of Jan. 24, only Jennings is ahead of her on the show’s consecutive-games won list.

Consecutive games won:

Ken Jennings in 2004: 74 games

Amy Schneider in 2022: 39 games

Matt Amodio in 2021: 38 games

James Holzhauer in 2019: 32 games

Julia Collins in 2014: 20 games

Highest winnings (regular-season play)

Ken Jennings: $2,520,700

James Holzhauer: $2,462,216

Matt Amodio: $1,518,601

Amy Schneider: $1,319,800

Jason Zuffranieri: $532,496

This story was originally published December 2, 2021 at 12:39 PM with the headline "Amy Schneider has won 39 games on ‘Jeopardy!’ — and keeps moving up the leaderboards."