Image Source: Them

If you have been watching Jeopardy for a long time, it is almost obvious that you must have thought, "Well, I could win this." But actually, there is a lot of hard work that goes into entering into a show like Jeopardy, maintaining your winning streak, and then taking a significant win back home. 

Just recently, Amy Schneider won $1.3 million through her 40-game winning streak as she created history on the show. Her big win managed to break many records, create new ones, and help her nab a spot in the top 5 Jeopardy winners of all time. Apart from her very marvelous winning spree, Amy Schneider also became the first transgender person to have qualified for the show's Tournament of Champions and is the winningest woman in the history of Jeopardy. She is also the fourth person to have made over a million on the show.  

"We'll be forever proud of it," said Schneider of her performance and win on the show. "It was much more than I anticipated going into it. I told everyone I knew that I thought I could do okay, and if things went well, win three or four games. That was my expectation, so to have done so well, and to be forever part of Jeopardy history, is just really special. Jeopardy has been an important part of my life for my whole life; I think it's a great show, and sort of good for America, almost. So I'm glad that I've been helping the show out as well."

In her interview with Entertainment Weekly, Amy said that she felt relieved to finally be able to talk about her big win with people as keeping all of it a secret was very difficult. "It's definitely a relief," she said about being able to talk about Jeopardy. "The last three months or so of keeping the secret has been a bit of a struggle. That's definitely a good thing about this finally ending."

Sharing her final moments on the show, and how her incredible journey on Jeopardy came to an end, she revealed, "I had a feeling that day that it might be my last day there. That may seem odd if you look at the scores from the last few games; it seemed like I was playing as well as ever." "But I could just feel that I was losing a certain edge — what Warriors coach Steve Kerr calls "a healthy fear." I could kind of feel that slipping away," she added.

The well-prepared contestant had firmly gouged out her rivals and whom she had to be careful of, and Rhone, the contestant she lost to was on the list. Sharing why she singled him out, Schneider shared, "It was a story that Ken Jennings had been telling before the games as he talked to the contestants, which was, by late in his run, the other contestants would seem to be intimidated by him, but the person who wound up beating him was the one who was just friendly and relaxed and having fun." 

She revealed, "And Rhone was exactly that way. Right before the game, we'd had lunch, and I remember having a really nice conversation with him over lunch."

Then Amy Schneider explained her final game in the show and how all of it tallied down to her losing it finally. "It felt like it was going a lot like many of my other games had gone," she shared. "But full credit to Rhone, he got his opportunity finding that last Daily Double, and went for it, and bet it all to try and win the game. I knew at that point that there was no way I could keep it from going to Final Jeopardy. And I'd been struggling a bit in Final Jeopardy, and kind of getting in my head about it. So that's when I started to really be aware of the possibility."

The contestant then relayed that she did experience "a lot of different feelings." "The primary one was sadness. Being on Jeopardy is the most fun thing I've ever done, and I was so sorry to see it go," she said. "But it was definitely mixed with some feeling of relief. I know that one of the first thoughts I had was, "Well, I don't have to come up with any more anecdotes!" 

She also added that she had started to miss her girlfriend and her home. "But just as much, I don't have to come back down to L.A. and leave Genevieve, my girlfriend, at home anymore. Because that was really hard. We hadn't really been separated for that period of time before I went on Jeopardy, and I didn't enjoy that part of it," she said. 

The most fetching part of Amy's Jeopardy win was how early she started preparing for the show. "The version with Alex Trebek launched when I was 5 or 6, and my parents always watched it growing up, so it was sort of always there," she revealed. "They were both intellectual people, both worked at universities, so it wasn't just an entertainment thing for them. With us watching along, they always wanted to teach us as we were watching. Things would come up and remind them of other topics, or they would explain questions to us that we didn't understand."

And as she continuously grew in such an informed circle, it was inevitable that she, too, tried her hands at the game. RElaying how she thought of entering the game, she told EW, "It was something like maybe 14 or 15 years ago. I came close a couple of times; after they do the last round of interviews, they basically just tell you, "You're in the active pool now, and at some point in the next 18 months, either you'll get the call to be on or start the process again." 

"It was frustrating having to do it so much, but I felt like it was just a matter of time before I would get on there," she said. "And I also was sort of like, "Well, the longer it takes, the more I'll know by the time that happens."

Amy Schneider became the fourth person to win over a million dollars in Jeopardy; Credits: TNYT

Her massive winnings stand a testament to the fact that she did know more by the time she finally entered the show.