‘Danger!’ Tournament of Champions crowns a new winner: “I feel great”

WARNING: This story contains spoilers from Monday 21st November episode of “Jeopardy!”

Time to break out the champagne and confetti because Jeopardy! has a new champion.

The long-running game show honored Amy Schneider as the winner of the Tournament of Champions on Monday, November 21.

Andrew He followed in second place, while contestant Sam Buttrey landed in third place.

Schneider – who is the first openly transgender contestant to compete in the Tournament of Champions – snagged the winner’s seat after six matches and won the $250,000 grand prize.

“I feel great,” Schneider gushed in a statement. “At the beginning of the final I had this sudden moment where I saw myself and I was like, ‘I’m on stage in the final of the Tournament of Champions’ and it was crazy. And I won! It is a good feeling.”

She also became the first to win three games against He and Buttrey.

Buttrey cashed $50,000 at the end of the game while walking away with $100,000.

Schneider, from Oakland, California, won the last game despite not winning any daily doubles. While Buttrey had three DDs, he was still behind He and Schneider.

On the way to the last danger! Round one, Buttrey, an associate professor, had raised $8,000, while He, a software developer, had $14,200 and Schneider topped the list with $15,600.

The winning announcement fell in the “Plays” category with the following sentence: “The Washington Evening Star of January 12, 1864 reported a performance of this ‘dashing comedy’ to ‘a full and delighted house.'”

The correct answer was, “What is ‘our American cousin’?”

Buttrey wagered all his money but gave the wrong answer; however, both Schneider and He responded correctly.

His bet was $2,801 and ended up being $17,001 while Schneider played $13,000 for a maximum score of $28,600 to win both the game and the tournament.

Schneider and He first crossed paths in Season 38 when she ended He’s five-game streak and started her historic 40-game run on the show.

Her well-known winning streak and skill earned her second place behind now – “Jeopardy!”. Host and former player Ken Jennings.

“I wanted both [compete against him] and was afraid to face him again,” explained Schneider. “I knew he was one of the best competitors in this field. He was definitely someone I knew could hit me because he’d almost done it before and he did it a few times here too.

“All three of us could have really won if a few things had gone differently. I’m glad we got a really fair chance to test our skills against each other and I’d love to play him again one day, kinda,” she continued.

“I’m going to keep going out there and being myself,” she added. “Being in places that people like me have never been is a very powerful thing.”

Other contestants with big win streaks that appeared in season 38 were Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach.

Schneider first made history with her win in January, when she won her 39th game and became #2 on the trivia show’s all-time uninterrupted wins list. She took home nearly $1.4 million at the time.

The former software engineer became the highest-grossing woman in the show’s history.