Amy Schneider continues streak as highest-earning and longest-winning woman in "Jeopardy!" history

"Jeopardy!" star Amy Schneider is continuing to break game records. Schneider became the highest ranked female contestant for consecutive games won on Tuesday and has kept on winning — a streak of 23 straight victories through the end of 2021. Last week, she also broke the record for highest female earner of all time. 

Since starting on the game show, Schneider has surpassed Julia Collins for consecutive wins and Larissa Kelly for highest earnings by women. Among all contestants, she now places fourth in both categories. With her win on Friday, she is 9 games away from matching James Holzhauer as the third-ranked contestant ever in consecutive wins, according to the "Jeopardy!" leaderboard.

Schneider, who is transgender, is an engineering manager from Oakland, California. 

She's won a total of $855,600 on the show as of December 31. And she's not stopping there. 

"It happened months ago for me, and I'm still trying to take it in. In my highest of high hopes, I never dreamed of matching Julia's streak," Schneider tweeted after her 20th win. "It's hard to say how I felt: proud, dazed, happy, numb, all those things. But along with all that, I was also ready for lunch!"

To honor Collins' record, Schneider wore a sweater in tribute for her 20th game, calling her time on the show extremely meaningful. 

Schneider is not the first transgender contestant to do well on the game show, but at Thanksgiving she became the first trans "Jeopardy!" contestant to qualify for the Tournament of Champions. 

"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," she tweeted last month, referring to a transgender pride flag pin she wore on the show.  "But I also didn't want it to seem as if it was some kind of shameful secret. While it's gratifying to know that people didn't necessarily know I was trans until they read about it, I do want people to know that aspect of me. I think being trans is really cool!"

"I am a trans woman, and I'm proud of that fact, but I'm a lot of other things, too!" she continued.