Will Amy Schneider Retire From ‘Jeopardy!’ After Shocking JIT Defeat? She Says…
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Jeopardy! fans were shocked to see Amy Schneider eliminated in the quarterfinals of this year’s Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament, but is she ready to hang up the towel after the surprising loss?
The former champion, who famously won 40 consecutive games in 2021 and 2022, tells TV Insider she “certainly” sees herself returning to the show in the future. “It’s sort of a vicious cycle where it’s either like, I win and want to go back and win again, or I don’t and want to go back and do better next time,” she explains. “Perhaps I will retire at some point, but I don’t think that time is yet, as long as they keep calling me back.”
After a big wager and incorrect guess in the final Jeopardy! of the JIT quarterfinals, Schneider lost to Luigi de Guzman and Avi Gupta. She praised Guzman’s performance on X (formerly Twitter) afterward, writing, “Nothing I can do but tip my cap to
@ouij on that one. I mean, come on, he successfully buzzed in on 31/60 clues! Just sheer dominance.”
However, she says being slow on the buzzer wasn’t her only downfall. In fact, Schneider, who released her book Who Is Amy Schneider? earlier this month, is able to pinpoint the reason she may have performed better in 2021 and 2022 (she also won the Tournament of Champions that year) than she has more recently.
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“It’s actually literally just a different environment in the studio than my run,” she explains. “When I was on, it was during Covid and there was quarantine and social distancing, and now it’s back to the way it has been for the majority of the history of the show, where all the contestants are hanging out together in the green room the whole time. I realized this past tournament that it kind of changed my sort of mental preparation. I was used to being in a corner by myself on game days because we all had to be sitting in corners by ourselves. So, figuring out how to sort of change my mental approach in a different physical environment is part of it.”
When she’s not behind the podium herself, Schneider is admittedly keeping up with Jeopardy! “less regularly” than in the past. “[Before I was on,] it was always partly studying to be on the show, and now that I’ve done that, it doesn’t occupy quite the same place in my life that it did,” she shares. “I’ve still got my eye on it all the time. I check in here and there, whether there’s interesting storylines or things going on that I want to watch, or people that I know [playing].”
She says she knows “a couple people” personally who will be on the show soon and “can’t wait” to tune in for those episodes. Plus, she’s still very immersed in the Jeopardy! world, as she adds, “There’s some Jeopardy! group chats that I’m part of and keeping in touch with the people that I met through it.”
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