‘Jeopardy!’: Watch What Happened After Amy Schneider Lost (VIDEO)

Amy Schneider and Rhone Talsma on Jeopardy!
Jeopardy/YouTube

Amy Schneider‘s record-breaking Jeopardy! run finally came to an end on Wednesday night when she was beaten by new contestant Rhone Talsma, and the energy in the studio following the shock defeat was palpable.

“This doesn’t feel real,” said Talsma after the show. The librarian from Chicago managed to end Schneider’s 40-game winning streak with $29,600 compared to her second-place finish of $19,600. However, despite the defeat, Schneider was quick to shower the new Jeopardy! champion with praise.

“I was worried about you all day,” stated the engineering manager from Oakland, California. “I was a little worried about you too,” responded Talsma before explaining what an honor it was to compete against such a “formidable” opponent.

“You made that Daily Double wager,” continued Schneider. “It’s the right thing to do, but I’ve seen several contestants not being able to pull the trigger on that.” In response, Talsma said their strategy was just to “have fun” and “go big,” and it ended up paying off in a huge way.

Current host Ken Jennings revealed that he had a flashback to the day his (still unbeaten) 74 game winning streak ended. “The thing I noticed was that neither of you looked scared, and that’s what I remember when I saw the person who beat me,” he said. “She just walked in the room like, ‘Hey Ken, what’s up?'”

Jennings also took to Twitter after the episode aired to compliment Schneider on her monumental run. “Of all the Jeopardy! greats, I’ve never seen anyone that played the game with the kind of unflappable ease that Amy Schneider always seemed to have,” he wrote. In a follow-up tweet, he added that he was “dazzled by her talent” and “how she was always so authentically and straightforwardly herself.”

Fellow Jeopardy! host Mayim Bialik also shared her praise for the departing champ, tweeting, “Congratulations @Jeopardamy for your historic and absolutely beautiful run on @Jeopardy ! You have inspired so many with your brilliance, your eloquence and your absolute awesomeness.”

Responding to the compliments, Schneider tweeted, “Going into my first taping, one of the things I told myself was “Just be yourself, and then whatever happens as a result, you’ll be ok with it.” I’m so glad that seems to have come across for everyone!”

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