Emma Boettcher had never even heard of Jeopardy phenomenon James Holzhauer before she beat him on Monday night’s episode of the celebrated US quiz show, defeating him before he could break the $2.52m record for the most money won on the show.

Owing to the taping schedule of the program, none of the episodes of Holzhauer’s near historic and widely followed streak had aired when the University of Chicago librarian faced off against him in March, so his 32-day run and $2.46m in winnings were news to her.

Before the taping, a producer mentioned the details of her formidable opponent’s winnings, she told the Chicago Tribune.

“‘This is James. He’s won 32 games. He’s won, however, many million dollars,’” they told 27-year-old Boettcher. “So that was the first time I had heard of him. Those numbers, I heard them, and I thought, ‘That’s not real, what’s the real number?’ And the real number never came because that was the real number, so I went into denial pretty early on.”

Luckily Boettcher had been preparing for the occasion for much of her life.

A paper she wrote to finish her master’s degree in information science at University of North Carolina was on Jeopardy itself, she told the New York Times. She analyzed thousands of clues from the show over the years to figure out whether or not a computer could use the length or types of words to ascertain the difficulty level. (Yes, as she found).

In the meantime she had also been practicing at home, and meticulously documenting patterns and tendencies she noticed while watching the show.

As Final Jeopardy – the last round – approached, the librarian was ahead of Holzhauer, the professional gambler, by $3,200. Having written an undergraduate thesis on Shakespeare, the final clue was right in her wheelhouse:

“The line ‘a great reckoning in a little room’ in As You Like It is usually taken to refer to this author’s premature death,” host Alex Trebeck said.

Both contestants guessed the answer correctly, Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, but it was Boettcher that gambled big, wagering $20,201 to his $1,399.

“When I got the call to be on the show, I really wanted to hold my own,” she told Vulture. “I wanted to be able to say I got onstage and I was able to put this lifelong love of trivia to good use. It didn’t necessarily mean I would win – there’s skill and luck involved in every game. I wanted to do right by that love of Jeopardy!”