Dongmin did so terrible. He seemed to crush these types of games in The Genius.

Taeho's plans are coming together

Scheming Sangmin 4D chess

Yeah, Taeho has been great. Him as the leader though might be trouble for him. He was very under the radar otherwise.

Episode 4 and 5 show the problem with the resident exchange. I guess Asol overcame it in Season 1 but it's just a death wish in this show given the format. It should be voluntary only, not having leader for their hands.

the game was pretty poorly designed. the producers must not have realized how valuable the 30 second rest period was. should have allowed both physical teams to adjust during the 30 seconds, but only the loser has to add the piece. that way there is always incentive for mental players to actually play the game.

purposely losing as part of a winning strategy is sign of a bad game.

MJ nooooooooooooooo

This season seems to be overall more entertaining than season 1. I like the tweaks they've made to the format and the games are better. Not surprising since The Genius was the same way and obviously these guys know what they're doing.

Dongmin was running a manipulation play on his team with the whole woe-is-me martyr charade. I couldn't believe that the same people that were rightfully seething the previous night from finding out that Dongmin shadily ganked their prize money (with no proper apology or explanation) were suddenly willing to trust in him and completely prostrate themselves to his every will just because he shared some half-baked weak sauce memorization technique (which BTW didn't even work, as Dongmin seemed to be trying his hardest to tank finals game 1 with MULTIPLE memorization fails, being saved only by Taeho spazzing out even worse on the connect4 board).

I was just thinking to myself, surely this is not the way it really plays out. There must be some editing twist, like Dongmin was actually telling the truth and was really willing to fall on his sword for the team's benefit when selecting the final 3. But no, it's exactly like it surface level seemed. The "others" inexplicably offer up their own heads to get chopped off as per Dongmin's original plan, and Dongmin selfishly places himself in the finals, where his bum a** chokes in games 1 and 2 and has to be carried by white boy and PNU the whole way. The only game he looked relatively okay was game 3, and that was just because he was matched up against MMA meathead Minseok who couldn't puzzle his way out of a paper bag. If orange team had gone two mentals like they were supposed to, Alpago would have destroyed him.

The games themselves were fine to watch, but this whole Dongmin affair really soured the experience of these episodes for me. Like, is it a cultural respect your elders no matter how wrong they are thing, like with Chunsoo and the dogfood? Or is Dongmin just that good at manipulating people even when the strings being pulled are so blatantly exposed? I just don't get it, man.

I really don't think it was a manipulation play on his team, I think it was genuine. I think he didn't realise how much it would effect the other members and when he realised, it got to him. Just look at how he was moping around, refused the massage, long pause before agreeing to be leader.

That being said, I do agree it was a less than stellar resolution to it all, but I more so attribute that to the game design and Korean culture. You have so many people just willingly content to make it another day but knowing they won't make the finals and are okay with it. The resident swap just absolutely blow up the swapped person's spot as well.

Was rooting for Nopdong though. Madong screwed themselves with two physical players. Physical players were marginalised in those final games I feel.

With Dongmin's practice regime, you can really see how he excelled at The Genius, particularly Season 4, where the death matches were known.