looooool (applies to Dongmin too)

Hyunmin's work this episode was one of the most impressive single-episode performances in the series. He finds by far the best approach to the game - one which all but guarantees a 10 while allowing flexibility, concealing his hidden card, not requiring many coins as there will rarely be fights over the division sign, and making him an ideal teammate because his division trick allows him to pick up any number and freely trade it later. He executes it well and Dongmin and the two winners/series GOATs are none the wiser.

Can we get a decent female player for S4 please?

Regarding the underlined: If they recruit a certain someone from Crime Scene we should be getting a very capable female player. The first season of Crime Scene featured a total of 3 different people from The Genius Game, so there's a great deal of overlap - crossing my fingers.

Since Kyungran was 2 spots behind Sangmin to start the memory picture game, wouldn't Sangmin's best strategy have been to just repeat Kyungran's guesses and not reveal any new pictures and just hope she falls off?

This is results oriented, but he would have won this running of the game using this strategy, but I am not sure if you run the game several times. However, due to the fact that Sangmin knew his memory blows I think it is clearly his best strategy. For someone with a great memory, maybe not.

Of course if Kyungran reveals Sangmin's next move, Sangmin should take the free space, but then go back to guessing already revealed pictures.

It's mathematically correct to use that strategy.

LOLLLLL

1. Jinho
2. Sangmin
3. Dongmin
4. Hyunmin
gap
5. Yohwan
6. Sunggyu
7. Yoohyun

That opening sequence gave me chills. I love the Hyunmin-Dongmin pair and both are excellent players, with personalities that are very different but in ways which complement each other. Dongmin was spectacular socially but I think we saw him at his best this season; the fact that Hyunmin was able to outmaneuver him/Yoohyun (and Jinho/Sangmin!) in many main matches is very impressive for a 20yo without the connections or high profile that the broadcasters/celebrities have. Hyunmin at 28 would probably be the runaway GOAT.

I'm glad you mentioned this, because it does seem that we shouldn't underestimate the importance of this. After watching the show I've been reading various forums and articles and I've gathered that there's a consensus that Dongmin only got so many supporters for the final deathmatch because he was a celebrity while Hyunmin was a nobody. Which of course makes sense - if you have the opportunity to rack up goodwill with someone you always go for the celebrity. And so this would similarly apply to the main matches throughout - you're more likely to want to partner up with the celebrity.

And I probably already said it, but I agree: Hyunmin/Dongmin GOAT 2-man alliance. Yes, even better than Chilltown.

1. Sangmin - Great social game, dominated a lot of s2, did p well in s1, not much needs to be said in my opinion.
GAP
2. Dongmin - Great social game (wanted to go to the death match for his allies), solid enough at the games.
3. Hyunmin - Tremendous at the games, not so great socially.
4. Jinho - Solid socially and at the games but not dominant in any facet, 2-4 are pretty tight to me. I might just put Jinho above Hyunmin because he won.
HUGE GAP
5. Yohwan - I think he would have a high equity in death matches, and his social game was good enough where he only had 1 death match before the final 3. also was clever in the f4 helping Sangmin for his token. A lot of others have a claim for this spot.

2-3-1. 1 Ranks the lowest for me because the quality of the games was much lower in my opinion. The characters were probably the best in S1 though. I like S2 the most because I am a big fan of Sangmin and watching him dominate (won 9/11 main matches, including all of them starting in round 5, crazy) was very interesting. S3 was great as well with the great alliance of Dongmin and Hyunmin.

I'm not sure I like the passcode game. Unless I'm thinking about this wrong, it seems too advantageous to the opening player.

In the safest route you can guarantee you eliminate half of the field. Ask if it's over 5000 on the first question, if yes then ask over 7500 for the second question, etc. Your EV and actual results are 50%. (50% of the time you eliminate 50% of the field. The other 50%, you eliminate the other half of the field).

In spite of that route being the safest, most obvious, and easiest to follow route, I don't think there's an EV that yields > 50% result. Let's say you ask a question intended to eliminate > 50% of the pool, such as is the # 9 in your passcode. If it is it eliminates over half the field but the counter is your way less likely to get it than 50%. For example, let's say you've narrowed down the passcode to something in the 0-99 range. 19 numbers have a 9 in it from 0-100. 81 do not. 19% of the time you eliminate 81% of the field and 81% of the time you eliminate 19% of the field. 81% * 19% + 19% * 81% = 30.8%. A much worse proposition than 50%.

Basically if whoever is going first takes the most obvious route, they are also maximizing their EV and the second player is forced to take a higher variance route and hope luck comes through for them.

Am I thinking about this right?

That math sounds right to me. I used to play a game that was essentially the same thing, but there was an additional mode where both players would guess the same number (the numbers were determined via bot). The 1 number mode was always much better than the 2 number mode.

Dang, I wanted Jinho and Sunggyu to meet in the final.

I am curious what people think of Yohwan. A bit earlier in the thread there was the discussion about how Jinho is very intelligent, but at a big deficit to Sangmin in cleverness. I think the gap between Yohwan's intelligence compared to cleverness is even greater than Jinho's. He seemed to randomly spaz out in nearly every main match and it almost never worked out, but he's obviously pretty brilliant in 1v1. He only lost Quattro (which doesn't really count b/c it was almost all luck) and Passcode where I think he had a little too much FPS.

Whereas Sangmin and Jinho would advance towards the end of the game quite often if you drop them in with random casts, I think Johwan would flame out early an awful lot. He might be too brilliant for his own good and seems to think there is some super complex solution to every game, when really he just needed to keep it simple and use his talents to crush. Like when he totally exploited the old guy in black/white and dismantled Sangmin in Indian Hold em.

Yohwan is a very interesting player to me. He seemed to have a decent social game, and a decent amount of skill in Death Matches, but he was completely horrible in basically every single main match. Hypothetically, were he to return, I don't see him ever being an elite player, but I think his combination of social skills and intelligence can get him fairly far in most random seasons. I feel like he would have to be pretty fortunate to win a season, though.

You say you can see Yohwan flaming out early, but I don't see it happening very often. He doesn't seem to be the type of guy to put himself into the forefront and become an early target, a la Hweejong for example, and I think he'd be competent enough in most games to either avoid the death match or avoid losing in the death match. Maybe somewhere in the "5th-7th out" range would be somewhat common, but I wouldn't call that early.

Yohwan is a boss and his "poor" main-match performances from his season are being overstated. He played a super high variance style in the main matches and probably ran bad in a few specific instances in his season. If you don't get it horribly wrong in games involving lots of people and lots of variables from time to time, you're not approaching it the right way.

I think his expectation in randomly cast seasons is closer to 1st-3rd place than 5th-7th player out.

I was too in awe of Sangmin the first time watching that I definitely didn't fully appreciate Sunggyu and Jinho as the gods of unintentional comedy that they are.

I don't think I've ever been more happy with the finale of a gameshow. Although I don't believe you can 'float' your way to the end in The Genius, I think (as has been said above) that Yohwan was overall pretty weak in the main matches. He obviously excelled in 1v1, but I still think he doesn't even come close to the god that is Sangmin. I mean, Sangmin won 9 out of 11 main matches. That is absolutely unprecedented. He found the Token, and everyone was in agreement to flush it out at their first chance, but he never even gave them a chance. That's how ****ing good he is.

I didn't find this season boring at all. People say that Sangmin steamrolled the season, and it never even seemed like others had a chance, but I completely disagree. He didn't have a horde of zombies following him around a la Boston Rob, he found new strategies every single week and was always actively politicking, scheming, and clawing his way to make it to the next round every single week. This isn't the type of game where you can steamroll, because every single week is a new playing field. In Survivor, it's the same every week, and you can anticipate that with alliances. That does not work in The Genius. Sangmin never had an easy path to the end.

****, I'm still riding the high of Sangmin's win. Gonna check out the start of Season 3 to see if anyone's coming back (please be Hongchul...)

Junghyun. He was probably my 3rd favourite character of the season behind Sangmin and Hongchul, I really loved him. He definitely wasn't the strongest player at all in the main matches, but it was so much fun to see him constantly be underestimated and ignored/rejected due to his age and 'gentle' demeanour and then suddenly beast his way to F3 in death matches. A very unique character in reality TV.