This will probably be a minority opinion, but I thought he was kind of a waste of a spot. I think he just ran red hot to make it as far as he did and would probably have a pretty poor average finish if you ran The Genius multiple times with different casts.

I don't think he was ostracized just b/c he was old either b/c the elders from Season 1 were shown a great deal of respect. I just think that the others in Season 2 viewed Junghyun as a very weak player and didn't respect his ability in The Genius at all.

One moment that I found rather touching involved him when Junghyun was rolling his die in the craps game and everyone was ignoring him, but Yooyoung came over and said "Sunbae!" and cheered him on. That was sweet of her. Sadly, it really illustrated how little the rest of the cast thought of Junghyun to not even feign interest (at least until he started doing well and they were feeling threatened).

Agreed. Very surprised to hear he was top 3 in anyone's list. His deathmatch wins seemed luckboxy. You saw how destroyed he got in Black and White when he came up against someone competent in Yohwan.

To be fair, Yohwan had already seen his strategy, but its not like Junghyun couldn't have adapted.

Love Sangmin and all, and obviously a deserving winner. But has anybody mentioned how terribly he played Indian Holdem?
First off - choosing the copy item for 5 extra chips is obviously god awful. I'm not sure if they know what each item does for all games at the start of it all, but even if they only get that info before each individual game he has to know that the additional 5 chips is so worthless compared to every other item.
And he just gave up at the end! He did the Negreanu strat of knowing he was beat then calling anyway. Having 6 chips left compared to 49 is clearly a pretty tough mountain to climb, but I've seen posters ITT in the bad coaching thread lambast coaches for giving up small percentages of winning EV, and Sangmin calling the bet was worst than most stuff in that thread.

Sangmin GOAT. Tbf Jinho was at such a massive disadvantage throughout the whole season because he was (rightfully) on everyones radar it made Sangmin seem less of a threat to the new contestants but his social and manipulation skills are just legendary. Somehow he even managed to get support from Doohee in the final despite soul-crushing him with the fake immunity and also Jinho, although maybe there's some SC rivalry stuff with Yohwan that made Jinho pick Sangmin. All that said, in a neutral setting I'd still favour Jinho over Sangmin just because of the former's massive edge 1v1 even though Sangmin's macro game is just ridiculously elite but it's not like Jinho is terrible in that aspect and assuming he manages to gather a team his gaming strategy is obviously brilliant.

The last reality show I've watched was survivor 10+ years ago so not sure if this is std but the level of fair play was astonishing. Everyone would always borrow garnets in the finals to make it fair and in the final some players changed sides just to make it more even. Also extreme dignity shown after a loss but I guess that's just the confucian way.

As for the final, I liked the 1st 2 games even though the truth detector one is just binary forcing your way to the end with 12-16 questions depending on how good you run on the uneven splits and gives a ~65-35 edge to the player who starts (disregarding Sangmin's 2x card). The last game was a massive letdown as it's 95 % luck, I at least was hoping the fallen contestants would have been able to switch cards or something. Considering the show is called the Genius they should have chosen a game a lot less dependant on luckboxing skills.

Thoughts on some players:

Neo: There's are 2 occasions you can wear sunglasses inside: A) blind guy B) black funeral. That's it, period. What he did was unacceptably cringeworthy.

Ziigmund: Kind of douchy to hold onto Doohee's cards for so long. I get initially stealing them because the opportunity arose so quickly and it gets harder to return them by the second but he practically made it impossible for Doohee to even play. I also thought during the chair episode that it's really easy to tell when he's lying but he actually always looks like that which was funny in the auction game when the boy band member didn't trust him even when he was telling the truth.

Jinho: Extremely likeable and obviously apprealing to the INTP/INTJ 2+2 group. Brilliant in figuring out the games but somewhat easy to manipulate, eg when they got him to say 1st who the person he wants eliminated is. Kind of annoying to get eliminated by obvious deck riggage and a shame he knew he just couldn't trust anyone in season 2 because of being a target which probably influenced him not sharing the splitting dice secret with his 2 allies.

Junghyun: At 1st everyone thought he's clueless, then he won those deathmatches but it was still pretty obvious he's just not an intelligent player but just ran hot. Credit for forcing the other team to act 1st in the 2nd to last episode after he smelled something fishy though, just not sure why he only did it once or twice. Overall a bit of a freak and very weird dude with his hilarious running episdoes.

Hongchul: Thought he was hired with a set fee just to bring enjoyment and colour to the show based on his behaviour when faced with a potential deathmatch early in the season but I guess he really is just that weird. I kind of liked his eccentricity but I bet he gets punched in the face a lot.

Yohwan: Really sharp sometimes (black/white game, indian poker) with some total wtf moments (minus auction, job firing game). Was really baffled by his showing in the lie detector game and was hoping for some ridiculous street maths showing but sadly it turned out he just went full ******. Wouldn't have minded a Yohwan-Jinho final with 3 extremely tactical games but it probably wouldn't have been as audience friendly as his battle with Sangmin.

Sangmin: Such a joy to watch. Kind of a douchy move to monopolize immunity after getting help from Yohwan but the game is the game. His ability to get others to do his bidding and occasionally betraying them without almost ever getting hated for it afterwards is incredible and it was so easy for him to get anyone to work for him as demonstrated by eg the 2nd to last episode. Also delivered many legit lols: 1-2 teddying Doohan with the fake immunity, hiding behind the door when Junghyun was about to enter the room and just his maniacal laughter/behaviour after he figured out something/played someone.

Overall I gotta say this has been a brilliant show and goes into my top 15 tv shows of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoA9SsD51no more or less confirmed it for me

2 possibilities: Jinho hasn't practiced much at all or just a case of domain specific intelligence. The game itself is super simple since the 2nd player always wins if playing GTO (backwards induction from leaving 12-8-4 pieces to your opponent which you can always do as he has to put out 1-3 at the start and you can always force a sum of 4. Obviously also make sure you don't make the track too small and are aware if your opponent makes it impossible to finish but that should be v simple as long as you've played a few times/take your time. But yea I guess my point is that maybe Jinho just has a leak in some GTO stuff while still being really strong in most areas or maybe he's tried the game for 2 mins so I wouldn't put too much on weight on it - interesting clip nonetheless in that it shows the awesomeness of Hyunmin who's just insanely bright and I don't recall a single game he hasn't figured out.

That was the reason I posted the clip, not to downplay Jinho's game intelligence compared to Hyunmin, but to show how adept Hyunmin is at figuring out any game that is presented to him. Don't get me wrong Jinho is still my favourite over all 3 seasons just because of how he owned everyone in Open, Pass. It's one of my top 3 moments in the show and after that episode everyone knew that any game that was presented as a "game of chance" could be rigged/solved in some way.

1. Jinho
2. Hyunmin
3. Dongmin
4. Sangmin
5. Yoohyun

This is based on who I'd bet for the win in a parallel universe where none of the players have met. Obviously it mostly depends on how much you value intelligence vs social skills and the final format. I liked season 1 because the games in the final were heavily based on skill while season 2 had the 4 card game (wtf) and season 3 betting RPS which both have a minimal skill component (and I'm wondering if the producers did this just to make the final more even for Sangmin and Hongmin.

Anyhow, I put the more intelligent players top 2 because in my ideal world the final won't have a luckboxing game and thus intelligence is more important for winning. Sangmin could have the highest odds of reaching the final because of his elite social skills and him being seen as less of a threat than the others because of a handicap in intelligence so in a luckboxing final format there's an argument to put him as high as #1.

Jinho vs Hyunmin is interesting because the former has better social skills but Hyunmin is even better 1v1 which was really impressive in season 3. I'm speculating here but I wonder if he's also at a disadvantage because of his age: the whole culture is so heavily based on respect to your elders (and thereby disrespect towards the young?) maybe that's a reason for him getting so little help in the season 2 final, /speculate. Could of course also be he was just a **** but they didn't air those segments. Jinho might also get #1 from me simply because he was the most likeable player throughout all three seasons.

I ranked Dongmin higher than Sangmin because he was surprisingly intelligent and even though Sangmin's social skills are still GOAT Dongmin's are also elite so he gets the edge. Because of the editing Yoohyun got criminally little air time but from what we saw I think it's enough to place him above Sungguy. One interesting thing about Dongmin was when he supposedly tried to lose on purpose and failed. In that episode there was no need for him to hide it after round 1 and his "failure" was so ridiculous I wonder if he really wanted that last spot. As it turned out he obviously secured an easy immunity and benefited a lot so I'm not sure if he's as valiant as he lets on.

On the air time thing, maybe it was like that for all seasons and I just didn't notice but it started to annoy me slightly right from the start how obvious it was Dongmin and Hyunmin would go very far. It's justifiable if the other contestants didn't have anything interesting to say but otherwise - and despite the pair being awesome - I would have liked a more even distribution of air time among the contestants.

Edit: Wow, t wat is censored.

I think Dongmin is getting pretty damn overrated. Think he get's in a ton of trouble in the middle of most seasons and he got bailed out by convincing the GOAT to align with him.

1. Hyunmin
2. Sangmin
3. Jinho
4. Sungyu
5. Dongmin
6. Yoohyun

Jinho was unimpressive in S1 IMO. Open/Pass was great, but it's an individual game with a physical trick that he figured out; he was often outmatched in team games with a larger social/strategy component. He had the right idea in 1,2,3 but messed it up, was outplayed by Gura in Election, didn't stop things falling apart in Catch the Burglar or Kong's Dilemma, didn't complete an answer in Expression Auction, didn't do much in the first Scamming Horse Race and lost the second one... the only cooperative game he did well in was the Zombie Game.

- After the first reveal you know where the burglar is, and therefore who it's likely to be, because [2 nights in exile], [1 in LV, 1 in exile], [2 in SV], and so on all give different point totals. This is all but confirmed after the second reveal.

- If the Large Village has the burglar and intends on just cycling the same players back and forth and then sending the burglar in Round 10, whomever they send in Round 9 ends up stuck with the burglar on the Small Village with the least points and is the loser while whomever the Small Village sends in Round 9 has the most points and is the winner. So the Large Village has to find another strategy, unless the Large Village contains a solid majority alliance and someone they are happy to make the loser; but then the loser picks one of them for the deathmatch.

- If the Small Village has the burglar, the burglar needs to spend some time in the Large Village to amass enough points. Based on the above, the Small Village can send them there immediately knowing that the Large Village has to play around that scenario.

- If an alliance can get an early majority in both villages, they can organize the voting to make sure the winner is from their alliance and the loser is from the other one. AFAICT this has to be done quickly though, as otherwise the relevant people can't get enough points and you have to try moving your alliance in the small village over, which gets messy.

- The burglar's role is both easy, as they basically always win if they spend more than a round in the Large Village, and interesting, because this lets them be a free agent. If you're in the small village with the burglar and they aren't on your team, it's impossible to maintain a constant majority. Allying with the burglar should be a priority for everyone.

- Given all of this, it seems like the game is very often going to end the way it did - an alliance getting the burglar to switch sides at a crucial moment.

For reasons given above I think Jinho and Yohwan are pretty similar in that regard: bad in teams, good in 1v1. Yohwan just takes it even further.

He may not be a 'great' player, but I think he has a better chance of winning a random season than a lot of people. His skill in Death Matches doesn't raise his profile because other players are concerned with how good you are in Main Matches - they don't imagine themselves having to play a DM, so they don't want you out of the game as a priority - but it does ensure that people are scared of picking him for a DM. His lack of initiative in MMs and non-threatening personality make it unlikely he gets picked out for game-related reasons.

As a result, he's able to coast until the endgame where his HU skill takes over and makes him the favourite. Consider that, despite Sangmin's ridiculous curbstomping of the MMs in S2, Yohwan probably wins the season if the deciding game isn't ****ing Quattro.

I give a giant +1 to all of this. Hyunmin's line is just all kinds of perfect. It's beyond brilliant, and as I head into the F3, I feel extremely confident calling him the second best player in the show's history. He is Jinho with better social skills.

Even when I was expecting Dongmin to bluff and have a shot at escaping, I still didn't think it could possibly work just because the position of his bluff was so obviously bluffy. I don't have it freeze-framed, but I feel like that might be the worst tile position to bluff at vs. anyone who is a visual learner. Doing it upside-down and/or at the bottom seems better.

But yeah, LOL Yeonsjoo or whatever her name is. Good job, good effort.

Yoohyun 6k
Ahyoung 7.5k
Jongbum 11k
Sangmin 13k
Hyunmin 15k
Poong 40k
Junseok 40k
Jinho 55k
Sunggyu 375k
Hongchul 1.6 million