Survivor China: Interview with Jean-Robert - "I feel like I got cheated now."

[hepcat]

When it comes to Survivor, it’s the votes that count – and 36-year-old professional poker player Jean-Robert Bellande was so annoying to his teammates that they were willing to overlook his solid vote on their side and give him the boot anyway. Jean-Robert and I tangled a bit when it came to defining his strategy in the game, but I think he gives a clear picture of who he expects to win the game, and who he won’t be voting for in the final Tribal Council.


A couple of people who left the game before you said that you were the most crafty person out there. How would you describe your strategy?

I describe my strategy—I’m definitely a thinker, I’m always thinking one or two steps ahead, and trying to see what the next play is, and what the situation is down the road. My plan coming into the game was to be the last horse in the race, and to work my way up to the front, and I was going to do that by being the jerk, the guy who’s kind of lazy, and just not contributing, and gradually do a little bit more and more around camp, and show myself a little bit more, as we went.

So be the person people want to keep around because they figure nobody would vote for them in the end—is that the idea?

No, no, that wasn’t the plan—the plan was to be kind of the assh***, and gradually become more and more likeable by the end.

So is this a poker strategy? I mean, you can be a jerk at the poker table and it can be an asset. But would you say the same thing for Survivor?

No, starting out as being a jerk and working my way up to being likeable is not a poker strategy. That was a strategy I chose for Survivor. And you’re right, that sometimes being a jerk, or being the loud one, obnoxious, is very effective at a poker table. Sometimes I will get under people’s skin, and it’ll make them want to beat me so badly that they’ll play compromised hands against me. In Survivor it was more of a thing of, let me be as disliked as possible without getting voted out and from there I can only go up, and contribute more and more around camp, and start to be a little more likeable as we go. And right around now, around mid-stream, it’s not that I’m starting to be likeable, I’m being disliked more and more—I don’t know if you noticed but last night Courtney didn’t have as much negative stuff to say about me, she wasn’t the one pushing for me to go home last night.

Well, that’s true –

And I’m already starting to work on jury management, like Jaime for example, when we sent her to the jury last week, we sent her there as a friend of mine, and I was working really hard on both Peih-Gee and Erik, because they were supposed to be the next two that we were sending home, and I wanted to make sure that I had them in my pocket for the final two or final three vote.

And you begin to see me become more of a likeable character, like that day when we had that dinner with the Chinese fisherman family, and I started speaking Chinese—you start to see a bit more of my sweeter side. The plan was, be the jerk, and become more likeable as we go. Right around the time that I got eliminated last night was the time when I felt like my horse was just right getting to the middle of the pack, and ready for a sprint forward.

What was up with you rubbing up on the girls?

That’s just camera stuff! (Laughs) Anybody who knows me knows that I would never in a million years have any kind of interest in Leslie or Courtney in that way—part of that’s just like keeping someone next to you warm, because they’re freezing, and if there’s a negative reaction to that, well—the stuff gets talked about, but it was a non-issue. It was something that was brought up one time, but as soon as anyone gets to know me—none of that was real.

I wanted to ask you—do you think your background got more or less play than other people’s backgrounds?

That’s an interesting question. (pausing to think) I do think my background got played up more than other people’s backgrounds, because of me, bringing it up a lot—I don’t know.

I don’t even mean editing, I mean like Jeff making poker references, or bringing it up. It’s not like he sat around talking to Denise about being a lunch lady a lot.

For sure. But you have to understand, a lot of people would relate Survivor strategy to poker strategy. So the fact that they have a professional poker player on the show I think just makes it interesting. And it seems like they made they made my character one of the most significant characters in almost every episode until now, and I think it’s made for a really interesting show. I think people would like to see, “Hey, how does Survivor strategy relate to poker strategy,” and to be honest with you, there’s a lot of correlation between the two games.

It’s a natural fit.

Yeah.

So was Courtney correct when she was trying to call you out as being the most dangerous player last week?

That was so silly. It’s just an example of her showing she has no clue of what she’s doing. What I said was just basically the obvious, which is that “Hey, you know what? We’ve gotten to the individual immunity challenges time now, Courtney is no longer going to be perceived as a threat in those challenges, so she’s going to be able to fly beneath the radar. It wasn’t because I was trying to call attention, “Hey, watch out for Courtney,” that’s so silly, that’s seven weeks away! I was just talking about how it’s really interesting how Courtney was kind of on the chopping block those first few weeks, and now all of the sudden she’s like going to be perceived as the least threat out there, so there’s a good chance she’s going to make it down to the last two or three. And I stand by that statement! Why is anyone going to put her name on a ballot? For me it doesn’t matter—she can bad-mouth me all she wants, talking about “Jean-Robert is a jerk;” I’m not going to put her name on the ballot, because I’m trying to win a million dollars, and she is not a threat to me at this point in the game. You’ll notice I never once lobbied against her, because I’m not doing this for popularity, I’m not doing this for who I enjoy having around me, I don’t care about any of that. I’m out there living in miserable conditions, because I’m trying to win a million dollars.

It went from “get Peih-Gee out, then Erik, then Frosti” to “maybe James” – so how did it end up that you went this week?

Well, quite simply, the plan was to remove the four members just as you stated: Peih-Gee, Erik then Frosti, just as you stated. But when I’m sitting there and start studying the possible end game, I’m just saying, hey, I have new information now. James has two hidden immunity idols. Not just one, two hidden immunity idols. Okay? This guy’s the most liked player in the game. If I get down to the bottom two or bottom three with him, he’s going to get the votes. From here on out, he’s going to be a huge favorite to win any of the individual immunity challenges, and any one that he loses, he can just pull out that idol. So right now James is such a huge favorite to win the game, he is the biggest obstacle between me and winning a million dollars, we got to get rid of James. And it’s got to go now while there’s a chance that he won’t pull out one of those idols. So the plan to remove Peih-Gee and Erik, that can hold for a week.

Getting James out now was an optimal move, not just for me, but for everybody in the game. In my opinion, that was a brilliant plan. Todd had actually even come up with it before I had. But Todd got nervous when he saw that I had gone from not even knowing there was a hidden immunity idol in the game to basically almost finding it. You saw that a few hours after I found out, I’m up there, looking and realizing there’s no idol here; going on a fishing expedition and getting Erik to tell me that James had at least one idol, maybe two idols. Even though James denied having those idols, I got a read from him that he did indeed have the idols. Going from that to coming up with a game plan to get rid of James. Todd was like, “Man, how is Jean-Robert coming up with this just like that? I feel uncomfortable because I like making all the calls, and Jean-Robert is coming up with similar ideas I have – let’s get rid of Jean-Robert.”

But that was kind of a panic move on his part, because had he thought about it, he would have recognized that Jean-Robert is not nearly as much of a threat as James is. First of all, if it gets down to me and Todd in the final two, he has a good chance to more votes than I do because of my likeability factor – or lack of likeability factor. And, there’s a good chance he could beat me in immunity challenges. And then there’s the fact that neither of us have idols! It’s like, they could vote me out any week to come, right now we a chance to get James out of the game, he’s the biggest threat to win this thing – it was a perfect plan to get rid of James.

One of the things you have understand is that when you’re playing any game, whether it’s chess, poker, pool, or Survivor – you have to make your moves assuming that everybody else is going to make their best move. The best move for everybody in the game at that point was to get rid of James, not to get rid of me.

You’re saying Todd panicked because you came up with this plan that quickly? From what they showed us, it almost looked like Todd was offended, like, “If Jean-Robert came up with this idea then there’s something wrong with it.”

I think that Todd gets caught up in being so clever and come up with so many backstabbing moves. It’s almost gratuitous, his need to be the mastermind behind any kind of plan. He’s patting himself on the back. At the end, you could see that little smirk on his face when he saw that I was voted home, thinking that he had done something good. He actually made a huge mistake. Not only did he keep James around, who is the biggest threat in the game, he sent somebody to the jury that is probably going to lobby so hard against him that he’s got no shot to win a million bucks. I mean, that was the worst decision in the game to date, making the move to get rid of me at that time instead of James. It was just a bad, bad play. I’d really love to hear what Todd has to say about that play later on. It was a really, really bad play.

Who knows, you might be hearing from him pretty soon.

Well, let’s see how he’s able to handle James and all his power right now. James having two hidden immunity idols, and we’ll see if James even loses a challenge from here on out.

I want to go back to the hidden immunity idol. During the reward challenge, you acted like it was the first time you had an inkling there was a hidden immunity idol in the game.

The first time I had an inkling was when Jaime threw that faux immunity idol – when Jeff threw it in the fire. I was like, “Wow, that means there is one in the game?” I never had a clue. And it’s not because I missed something, it’s not like something was presented in front of me that I just didn’t understand. The clues were never presented to me. And part of that’s because I was never in any kind of jeopardy situation. Basically, those clues went to people who got kidnapped, or people who lost challenges—I never got a clue, and I never was in a situation where I could have had a clue. Once I got the clues, I caught up to everybody as fast as possible, but it was too late, the immunity idols were already gone.

So I take it from that, that Jeff wasn’t making that announcement in all the tribal councils, that if you have a hidden immunity idol, you can play it now? He just said that after Jaime presented hers?

Aha! You know what? That’s so interesting. Jeff did not mention that if you have a hidden immunity idol, play it now, when we went to our first tribal council. Otherwise that would’ve been a clue. Ah… He did not. And that’s right—because as soon as it was announced that there was one, he said that at every tribal council after that. Oh, man! I feel like I got cheated now. If he had said that at tribal council, I would have known that one was in play, and I could have done a little bit more digging around. Even so, the information was just never in front of me. And it sucks to watch the show and see that everybody in my tribe knew about it but me. But, you know, it was never put in front of me, so I had no reason to suspect that there was an immunity idol.

What about at the reward challenge where you were all sitting there at the table, and now you know that everyone around you knew that James had two of them, everyone at that table – as a poker player, shouldn’t you have been able to tell something from their faces?

I could tell that something was wrong, because they didn’t seem nearly as interested in these clues as I did. I was studying these clues, and I was like going over them, and they were like “la di la di la…” (both laugh) I’m like, “Man, are you guys out of your mind? This is like the most important thing to date! And of course that all makes sense now. But they were probably thinking I would understand what was going on with that anyways. But you saw, that just within a few hours, I was right there where the hidden immunity idol should have been.

In the confessionals there was a lot of gloating about that moment, and how you didn’t know about it. What’s your response to that now?

With the information that I had, how could I have known about it? They can gloat all they want—look at how good Todd was running. (in disbelief) Leslie goes and hands him this information, and thinks she’s so clever and blessed? It’s really unbelievable how good he ran. He’s like a poker player who gets aces dealt to him every time. No matter how he’s playing, he just has good luck in getting the right cards every time. Leslie gave him the information, James gives him the information – it’s unbelievable.

He did have good luck, but then again, maybe he was buttering up people and you weren’t there, you were off being angry and unlikable.

Hmm. Maybe.

What are you going to base your jury vote on?

I’m going to base my jury vote on who played the game the best, whose strategy worked. Not people getting there by happenstance, but who created their fate? Who made it happen for them?

Who do you think is playing the game strategically, and who do you think is making their decisions based on who they like or other personal reasons?

Well, look at the Zhan Hu tribe. I mean, every time it comes to a vote for them, they vote out Chicken, they vote out Ashley, their strongest girl – it’s like their getting their butts kicked every single challenge, and guess who they’re going to let go now? “Yes, let’s let Dave go, because you know what? He’s not so pleasant to be around.” They’re playing the game like high schoolers instead of playing like they want to win a million dollars. If they get picked off one-by-one because they happen to be on that tribe, they decided their own fate. They didn’t put out their best effort.

Is there anyone who is getting played and doesn’t know it?

Well, I kind of got played last night, didn’t I? (chuckling)

(pausing to think about it)

Peih-Gee is a thinker, and you always have to wonder if she’s up to something. You can never count her out. Amanda, you know, she’s been flying beneath the radar and holding onto Todd’s coat tails, but you can’t imagine that she loves doing that. She’s playing this game to win. And then you’ve got Denise who hasn’t been building huge alliance, but is completely flying beneath the radar, and is kind of likeable. Just creeping up towards those top spots.

Right now, I definitely think James is a huge favorite. He’s the most likeable person, he’s got the idols, and I think if he makes it to the final three he’s got the likeability vote. What’s happened so far, you say, who has contributed in camp a lot? James. Amanda did a lot, too. Who has contributed to the challenges? James. Amanda did a lot too, but if she’s up against James, how is she going to get the votes? When it comes to who is more likeable, it’s clearly James. Who else comes close to James in likeability out there?

I don’t know, the people who have already left the game have said he was forever complaining about being hungry.

Yeah, well. He was hungry.

Thanks very much to CBS and Jean-Robert for the interview.

[Google]

 

[Gutmutter]

Great interview! Thanks hepcat. I think he's right about Todd's knee-jerk reaction. They missed a big opportunity to get James out and now he's on to them.

[Fanta Fanta]

Thanks hepcat for another great interview! He's not as dumb as I thought he was, after reading this. One thing, Why weren't there questions on what he thinks about the remaining survivors?

[Leo]

Fantastic interview, Hep. I smell a little spin here, but I do think he is dead on about Todd.

[Brooks]

Thanks, hepcat!

JR does seem to be saying that James hangs on for quite a while. Since JR is on the jury he would know.

I like players who have a plan and stick with it. JR made himself TOO unlikable for it to work, though.

[PWS]

It also seemed as though he had NOT had a chance to talk to Todd yet about how he blew a chance to vote James out... so maybe Todd didn't spend much time in Losers' Lodge either... or don't they keep them all together these days?

[hepcat]

Originally Posted by Fanta Fanta

Thanks hepcat for another great interview! He's not as dumb as I thought he was, after reading this. One thing, Why weren't there questions on what he thinks about the remaining survivors?

We are limited on time, and you can see that he's quite a talker. I had a full page of questions that I didn't get to. I think he covered nearly everyone, anyway.

[sugarlady]

No matter how much JR insists that his game was all strategy in interviews, I still don’t buy it. I don’t consider him a strategic player. His sole strategic move of blindsiding James was as weak as him looking for Immunity Idols that were out of play. I would have loved to see a meaningless piece of wood presented to Jeff for a second week in a row. But alas, Erik foiled that pleasure.

I just didn’t see Courtney warming up to him simply because she was skeptical that she would finally have enough votes to be rid of him. Her comment that he was the Susan Lucci of tribal council was priceless.

I am sure the players have signed a contract about not revealing information about the final 3. I would like to see James win it all but the fat poker player is singing so much that I am afraid that he is playing another bad hand of cards.

[Shady64]

But Todd got nervous when he saw that I had gone from not even knowing there was a hidden immunity idol in the game to basically almost finding it.

6 months and this is the best spin he could come up with? What a boob. You can't make anyone nervous about almost finding something they already knew was found days ago

[hepcat]

Originally Posted by sugarlady

I am sure the players have signed a contract about not revealing information about the final 3. I would like to see James win it all but the fat poker player is singing so much that I am afraid that he is playing another bad hand of cards.

I agree with all your points. And to add to this one, there is a press rep on the line as the interview is being given, so if he had really revealed anything they would have stopped him.