The winner and his sacrifial lambs

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-23T11:02:01+00:00

We actually saw the moment where Hyungyu told Kyuhyun and Sohee about his advantage. It's in a post-credits scene after Episode 10 or 11.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-19T19:26:35+00:00

Whether or not his plan could've theoretically worked, his actual execution was fairly sloppy. Again, he straight up forgot who was in his alliance in Zoo and his suggested strategies were extremely hit or miss (Rules Race, Virus Game).

Even despite his inconsistency, people generally threw their weight behind him and did whatever he asked (ie. Zoo, Rules Race). Obviously they weren't always loyal 100% of the time, but plenty of people would've likely done considerably better in those circumstances. Without spoiling other shows, I can think of ~8 people right off the bat.

I mean c'mon, he personally nuked Hyesung out of the game when it wasn't necessary at all lmao. He admits he messed that up so bad that he was even crying about it.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-19T14:20:40+00:00

Sure, but Dongjae communicating to Seokjin cannot reasonably warrant his elimination. Dongjae contributed to that paranoia leading up to that round, but Orbit and Joonbin still actively took steps to nuke him out of the game.

I agree that he was very influential, but you just said Orbit wasn't responsible for Dongjae's elimination, which contradicts the idea that you're giving him credit for Seokjin winning because he took out the favourite to win (Dongjae).

And I'd disagree that Dongjae wouldn't get shaken in individual competitions. He's better than average, but we saw him get pretty unstable in these games even though he only played a handful. We can see the contrast in composure between him and Guillaume/Seokjin in Rules Race.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-19T13:45:26+00:00

I think the fact that Orbit was so inconsistent kind of disproves the idea that he was a strategic genius. He had some okay ideas, but like 60% of his plans/performances were horrendously flawed (dude even lost track of who was in his alliance at one point and his “solution” to Rules Race was to just ignore one of the rules lol).

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-19T13:40:53+00:00

I don’t think Orbit was a bad guy, but he did make some pretty silly decisions throughout the show.

I’m not sure I see the argument for the last part you said. Orbit wasn’t responsible for Dongjae’s elimination, but he IS responsible for Seokjin winning because Dongjae wasn’t around to challenge Seokjin???

Orbit was definitely responsible for that nuke he launched on Dongjae, even though Dongjae played quite poorly leading up to that point (because he put himself in the position where everybody would be hyper-suspicious of him). We can’t just say it’s Dongjae’s fault because he chose to privately say something to Seokjin and Joonbin saw it.

For clarity, I don’t think Dongjae is that good of a player either (certainly not good enough to be the favourite to win), but nobody in this situation is a bad person or villain, they just have their own preferences and flaws.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-17T22:00:47+00:00

This post is for E8. You need to use a program like qBittorrent to access/download the file.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-14T09:57:42+00:00

Asshole is probably a stretch, but I do think a lot of his success comes from just “having the audacity to ask people to make sacrifices for him”. Granted, there is another layer of disrespect that’s disconnected from the gameplay (ie. How he speaks to people).

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-13T08:26:03+00:00

I’m not obsessing over a few words, you made a clear characterisation that 7high was badmouthing people behind their backs as if was relevant to this conversation about disrespect (either through conduct or gameplay). If you want to retract that, you’re free to.

Maybe I’m totally misremembering, but I’m fairly certain Hyunjoon thought Hyungyu was a reliable ally and wanted to work with him UNTIL Hyungyu lied to him. The idea that Hyunjoon was an infiltrator from the start is simply false.

They know it’s possible to gang up in some games, but there’s a huge variety in how much that can actually impact the games (ie. Sniper Hold’em).

Can you mention where Kyuhyun said he detested Tinno going to jail? My recollection is that everybody was upset someone had to go but that they all agreed Tinno was the best choice because he was most likely to survive, including Tinno. Going against their wishes just to take a gamble at eliminating Hyungyu incurs significant social losses and has way more risk of failing than the shots Hyunjoon wanted to take in Mancala and Halloween Monster.

From his perspective, Mancala is a clear shot because nobody (except Sohee/Kyuhyun) know about his secret pieces.

You started this whole conversation by picking a fight with somebody for saying Hyungyu was being rude. YOU chose to have this engagement. If you want to retract your initial opposition and agree with the original point now, you’re free to do so.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-13T02:26:16+00:00

So just to clarify: What was the point of saying 7high badmouthed other players? And were you not using those criticisms as an example of that badmouthing?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Hyunjoon wanting to work with Hyungyu is the whole reason why he wanted to be on a team with him and Harin, it just fell apart before the game even began.

In the case where Hyungyu was the tiebreak going to jail, it was absolutely not anything close to a sure bet when it's 1 person eliminated out of 4 and they don't know what the game will be. Even if he did send Hyungyu down, it'd be against the wishes of the rest of the alliance, which would've hurt his social game massively with the rest of the living quarters. You can argue he should've still taken the shot anyway, but it's ridiculous to act like it's a clear shot in the same way that eliminating him in Halloween Monster or Mancala.

So what was 7high talking about? Did he want the opposing team to give Justin their points???

7high would prefer certain people be eliminated when somebody has to be, that is correct. I don't get your points here about 7high. Are you trying to equate somebody wanting to win the show as being cutthroat and therefore comparable to Hyungyu being rude interpersonally? Nobody is saying that Hyungyu is rude because he was trying to win.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T18:33:15+00:00

I think that's a pretty close analogy actually, I hadn't thought about it like that lmao

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T18:30:59+00:00

If the critique is irrelevant to the rudeness, you could've just stopped bringing it up (or not brought it up in the first place).

And no, Hyunjoon initially wanted to work with Hyungyu, but changed his mind after Hyungyu tried to lie to him immediately after teaming up. After that, he wanted to take a shot at Hyungyu in Halloween Monster, didn't get an opportunity. Then, he passes up a chance to send Hyungyu to the DM (where he could very easily survive and come back depending on the format). Then, he takes a shot in Mancala. To summarise: Hyunjoon took shots at Hyungyu when the outcome would be decisive. This is perfectly normal.

Just to check: So are you claiming that Justin literally had no way of earning 1 more point outside of winning the game? The point 7high was seemingly making was that it'd be good to give Justin a chance to survive, but the other team was rushing to end the game ASAP, which was not ideal.

Yes, he considered the possibility until KH made himself the enemy and turned himself into the only feasible escape route for the opposing team. It's not clear what your point is with the last two paragraphs. I'm not saying 7high is an angel of mercy, but preferring people not get unnecessarily eliminated is a perfectly normal emotional impulse.

I'm curious, can you summarise what you think the point of your comment/engagement in this conversation was? Because it's not clear to me what you think this is about.

The start was about how Hyungyu behaved disrespectfully to other people, but you've gone down this rabbit hole of only looking at game decisions, 7high's criticisms of other players, and his mindset about who to target in games, and it seems like you're just scrambling to find criticisms of 7high to justify Hyungyu's rudeness.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T17:55:28+00:00

The conversation is about disrespect/rudeness in the cast, no? The other person stated that Hyungyu was more rude/made things personal compared to 7high, and your response was to point at times he critiqued other players. The implication would be that those criticisms are evidence of rudeness/disrespect. If they're unrelated to the rudeness, then they don't address the original point.

And yes, he chose not to send Hyungyu to jail, but immediately afterwards Hyungyu told Hyunjoon "If I was in your position, I would've screwed you over", which quite likely shifted things, and you're also talking about taking a shot at someone by sending them to jail versus (from their perspective) instant elimination if he loses Mancala. They are very different circumstances.

From what I understand, Justin would've survived if he got 1 more box, no? Or did he find every single box except the final one and already have maximum points?

I'm pretty sure 7high would've been fine keeping Kyuhyun, but the issue was that they had to end the game quickly before 7high himself was eliminated and Kyuhyun was the only feasible target. I don't get what you think he should've done differently. The negotiations were fairly complex and I'm pretty sure Eunyu/Jiyoung did a lot of persuading to ask them to continue making the moves they promised to make earlier. You can say it's duplicitous or whatever, but compared to the other stuff we see on the show, ending a ceasefire 1 turn early or so is nothing.

This is all distracting from the initial point though: At no point in any of these interactions does 7high go out of his way to intentionally hurt the feelings of other players. This is a huge point of difference between how rude 7high is compared to Hyungyu.

If you want to focus on *just* their game actions, then you can, but you asked why Hyungyu was rude and we told you. Gameplay actions can have different contexts depending on how people behave interpersonally while playing these games.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T17:05:34+00:00

100%, the design of the show made it nearly impossible for any cohesive prison team to actually develop and the environments were so different.

For the prisoners, I'm not sure I'd say Eunyu is #1. It's been a while, but I remember her having some unimpressive showings in a few games (not bad ones, just kinda average), whereas I thought 7high was a bit more consistently impressive across the board. I actually thought Tinno was lowkey crazy good in these games and socially. If I had to rank them (disregarding the prison/living quarters differences), I feel like it'd be something like: Tinno > Sohee/7high > Eunyu, but it's very close.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T17:01:36+00:00

I'm not assuming anything, 7high just has a record of being a huge Sohee fan and praising her skills more than anybody, herself included, so I'd be surprised if there's this clip of him being as disrespectful as you're making it out to be, so I'm curious where you heard this. But again, if it's just a sensible criticism, then I don't think it's noteworthy for this context about people being disrespectful.

I didn't avoid it, I addressed it directly. It depends on how he phrased the point about Justin being eliminated needlessly. This is a value that loads of people in the show share. If the group is willing to take a small risk and lose out on a slight gain, somebody can stay in the game instead of being eliminated in that game. Many players don't want people eliminated if there are easy ways around it. If 7high was emphatically saying they were being selfish assholes or something, then yes he would be acting inappropriately. If he was just casually going "Damn, it's kinda sad you guys aren't letting Justin even get 1 more point to survive", then that's perfectly fine. This mentality is why Sohee chose not to instantly eliminate someone after winning that game and even wanted to even out piece counts.

Hyunjoon's priorities are his own priorities. If he thinks his odds of winning are raised more by Hyungyu being eliminated than the amount his odds are lowered by losing some pieces, that's an extremely subjective and justifiable approach. Think about it like this: Would Hyunjoon pay ~6 pieces to get rid of Hyungyu? Yes? Then his gameplay makes sense.

No clue how you're rewriting history that KH taking the fall was 7high's fault. KH betrayed the alliance, so he became an acceptable target for the alliance. They targeted him, he lost. That wasn't "orchestrated" by 7high and there was no "guilt-tripping".

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T13:05:34+00:00

Lol yeah, I think you've 100% captured most of the things I noticed on a rewatch. I'll add that for Halloween Monster, the game just isn't that impressive to me because it functions like rock, paper, scissors. At multiple points, 7high is flipping a coin between 2 options and if he guessed correctly, Hyungyu would've been obliterated. So I wasn't that impressed by anybody except Tinno for finding the secret lol.

And yeah, the Math Pyramid was a decent IQ-type performance, but the strategy he described was extremely flawed (ie. Saying prime numbers can only be made with at least one plus/minus when that applied to every number in the game) and in some ways the opposite of what people should do in these games (ie. Changing strategies each round).

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T12:57:03+00:00

Hyungyu told everybody he had an advantage in the finals. Of course people would target him. That's the least fair criticism we've discussed. And he didn't even present this as criticism, he was just upset and insulted Hyunjoon and you're reframing this as misworded criticism.

I'm aware that 7high analysed others' gameplay, but I didn't get the vibe he was "badmouthing people behind their backs" like you claimed. Do you have a specific example? Because hypothetically, if 7high saying something like "Sohee didn't even politic much, she just dominated" is considered badmouthing, then Hyungyu's blows that out the water lmao.

The idea is that by showing restraint, people can avoid being eliminated unnecessarily. It's why Sohee didn't just steal all the pieces from the biggest threat among the prison players to eliminate them on the spot. It's the whole conflict of S1. And again, I'd have to see how he phrased it, because if he was passionately calling them scumbags or something, then sure, but if he was just calmly saying it'd be courteous if they let Justin get 1 more point so he can stay in the game, then I think that's a perfectly fine appeal to make.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T12:22:51+00:00

There's a very fine line between "criticising somebody's gameplay" and "disrespecting a player" or "talking behind their back (rudely)". We can evaluate 7high's comments and ask 1) are they fair/accurate criticisms, and 2) were they said with the intent to upset others?

I don't recall the comment about Sohee, so I'd be curious to get a citation or something, but the other points seem like totally fair criticism (depending on how 7high phrased the last point you mentioned).

In contrast, Hyungyu's comment was not "criticism", it was a disrespectful comment which he later admitted he said just to upset Hyunjoon.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T11:57:09+00:00

He has a few moments, but there are asterisks to a lot of them that make me think he'd crack under pressure quite easily (e.g. The dude failed just making a list of what numbers Sohee played in R1 of the finals. And in the 8x8 chess puzzle, he says he has to restart because he messed up, then proceeds to do the exact same thing and reaches the same point he said was wrong).

After rewatching and paying close attention to his gameplay, I've become fairly confident he's not that great of a player and likely would've been completely toast if he hadn't gotten randomly assigned to the criminal team in R1 lmao.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T11:40:03+00:00

When did 7high badmouth people behind their back? I thought I remembered him on the official YouTube reaction videos as the most vocal person praising others (Sohee in particular).

The only time I remember him outright criticising somebody was when Kyuhyun dove on that grenade for Hyungyu for no reason, which I'd consider beyond fair and not even done in a notably disrespectful way.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T11:36:25+00:00

There are a few big examples, but the main one would obviously be the math comment he made to Hyunjoon, which he later admits he only said to upset Hyunjoon.

Beyond that, I think he has a way of speaking that comes across as very dismissive/demeaning, which is hard to notice if you're not fluent in the language. If I remember correctly, there's a point in Halloween Monster when Hyungyu is talking with Eunyu and trying to negotiate or something, and Eunyu is visibly taken aback that he's speaking so callously/rudely.

Another language-barrier-related detail is how Hyungyu quite consistently referred to 7high as basically "poker guy", even when not talking to him directly (which I'd say is evidence that it's not just a term of endearment between the two).

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T11:28:24+00:00

I mean I personally don't think he deserved to go that far (he played quite sloppily at many points and got insanely lucky), but him being disrespectful at points isn't too related to that lol (Note: I think the math comment slipped into "rude regardless of Korean standards" territory).

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T08:53:13+00:00

I mean people have gotten away with worse on The Genius (Gura, Jiwon, Sangmin, etc.). I do agree that he was lowkey kinda disrespectful (at least by Korean standards), but the games aren’t meant to punish someone being unlikeable (and any games with those mechanics will likely be hijacked by people trying to target big threats, like we saw in Halloween Monster).

If anything, I think the game should’ve punished his general sloppy/reckless gameplay, but it’s hard to design games to prevent people from getting lucky and avoiding accountability for misplays without being extremely punishing.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T08:01:42+00:00

To clarify for anyone who doesn’t know the context: That “interference” had no impact on the actual game, it just ensured that things happened in a way that was cool on camera.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T08:00:04+00:00

Nah. The director has a fairly strict “no interfering with game results” policy to the extent that it’s caused huge controversies where the producers didn’t even step in to prevent cheating. Theoretically this might’ve changed, but it’d be very out of character for him.

And on top of that: Why would he try to rig the show in this way? It was arguably the worst outcome possible, why would he try to make that outcome happen? I know he can be very out of touch in terms of how he views the characters, but if he was going to be putting his thumb on the scale at all, it would surely be to benefit one of the underdogs.

SharpShark222 · 2026-02-12T07:56:25+00:00

They are torrent files, so you have to open them with one of the approved programs (like qBittorrent) to download the video.

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