“I Made Very Few Mistakes in the Game” – An Interview with Survivor: Cook Islands’ Winner Yul

Anybody who reads RealityNewsOnline knows I’m a big proponent of the highly strategic game. And that includes Yul! We probably could have discussed strategy for a couple hours, but the winner of Survivor doesn’t have that kind of time. So we cut right to the chase, and here it is for you.

RealityNewsOnline: Congratulations!

Yul: Thanks. I read your columns and I know you’re going to have a lot of questions, like about why we eliminated Jonathan when we did.

RNO: Well then let’s just jump right to those. A lot of people watching thought you eliminated Jonathan too soon, though in retrospect it obviously turned out okay! What made you decide to get rid of him at that particular time?

Yul: I think that was actually the move – aside from getting Jonathan to flip – it won me the game. Adam was the pivotal vote, he told me if I hadn’t made that move, he would have voted for Ozzy. I knew getting rid of Jonathan was a risk, but I was incurring greater short-term risk for promoting long-term success. Adam had made it clear that if I got to the end, they would all vote against me. Whether that was true or not, they had labeled me as the puppetmaster, which I didn’t think was true. I don’t think that’s the way I worked, I think I was an effective leader but I built consensus and listened to what people had to say. It assured our alliance was really tight because they weren’t under the control of some dictatorial leader. I don’t think anyone felt the incentive to defect from our alliance. So the possibility of someone flipping if we got rid of Jonathan was very remote.

I knew they were going after Ozzy, but I didn’t see a strong possibility he would flip. They didn’t show all the stuff because if they did, it would have made for a pretty boring series of episodes. I knew we had the numerical advantage and we could get rid of him.

People were saying Jonathan was a perfect final two vote. But you have to assume I could get there with him, which would have been hard. I would have had to screw over my alliance. And people don’t give Jonathan enough credit. He wouldn’t have stood idly by, he would have been able to flush out the idol. He would have mounted a campaign and tried to take a weaker player in his perception, like Becky or Sundra, to the finals. He could have made a compelling argument to the jury. In order for me to get to the final two with Jonathan, he would have had to be a very passive participant, which he wouldn’t have done. I needed to eliminate the biggest strategic threat.

I had this deal with Adam and I felt I could arrange [Adam’s] ouster in a way that would retain his vote. I set him up such that even though we voted him out, he felt it was outside my control. I felt with Adam at least, whatever you might think of him, he’s a man of his word. He has a sense of honor and integrity in his own fashion. I was able to read him and know that he would stick to his word. That ended up working out. That was my thought process for why we voted out Jonathan.

RNO: So, as you’ve said, the decision was a group one to get rid of Jonathan, but you took credit with Adam?

Yul: Yeah. I did have a lot of influence, the reason was that I really did listen to everybody. If it wasn’t a big deal, I’d be more than happy to let them go with their decision. I think people wanted to get rid of Jonathan, and if I didn’t, it would have required the expenditure of a lot of social cap and it would have raised suspicion. It seemed like the tide was going against Jonathan and the others perceived me as the puppetmaster, so I might as well use it to my advantage. So everything I could think of weighed in favor of voting out Jonathan.

RNO: What other subtle plays like this one did you make?

Yul: When we were trying to flip Jonathan, I actually did come up with the scenarios and probabilities. Basically it was mutually assured destruction – you’re going to get screwed too if we do. The thing that I told him that cinched it for us was there was all the danger he would tell [the Raros] I had the idol. I told him you think they haven’t voted you out because you work hard? Bull$#!t. They didn’t vote you out because they think you have the idol. You’re going to get screwed. So that’s one of the reasons why he didn’t tell them I didn’t have the idol. I think that was a subtle story I came up with against him lying to us.

Another subtle thing, when we flipped Jonathan and voted out Nate, it appeared like we gave Jonathan the discretion to vote out whoever he wanted. But we decided to get rid of Nate together. When we were trying to decide who to flip, I pushed for Jonathan but Ozzy was pushing really hard for Nate. I couldn’t understand it, but I said if you can do it, okay. But I asked him how he would do it. At that point, Ozzy was saying he would try to pull in Nate by saying he felt outside our group and stopped mid-sentence, like a bird had flown into his mouth. I realized that it was a great story and could work, so I ran back to Becky and said we had to eliminate Nate.

Jonathan didn’t want to flip to our side if Ozzy would flip back, so we decided that part of the bargain was we would tell Ozzy that Nate had to go next. We went back to Ozzy, who was very strongly against it, but we said we had no choice. It seemed like Jonathan had the decision, but it was all very manufactured. I think it was the right choice. They had at least the beginnings of an alliance.