Jeff Probst weighs in on all the Survivor 46 players who got voted out with an idol in their pocketThe host says that getting blindsided and not playing your idol doesn't make you a bad "Survivor" player.
By Sydney Bucksbaum Updated on May 8, 2024 10:18PM EDT
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For the third time in a row, a Survivor 46 player has been voted out with an idol in their pocket.
Watching Hunter McKnight and Tiffany Nicole Ervin get blindsided and sent home without using their idols didn't stop Venus Vafa from falling victim to the same thing in the very next Tribal Council. But host Jeff Probst doesn't think that those three players — or anyone else who has ever suffered the humiliating fate of being voted out without playing their idol — made a mistake. While discussing this week's episode on his On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast, he explained that it's actually due to "great game play" from the people orchestrating the blindside.
"When players are playing at this level, the blindsided player never knows it's them," Probst says. "And I know from the couch you might think, 'I would know,' but I doubt it. Getting voted out with an idol is rarely due to a truly bad game decision by the player. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's the result of great gameplay by the other players. That's why it's called a blindside."
But Probst's co-host, season 45 winner Dee Valladares, puts more of the blame on the ousted players. "Ultimately, it was a mistake," she says. "A mistake equals a wrong judgment, right? They misjudged the accuracy of the information that they knew before Tribal, and I'm willing to bet that each one of them thought so hard about whether or not to play their idols, and unfortunately not playing it resulted in Jeff snuffing their torch. That's a regret that's probably going to last with them even after the game, so it was a mistake, really, because ultimately it led them out of the game."
Probst immediately counters that he doesn't think it's a mistake, because that kind of judgement only comes with hindsight. "And I know that I've never played, so I am ripe for criticism to even have a thought on this," the host admits. "I get that, but I do have the viewer seat, and what I see is ... I'm thinking of Hunter, when Tribal got crazy and he looked at Kenzie and said, 'I just don't want to be played.' And Kenzie said, 'No, you're not.' In that moment, he doesn't know if Kenzie's telling him the truth but nobody else is, or if everybody else is telling him the truth but Kenzie's lying, so he has to make a decision. It's hard to judge it as a mistake rather than great gameplay by everybody else, which is why you thought you were safe when you weren't."
Probst goes on to explain why he doesn't believe that getting voted out with an idol in your pocket makes you a bad Survivor player.
"Holding an idol is so appealing — from the couch, it's very easy to say, 'You should always play your idol, guarantee that you stay in the game another day,'" he says. "But if you're playing to win, then you're always making calculated risks. That's the cornerstone of any Survivor strategy. You need to be clear about the risk you are taking. Sometimes you get lucky, your instincts were right, everything works out, but more often you're going to make a mistake and it will hurt your game in some way. Hopefully not in a fatal way."
It goes back to Probst's favorite strategy that "you can't win Survivor by playing to not lose."
"So getting voted out with an idol in your pocket doesn't make you a bad Survivor player — it makes you a risky Survivor player who either didn't read the room correctly or didn't have the right information, which is most likely," he adds. "But either way, you made a calculated risk that you were going to be okay so you didn't play it. It's a huge part of having an idol, to play or not to play. When in doubt, play the first time as though you're playing for the second time because second time players never say, 'Woulda, coulda, shoulda,' and the Hall of Fame is filled with great players who have never won Survivor."
To hear what else Probst had to say about this week's episode of Survivor 46 — including Maria's rock, paper, scissors decision and why he keeps feeding the players at Tribal Council — check out On Fire with Jeff Probst.
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