Poker Pro Jason Somerville on Reading the Players of Survivor Cagayan

As he head down the home stretch of Survivor Cagayan, we are bringing you some additional bonus coverage with Poker Pro, Jason Somerville. Jason is one of the rising stars in the poker world and teaches people how to play on his youtube channel. Jason has earned a bracelet in the World Series of Poker in 2011. Additionally, Jason is the first and only openly gay high stakes poker player.

Interview with Jason Somerville: Poker Player, ‘Caster and Survivor Expert

After being introduced to one another on twitter a few months ago, Rob welcomes Jason Somerville to the podcast. Jason has made a career for himself in the world of poker, starting out as a high school student with a few dollars in an online poker game and transforming into someone who was won millions of dollars. Jason’s love of strategy and online gaming led him to discover Survivor around the time of Survivor Pearl Islands. Jason has been fascinated by this season and talks with Rob about some of this thoughts.

Jason shares the same Poker mentor as Boston Rob Mariano in Daniel Negreanu. In addition to being one of the top stars in poker, Daniel is a longtime Survivor fan. Daniel has met with Boston Rob in the past and also knows Jean-Robert Bellande. Rob is curious to know Jason’s thought about Garrett Adelstein, who was another poker player who was the second player kicked off the show this season. Jason thought it was interesting that Garrett spent over 2,000 hours preparing for Survivor. Rob doesn’t even know how you can spend 2,000 hours preparing for Survivor and wonders if Survivor can really be prepared for. Rob thinks that the best way to prepare for Survivor is to try and build friendships with strangers and sell them things.

Rob asks Jason if he thinks that poker players are pre-dispositioned to being good Survivor players. Jason discusses a number of game theories including the idea of variance – which is looking at improbable events as random rather than something that was caused by the skill of the player. In the case of Garrett it’s difficult to tell if he was a bad player or just got REALLY unlucky.

Turning specifically to Survivor Cagayan, Rob asks Jason to look at a few of the major moments in the game through the lens of a professional poker player including:

Did Kass make the correct the game more to flip at the merge?

Was Tony correct to vote out LJ at the Final 9?

Should Tony have made the move to take out Jefra at the Final 7?

How does the Tyler Perry idol impact the game?

In addition, Jason takes a look at the chances for all of the players left in the game to be the winner of the season and looks for the scenarios that will most benefit them in the final two weeks of the show. Finally, Jason answers a number of questions that have been submitted to him from the listeners of Rob Has a Podcast.

Be sure to join us on Wednesday for the next episode of Survivor Know-It-Alls, LIVE at 9:15 pm ET with Stephen Fishbach. Then on Thursday, Rob will talk to the latest player voted out of Survivor Cagayan followed by our full episode recap with the winner of Survivor Caramoan, John Cochran.