RHAP: We Know Survivor - Dom Abbate Explains Why Rachel Could be the GOAT

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

Rob Cesternino is joined by Survivor Ghost Island's Dom Abbate as they dive into the the finale of Survivor 47.

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Hey, everybody. What's going on? Rob Sestranino back. We got a fun one today because we've got some special coverage in the wake of the Survivor 47 finale. An old friend is back. It's the holidays. We're all getting together and this man made a big claim. Said he would come here to talk about it and here he is. Of course,

the great runner-up from Survivor, Ghost Island, Dom Abate is here. Dom, how are you? What's up, Rob? Dom, great to see you. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

Merry Christmas to a man of his word who posted this tweet back on December 13th and said this on the website known as X.com. Dom said, if Rachel wins, I will go rjp to defend my claim that her game is the greatest ever played i realize that many of you will disagree so i'm asking you to list three players who did it better so that i can debate the comparisons and then that is what we will be here to talk about here today uh look dom off, I love the hot take. I love that you're here to talk about it. I love that you, uh, are here to, uh, discuss not to just slink off to defend it, to defend it. And this is going to be very fun. And, and let me just say to the audience that I

have so much respect for Dom for being here. And this is like a spicy take. And I think this is a fun podcast, but if you all can't handle stuff like this, we won't do it anymore. Okay. That's it. We won't do it. You're right. So this is, this is going to be a very fun. I, I think I mentioned, I don't think I'm going to change anyone's mind, but I'm going to bring forward some great examples of where I'm coming from. Let me start by saying one thing, Rob. Yes. Rachel has no affiliation with this claim whatsoever. Right.

She called me, was not happy that i made the claim she wants her name cleared from this she's got nothing to do with it yeah so nobody nobody come at rachel this is not her idea it's not her idea okay we'll talk about rachel uh but how's everything going with you uh yes things are are good. Holidays are here. Just trying to get all my ducks in a row. You know, it's a tough time for everyone, but it's a joyous time. It's a joyous time for some. I don't know what those people are.

Well, I'm jealous of those of you that have the next week or two off. Unfortunately, I do not. You're working this whole way through? Not the whole week, but it's a wacky thing when Christmas is on a Wednesday. It's like, how do you really enjoy it when you have work on Thursday? I think I'm taking off Thursday, so I think I'll have Wednesday, Thursday. But would you believe I have to work Christmas Eve? What are you going to do?

Okay. All right. I think I'd rather have the day after Christmas off, though, than Christmas Eve. I'll work a half a day Christmas Eve, off Christmas Day. Yeah, it's probably, you know, people are not giving it their all. Yeah, it's right. It's Christmas with an asterisk this year. All right.

Well, Dom, great to have you here. We had a ton of coverage about the finale, uh, over the last couple of days, including, uh, my exit interviews with the final four, including a conversation with Rachel herself. You could check that out. Plus I'll have, uh, one more podcast coming up with Chappelle. Uh, we'll have club condo talking about, uhor 47's Aftermath coming up on Monday. Make sure you're subscribed. We know Survivor.com.

Not to mention we have daily Traders previews coming up, Dom. So we've been cruising along, previewing all of these people that are going to be on the Traders in our Traders podcast feed. But let's get down to the business at hand, okay? Now, I was thinking about this and I think this is going to be a little bit of a tough exercise to compare Rachel to other people that have won the show, because I think it's a little bit like, and I know you're a big sports fan too, but I kind of feel like if we're comparing like, you know, baseball teams of like, we're comparing like, you know, the, the 27 Yankees or the 86 Mets and the, and the 2024 Dodgers, where it used to be like once upon a time, there was just like, uh, you,

you would just like have your, the two divisions you'd play. Like, uh, there was like 19 teams in the division. You'd win like 119 games and then go to the world series. And then two teams would play face off in the world series. That was that, but this like the new era, you know, there's all these, you got to play like four rounds of the playoffs. And now if a team goes down, like, like, uh, Oh two in a five game series and then comes back and like, is the team that had to come back from the adversity and win all these playoff games better than a team that just cruised to a victory and never looked back in different eras when it was like, you know, the dead ball era and stuff like that. So, but that's what we're here to try to unpack here today. because, you know, after I put the tweet out, I really did realize that it's a loaded statement. And it's also, it brings in a lot of like,

what are you basing this on? You know, like, how could you say she's the greatest to ever play the game? Like, first of all, there are so many variables. And if you really are comparing, like I had so many people come back and say, Kim Spradlin did it better. Dee did it better.

Tony Vakos did it better. First of all, I just want to start by saying, if you're going to bring a winner that won their second time playing, I'm going to just, we're going to leave that off the table today. This has to be like virgin game win. Okay. First timers. Yeah. I'm just trying to level the playing field a little bit here. And again, I don't know that

we're going to say, Oh, this one's better because of that. Because like you said, you have all these different, uh, conditions and scenarios. Someone that played a 39 day game verse a 26 day game. Is that a difference maker? The weather conditions, because the locations used to be different. All these things can affect how a game is played, which is going to make this really difficult exercise to really say, you know, this is why this one is or isn't. So I'm not going to really try to do that.

I did rewatch season 47 in two days i mean i got it in well detailed and i will admit reluctantly that i did the second time around find some holes in my girl okay first time i was definitely biased rachel and i are friends. Okay. Yeah. Can you explain the friendship? Because I'll try to do it without too confusing in during COVID. Um, this is the time when, uh, Sunday Burkess from millennials, Gen X, you know, she, uh, was sick and we had hosted a, uh, like an online poker tournament to raise funds for her and her family. So that was like myself, Adam Klein. I think Ronnie Barta was involved in that. A few of us were involved in it and it ended up being a huge success.

We had like hundreds of people play in this tournament. We raised a good amount of money and that was the end of it. And then because COVID stuck around, we, we realized that we kind of had fun with it and that maybe we can kind of keep up like a weekly get together for survivor fans who are also poker fans. And we developed like this weekly Friday night poker game online for, you know, not crazy money, very fun thing to do every Friday. And that group stayed pretty robust for a little bit, but then it dwindled down, dwindled down until we had a group of about 25 of us. And the 25 of us decided that we're going to just like exclude ourselves from that other thing and just make our own new group.

Okay. And we call ourselves the Outbluff group. You know, it's like the mix of Survivor and Poker, Outbluff. And Rachel is part of that 25. Okay. Along with many other amazing people. Kellen of Survivor players. It's Rachel now, who wasn't a Survivor player at the time.

Rachel, myself, Kellen, John Carroll. Oh. Yeah. Dino from Survivor South Africa. I mean, I guess you can give, you know, what's the word? Honorary membership to Adam Klein. Yes. And even Ronnie, because I think

they did come back a few times to the group, but I would say they're not really in the core group anymore. Sorry guys. Um, and we get together, like, it's not like we just talk about finding that out now. Well, we went to Vegas. Yeah. We get together. Like we've gone to Vegas together. I mean, the, they do a lot more trips together than I do. Okay. So they're a good group of people that, you know, we have a group chat going for years now and we're all kind of in the mix. So that's how my friendship with Rachel began about four years ago. Are you able to separate your friendship with Rachel from the cold, hard facts for this conversation.

Okay. So first time watching it, I could not definitely was like, that's our girl. She's killing it. Everything she does is perfect. Everything she does is right. But I want to not, I don't want to have a bias take. I want to be realistic about it. And like I said, I think the second time around, as I really like finally watched, like watched it with like significant concentration this time around, I said, okay, there's a few things that probably don't look too good on this is really just say, look, I believe that every winner that's ever played the that had absolutely no adversity in the game where like they were left out of a vote or, you know, just something they were not in the loop on. And obviously we can say Rachel was left out of a lot of things here. So that's a strike against her.

Let's not even worry about that let's let's do let's do part one here is tell me what you saw that led you to make the case that she did play the greatest game a first-time player has ever played okay if i was to get started on it i would say it started pre-merge where she was responsible for the victory of her tribe, which ended in like puzzles. Yeah. I think three or four times where I think her and Annika like just got it done before anybody. That's a good point.

I feel like that people have not talked about that very much about how that she really did help her tribe in the pre-merge i mean significantly if you pay attention to how successful she was in in in finishing it you know i mean like it's a lot of commotion you're jumping through hoops this and that but at the end of it there's always that puzzle and they're always there and she's always in the puzzle uh situation and she's the one finishing it yeah they say on survivor there's an old say adage that the puzzle is the great equalizer do you think that the person that can do the puzzle and sometimes it's like oh that person looks like they can do the puzzle but a person who can do those puzzles is that more valuable

than somebody who is like the like brute strength that gets you through the carry the boat up the beach and all of the parts that gets you to the puzzle? It's tricky because I would say it's like that the challenges are like designed for anyone to get through them. But sometimes you really do have to drag something that is like ridiculously heavy and you, you're not getting to the puzzle if you don't have someone there to help you carry it. But at the end of the day, if you, if the majority of the challenges are doable for anyone of any strength caliber, And then they all kind of at some point get to that end component where the puzzle is waiting for them.

That is where the brain power matters. That's where you want that person that could see it, that has like that visual gift that can just see how it starts, see how to put it together. That to me is worth more, but again, there's moments where you won't even get to that point if you don't have some muscle helping you get there. Yeah. Uh, her tribe did go to two pre-merge tribal council. I'd have to go back and take a look at

the, uh, the two that they missed on. I think that the first one that they were just so far behind from like tipping the boat over and And, you know, that, that might not have been a situation where they were able to catch back up. I'm not sure on when Anika went home, what the challenge was that they ended up losing. Yeah. I have some notes here, but I'm not going to waste too much time breaking into it, but, um, yeah, but yeah, you're right. They weren't, they didn't have a perfect pre-merge record. They did end up, you know, going to tribal a few times, but I feel like she kind of, she kind of had a handlegoing to get into the tribe. She was likable. She was a good worker. Like the basic thing.

She had no issues. No one had a problem with her out of the gate. She didn't have a very significant threat level in the beginning of the game. I think people realized she was just like good to have around. So that to me is like, I just thought she navigated her way through the beginning of the game pretty well. Up until like right before the merge where she kind of got blindsided there um on the onica yeah on the onica vote and then comes into the merge like lost yeah okay lost so for me though so if that's pre-merge now we hit the merge and uh the the most significant moment where my light

bulb really went off was when she played the shot in the dark to gauge the audience and i know that sounds like not that big of a deal but to me that is we, that's your 3d chess move. I mean, that is taking an opportunity or taking a tool that you're given and really putting it to use like no one ever has before. And I just feel like in this day and age, you have got to be playing the game like that. And I just feel like most people while, while like had no clue what she was trying to do there, they thought she was playing it. Cause she just felt like she had to, but none of them had that mental capacity to say, wow, like we should be thinking like this. So to me, that was when I said, we're dealing with a different caliber player here because she's thinking the way no

one else thinks. And I'll be honest with you after that episode, I called her. I don't know if she called me. I called her, but I told her, I said, I'll be honest with you. I'm a little intimidated by you right now. Okay. Because it was the first time i looked at her differently like in real life like wow like you you see it you understand how to do it even if you go back to pre-merge where she was trying to steal rice again one of those things that seemed like a silly little fun moment in the game absolutely not she was thinking of ways to advance herself and her tribe by feeding them and no one everyone else is focused over here and she's thinking about this that's how you have to play this game now so again like can you compare that specific thing that she did to something that Kim Spradlin did or Boston Robb did or something.

They're all different. There are some great moves that people have done in the past. Even Russell convincing Tyson not to change his vote during Heroes Villains. There's a million. You can name them. But I just feel like that after 46 seasons of playing of watching survivor if you have not evolved into a person who is seeing the scenario as it is and then figuring out a way to manipulate it to squeeze more juice out of it than what like everyone has done prior to you sorry nobody

nobody this season was doing what she was doing. I will give credit to Operation Italy. That was phenomenal. Okay. That was the chef's kiss. Okay. Can I go back to Rachel playing the shot in the dark for a second? So that to me feels like something that like a poker player would do. that like a poker player would do.

Can you give like a poker analogy to like in poker, what that was playing the shot in the dark to like gauge the rest of the room? I mean, yeah, I mean, it would have to do with betting structure and putting it out to get a read. There's a lot of reads in poker. Um, one of them is like, uh, I would say is like, let's say you're in the hand and there's a flop

and a turn and there's betting going on once for, for me, a tell from when someone's trying to bluff me off a hand is when they react quick with their chips instead of thinking about what to bet. Okay. So sometimes I'll set somebody up to see if they're going to come over me. And if they come over me with a re-raise, if they do it quickly, that makes me feel comfortable. Like I'm good. And if they take their time and try to calculate how much more they can get out of me, then I'm a little more concerned. I don't know. That's kind of like the best thing I can come up with right now. And who's Rachel in that scenario? Is she the person who is- She's the person that's trying to put a teaser bet out to see what the reaction of the razor is, if that makes sense. I'll give you another example in the game. Again, this is not to

toot my own horn, but a similar example. And I think this is why I loved it so much, is because it just felt like my kind of game was at my final six when I played my fake idol before the votes were cast. the fake idol i had an opportunity to gauge the audience as well and i was convinced that i had changed people's minds that i had a real idol so i didn't end up playing my real idol either now i did not do it nearly as good as rachel to refresh the us on that scenario you so you had the the fake idol if i recall the j the j uh fake idol from millennials versus Gen X you had, but you also, and you had a real idol too. Yeah. And I wanted to preserve my real idol for final five. So I tried this maneuver where maybe I can do something that's never been done before. Hand Jeff, this idol before the votes are read,

see if I can get Sebastian to change his mind on what he was planning on doing. He did change his mind, but it was messy and it backfired in a lot of ways that cost me possibly the game where Rachel did it pretty well. Again, I'm not saying she stole the idea from me. This was something that is, that came up in her own brain, which is why I respect it. And this is one of the reasons why I find her to be the greatest player. Okay. What are some of the other positives that you saw that led you to this opinion? All right. So, I mean, there's a lot that happens in between, um, you know, from that shot in the dark moment to where she plays her idol at final six,

but in between there, you can't discount all of these challenges that she's won. discount all of these challenges that she's won now there's been a lot of uh feedback on twitter or x that rachel had kind of a mike holloway or ben dreeberg an ending where if it wasn't for these wins and idols that she would have never made it and like basically she replicated that game. And I like, you can say that all you want, but there's no one, those things may have happened, but at the end of the day, Rachel like won her people over at the same time where I don't think Ben and Mike did the way she did.

Like she just had the entire package where she was able to recover any time she was blindsided. She never got down about it. She never gave up on it. She gave people their space. She knew when to step away from it. gave people their space. She knew when to step away from it. And then she carefully inserted herself back into the game and spoke to the right people at the right time.

You can't do anything about an Andy out there. If you have a person who's just decides to go this way one day and that way another day, the only thing you can do is try to take that person out. I think it didn't occur to Rachel to do that early enough. She finally decided, you know, this guy is all over the place and he may end up having a good story at the end. So let me take him out before Sam. So luckily she did that because who knows what it would have ended up as. But I just think the way that she dealt with people socially people with her and people against her that i i just don't feel like i've seen someone you can say there's people that have done that kim spradlin was great

with people right you want to talk about kim's game but i just don't feel like someone had all of these components like this whole package deal to me. Yeah. And not that I'm here to help you make your case. I I've, I'm here to call balls and strikes, but in terms of like, to compare Rachel to Ben or Mike now,

certainly like, you know, Ben was on the bottom. They wanted, they wanted Ben out, but I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that Rachel was somebody who played the game from the bottom because after Kyle, I'm sorry, after Gabe gets voted out, it's Sam and Genevieve and Kyle that are on the bottom. And Rachel is kind of in at the center of a five

person alliance, which is not something that really happened. Certainly not for Ben and, uh, not so much for Mike where people were, were like the people that were trying to get Rachel out were the people that were on the bottom, the people on the, like, uh, it was,

uh, Sam and Genevieve saying like, Hey, you got to take out Rachel. She's going to win the game. But all the other people were like, no, she's in my Alliance.

We're doing, you know, uh, four women are going to the end. She had a, uh, a, uh,

three person Alliance with herself and sue and caroline and then also was talking with uh andy and teeny before andy ends up flipping so it wasn't like that rachel was at the bottom really i don't know if ever in the late stages of the game agreed until and. Until Andy started his shenanigans, then it definitely flipped the game. And then, you know, Genevieve won immunity. So suddenly they felt like they had the power. And if it wasn't for Rachel winning immunity, she definitely would have gone home in that moment.

But it definitely was a swap of power those last few episodes. But you're right. It's not like she sat on the bottom for the last four episodes you know what i mean like she definitely was in the driver's seat you know was bamboozled by andy and then lost it and then made a great move and regained it and then once she got to final four she knew she was good to go one thing I would have liked to see Rachel do, and I know she didn't need to, obviously, because she just about got a unanimous decision on her vote. But I was concerned when

the Sam Teeny fire making challenge took place because- I'm so glad you brought this up. took place because I'm so glad you brought this up. Yeah. Well, I'm, my concern was that like, she needed to stay central. She needed to stay in the spotlight. And I felt like giving someone who I thought had a shot at getting some votes like Sam putting on the performance he did. I thought that was, that's exactly what I said. And I really thought that since I know that you and Rachel, you know, were friendly, had this relationship. And I know this is something that you've talked about also about having wished that you had made the fire. I almost wondered if that was going to be something that was going to be in Rachel's head where she was in that position, especially since she's so good at it of, yeah, let me go make the fire. especially since she's so good at it of, yeah, let me go make the fire.

Yeah. If I, right. Exactly. Because she knew she had the upper hand in fire making, but I will say this, there's risk at doing it. If it looks like you're just humiliating somebody. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you kind of, um, Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. So you kind of put it this way. If she knew that two people that don't know how to make fire were going up each other, going up against each other, it would almost in her mind may have played out where they're going to aggravate the jury that they're taking so long to do it. Maybe like can someone just win this stupid thing already? then rachel's just sitting back like because i it is tricky final four fire making is such a tricky thing nowadays and like after my season ended i was like you know i wish i never won the final four challenge because i would have rather wendell threw me in and maybe that would have boosted me you know there's so many ways to think about it so for r, obviously she had her finger on the pulse better than I did, where she said, I don't need to do this. I have enough people up

there that I can definitely speak to my game. And I think I have their respect. I don't need to put myself out there, but I'm telling you, there really is something that if you think you're going to blow someone's doors off in fire making making and it just looks like you're beating on people now. Yeah. That's the last thing you want. You don't want to like people be like, oh, what else are they going to win? Like, what else is next? You know what I mean?

Like kind of like how Kellen's attitude was towards me at the end. Yeah. What else is this guy going to do? So it's tough. But I definitely thought I was worried for her because I felt like she wasn't in the spotlight when she needed to be. Yeah. And I thought that was a great moment for Sam.

And that's what she said. I, you know, I asked her about that and she had said, she's like, and I wasn't so worried about Sam winning it, but the way he won it in spectacular fashion, she said,

the jury jumped up from the seats. She was like, Oh yeah, that's not ideal that he had that like not just that he beat teeny but that he did it in spectacular fashion and really coming from behind right it's this underdog moment right i mean like it doesn't get better than that and then if he could have pulled it all mean, but she just had too much. She just had, she did too much. And then if you come down to think about the, you know, the final tribal when they're, when they're talking it out. I mean, obviously Sam had that great few sentences and comments that he made where I was like, whoa.

He did a good job. Yeah. He did a great job. He really did a good job. Yeah. He did a great job. He really did a great job. And he did make a lot of points where I got to give him credit because he, he really did play like one of the greatest scrappy games ever. You know what I mean? Like a guy that just like got punched left and right the whole game, but somehow made it to the end.

And it's not like he was carried there. It's not like he was one of those good players. You're just like, let's just bring him because he's not going to get any votes. Like he was a contender for sure. He was a contender um but i think uh i think rachel really recovered really well and i think her answers were just slightly more genuine and authentic i liked how she said i don't care about legacy. I'm just here to play the game.

I think at first some people were like, weren't sure how to respond to that. But to me, I was like, it doesn't get more real than that. Like that's sure. Everyone wants to go down as you did this, you did that. But I mean, you just, just appreciative to have had the opportunity to play the game. And if you can just do it and do it well, to me, that's all you could ask for. You know what I mean? So my thing, Rob, for you is like,

I mean, I can get into more detail, but ultimately why I make the statements that I do about Rachel, again, there is some bias there because she's a friend. But I think the other reason why I personally find her to be up there, should I call her the greatest to ever play? Maybe I shouldn't. But if I do say it, it's because it's not just how well she did. It's how familiar to me it felt.

In other words, if I could have improved my game it would have been more rachel like does that make sense like if there's any other like if i was ever asked a question who like who do you wish you can play your game more it's it's easily her and it it's all based on this out of the box thinking and that every moment in this game is an opportunity to do something instead of just sitting there and pouting and complaining about this or that. You got to really take those downtime moments. And there's a lot less downtime now with 26 days. You've got to really keep that engine going, keep it in neutral, just running and keeping it warm because you're going to have to make moves and decisions

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Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash robpod. Okay, so let's get to the fun stuff, okay? Let's throw some other names out there. Let's throw some other names. And let's make some comparisons. And so let me, let me start in

the new era because that's probably the easiest to make comparisons in, in the 26 day game versus the 26 day game. Now, Dom, how closely have you kept up with what's happening in the new era? I've watched every season, but I just am not a sponge and absorb it all. Yes. The way you do. But if you bring something up to me, I will remember the moment, especially if it's a significant moment, you know? I don't think it's crazy to say that she's played the best game in the new era.

I think that the consensus is that Dee has played the best game in the new era. Now, this is the majority of feedback I got. This is a tough comparison because Dee, I believe, had an easier road to get where she got and did a great job at the end. But Dee was part of an alliance where Rachel really, for the whole post-merge basically, was kind of left to her own devices. Right. And it's something that she said, too, in one of the interviews was that after the Sierra vote and she felt alone is when she actually felt free, free to do what she wants now because she's not tied to one person as she said she actually thinks that was the best thing for her game and let me just throw one other thing out there i want to get back to d because d did play an amazing game and i'm not taking anything away from that not what we're here to do people okay um but one other thing in addition to Rachel's freedom when Sierra got the boot was that when she got the idol, I know she was given an idol in French fries.

She didn't earn it. Look, every winner in this game gets lucky. There's not one winner that ever won this game without some luck. There's not one winner that ever won this game without some luck. So even though she found it in her French fries, I can, I can, I can account to this, that the moment you find an idol and you unfortunately didn't, you know, I don't know, unfortunately, unfortunately didn't get to play a game with idols, but until you like, you see it when someone finds an idol, you're like, all right, whatever. But when you find one, there is a, like, I just, you're just, you feel so relieved.

You can now get crafty. You can now play the game and you know you have a safety net in the event that it backfires on you. So I think the combination of feeling free from an alliance or committed to any player out there now with this idol i think that's where her game really started to take off and if we get into where survivors found idols in their games you know between you know danielle and amanda finding an idol in a bucket of popcorn or sitting down at the right place setting to find the idol, you know, that people, people get idol clues randomly. Like that's, you know, I don't think we ever like take anything away from winners before of like, oh, well they sat in the random seat and got the idol clue. And you also have to

account for when people get advantages or idols gifted to them, you it's like well she if saul didn't save her with that idol she all right but why did he give it to her you know there's yeah there's reasons for these that one with we didn't really talk about that uh just so when you were talking about like top level stuff from her game was you know she got very unlucky that she got switched to with that whole group and then she had some luck that she got switched to that whole group. And then she had some luck that Saul, who she had a relationship with, found the thing and sent her an advantage. I feel like that that's sort of like just like nothing cancels it out. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. So I agree. So you're going to get some good luck. You're going to get some bad luck and you got to just try to navigate through it. But so somebody like D who really plays the game game from the top for the most part, part of an alliance, comes into the merge with the most numbers. Really, there's not really a point where even the minority alliance is really trying to come after her. It's a totally different game.

Now, you you played both from the top and from the bottom in ghost Island. Can you talk a little bit about the degree of difficulty of, uh, you know, playing with a target on your back versus being part of the group that's kind of dictating how things are going? Well, my downside of my game was very early on, and it's almost like I didn't understand the game until I did get blindsided and I did have a wake up call. So for me, I feel like you have to go through that rite of passage to really understand how the game is played. You have to take a kick to the stomach one time. And lucky for me, I did have that safety net and I did have that idle from that point forward. So now what it does is it allows you to open your eyes up,

figure out where your mistakes were made and try to fix them. But also don't play. You got to know when to play defense. You got to know when to attack and um i think my game became more offensive after my the blind side on me so for someone like d though you gotta help help me remember some of this um so she had she had a pretty like pre-merge. What, what was her, what was her scenario? Did she, for the most part, like, was she on a winning tribe that won a lot? Yeah. Well, 45 had the Lulu tribe, which, uh, did not win, uh, at all. So basically, uh, no tribal councils.

And then she ends up going to two, uh, or, uh, at least one pre-merge tribal council where Sean stands up and quits the game. I think they were going to vote out Sifu in that spot, but ultimately Sean ends up quitting the game there. And then they go into the merge with all of their original tribe but two they they vote out two people from her original tribe uh so that's sort of like then like sort of like reduces the threat level of the rest of the yeah because you don't right understood and that's actually what they

tried to do uh this season as well with tiku i think right about that. But yeah. So. All right. So tell me about like besides her great social game, which it seems like is definitely her best case. I mean, it definitely helps to be on a winning tribe pre pre-marriage. I know because I was on a winning tribe pre-marriage. Yeah. So I only went to tribal, I think, i know well after a swap i went another time but for the most part i was on a winning tribe so that is is very helpful but besides d's like social game give me an example of where d did something something maybe that stood out to you? I would say that D's best move, I think, comes at the point where Emily goes home. It's the final seven.

And I think that, and I'm trying to remember the exact circumstances of that D or Austin, who him and D, there's like some romance happening there at that point. who him and D there's like some romance happening there at that point. Austin is like, Hey, don't tell Julie, but we're voting out Julie tonight. That's, that's going to be the thing. And then D then tells Julie to play the idol that she ends up having. And then, and then, yeah.

And then D played it off like, Oh my God, I didn't even know. Like, yes. And so, and that was really, and then did not let Austin even know that that happened up until the final tribal council. So she does a really great job of like navigating her way through that. Like she gets to, she gets to the, you know, the, the final six with that four and then has really, you know, they, they have Ketur then has really you know they they have katora on board and she really does a good job of navigating you know how to get ultimately drew and then get to the end with austin feeling still like with the wool over his eyes feeling very good about d and

then she's able to sort of like drop this bomb but like well actually, I was playing you when we had that other vote. If I may, I would say then D also is the beneficiary of some luck also, because there's a situation at the final five when it's actually a really crazy vote where we're going to see that Jake has his idol and he wants to, uh, play it and is going to play it on Katora, I believe. And then, uh, when he plays it on Katora, he, uh, was going to have, he needed Katora to vote with him to vote out D and then Katora that they just could not get on the same page, Jake and Keturah and Keturah ends up voting for Julie instead, uh, where D could have gone home at the final five, if Jake and Keturah were able to get their act together. On the same page, right? Yes. Yes. I do recall that. So that's all right. So that's her moment of, uh, things falling in place for her. Um um but there's easily an argument to be made

that her game could go down as best new era game because she did have a path of least resistance and that is something that's not easy to accomplish in the game of survivor so it really it depends on what you feel constitutes the best style or gameplay and again um i love and respect the the hell out of someone that can navigate their way through this game without so much resistance. And I do that because I've played the game and I know how every day is a struggle just to make sure that all of everything is, is on course. It just doesn't stay on course every day you're fighting something else. So for her to be able to navigate her way through the entire game, fairly clean, you can't take that away from her that's an amazing

accomplishment and it's it's fair to argue that that's a better game than rachel's game i'm not gonna i'm not gonna say anyone that makes that claim is crazy um for me i just i find more value in someone that can kind of recover from, from these punches and, and just keep everyone in her good graces, even when she's taken them out somehow, like even with the Andy vote, like just he's hugs her and he's like, amazing job.

Like that just doesn't happen often. There's no ill will. Nobody on the jury is bitter towards Rachel. Because she'd give no one a reason to be bitter. And I think another thing that people take for granted when watching players is that like she talks about it in that way. Her and Genevieve even talk about being frenemies and they hug and I'm like, you know, we're at it with each other, but you know, like it's all love. And they talk about how they,

they respect each other and they respect each other's games. I mean, I think it's fun as the viewer to have two people that absolutely hate each other. It's fun to see that occasionally and have some dirt thrown all over the place. But, um, I, I, other it's fun to see that occasionally and have some dirt thrown all over the place but um i i just can't get over how well-rounded she is how well-rounded so all right what else you have besides d because like i said i respect these i respect d but then we also have uh jam jam we also have marianne in the new era of course and two people with great social games. And Marianne's game, I think, was mostly

laying in the weeds and then really popping up at the last second to make a big move and then ultimately have an idol. Marianne does not have the challenge wins that Rachel has. Right. No, she

doesn't, but she brings her own attributes to the game, for sure, Marianne. And you can also argue that Marianne was, there's no ill will towards Marianne anytime she's responsible for someone leaving the game as well. So she definitely had a strong social game in that aspect. I know Marianne as well. She's an amazing person. Um, again, you can't discount, you can't discount any winner's game at the end of the day. You know what I mean? I just have my flavor. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. Do you want to go to the old era? Yeah, let's dip.

Okay. How about this? Okay. And, and this is gonna, I'll put you on the spot here a little bit. You were with Wendell for 39 days. You saw everything he did or didn't do. How would you compare Rachel to the game, the winning game that you watched up close and personal Wendell? To the game, the winning game that you watched up close and personal. Wendell.

Um, I mean, he played a phenomenal game. His social game is, the problem is a lot of his advances involved me. You know? You know, Rachel as sort of a. Trying to think of the right word of just basically like an army of one. Yeah, absolutely. And she became an army of one after the Sierra. A lone wolf. A lone wolf in wolf's clothing. Who picked up whatever scrap she needed at the time to get through the next vote.

Wendell's game was different. And look, here's another thing we got to take into consideration. No disrespect to my season. Yeah. But the caliber of the cast on my season was not as tough as Rachel's. Okay. This is an interesting point because in survivor, okay. And we're about like 10 seasons after ghost Island is 36. This is 47. But you know, you had people on ghost Island who, you know,

were there for vacation and people that were, had not seen 25 seasons of the show. Right. And a lot of them that were there for the adventure, not the game, you know? Kind of like Kyle this season, there for the adventure, not the game. Yeah.

We had like several Kyles my season. And also age played a big factor. There was, I had the youngest cast, I think, in the history of the show. And not knocking young people, but life experience is a real thing. Yeah. Okay. And when you're a little bit older, like myself and Wendell, it's easy to see things coming from more emotional younger players or non-emotional where they're not having a reaction to certain things that they should be. What I'm going to say about Wendell is that he had – I'm not saying I – we had like a conference every morning. We discussed things every – we had – and we never left each other. We never flipped on each other.

So we always had this general assembly of Dom and Wendell and sometimes Laurel, where we could bounce ideas off each other. And sometimes we went with my ideas and sometimes we went with his. So I just feel like there's not much of an underdog story for Wendell. Yeah. You know what I mean? Let me ask the question this way and see what you think about this.

Okay. So it's very hard to parse one game versus another, but what if like, uh, some scientists, Dr. Christian Hubicki builds a machine that puts two survivor players into a random season and simulates it a hundred times, a thousand times. Could we try to figure out, uh, which of the two survivors would win a majority of those simulations? What do you think of that? That's wild. I always thought about that.

Like a season where you just put the entire cast back out there a second time. Just see what changes. And obviously things would change. Okay. Right. Well, what if we, okay. So Rachel and Tony Vlachos have never played Survivor before and they, and into the simulation they go.

And now they're starting with random new people. With random new people, maybe other random survivors. Okay. It's that the simulator is putting them in. Easily you have to give Rachel the edge. 70-30. Mm-hmm. 70-30.

Tony's first win was a, 30, 70, 30. Tony's first win was a, was kind of a miracle. Like, like I, I will say that and Tony's, you know, uh, super entertaining player and his second, his second win was, uh, like, you know, thoroughly incredible, but going back, there were a lot of things that broke Tony's way. Oh, sure. Oh yeah, for sure. Oh, let me ask you this question, too. In the simulator, when they start the new season with the new cast, has that new cast seen their previous win? I think everybody is first-time players.

First-time players. Everybody's, like, brains are men in black. No history of Rachel, no history of Locke. Right, right. Yeah, it's Rachel. It's got to be Rachel, like, significantlyers. Right. Yeah, it's Rachel. It's got to be Rachel like significantly higher. Yeah. Like if you broke it into percentages, I'd say 75% in Rachel's favor.

Given Tony, 25% is being generous. That's my personal opinion because I just- 75% of the time Rachel does better than Tony. I just think you got to look at a well-rounded player. And Tony has his attributes that you can't – look, Rachel stole some of Tony's ideas, right? I mean she's out there hiding in bushes. Yeah. So it is what it is.

But I think if you're starting fresh with fresh cast every time a million times, you got to give the upper hand to Rachel. So who do you think besides Tony would give Rachel a run for her money in that simulator? Well, I think that historically the best first time player that we have is Kim Spradlin. So you put Kim Spradlin and Rachel into the simulator and now they're both going to play a thousand times who's coming out ahead more now that's a lot closer yeah that's a lot closer and um obviously kim would have to be aware of new rules new conditions they have a different skill set and i think that's what i'm saying uh but if you bring back kim spradlin in her prime and i don't mean age but i mean she was right sharp as attack that

season and you put rachel the way she played this season i think you got a i think you got a fair fight i think also what we have to uh factor into account is like when are they playing in survivor history because i think that rachel is comes in with like the perfect skill set for Survivor as it is now in the new era that she is like a woman who does not like stand out and pop off the page where we've seen with other players like our Caleb's and Genevieve's of like, the, the, the perfect, you know, makeup to be sort of somebody who you're not thinking about, like from the jump. Uh, and then also has the ability to like play this, uh, very fast paced game and be able to think about all of the different machinations of the advantages and whatnot. That's not Kim's game. You know, Kim's game is that just, uh, like off the charts, charisma and leadership and can get a bunch of people to, you know, basically like go, you know, down with the ship to follow her to the, you know, uh, off the cliff.

And so that's a game that's probably very powerful tool in this game. And Kim was like the perfect player to play in the era in which she played. But I'm not sure necessarily that Kim comes in in the new era and dominates. And and I think Rachel would still do well in Kim's era, but probably not as well as Kim in Kim's era. Because you're right. Kim was the best of her time, you know? So this is what I'm saying. That's why this exercise is fun, but it's not going to solve anything. Right.

But I love the comparisons and I honestly do believe if that's, I love the simulator question because somebody will do it eventually. Someone should design the simulator i would be at least like a well the thing is like you can take these votes all you want people do it all the time on social media who wins in this battle this one or this one you know but um you do you do have to put all those variables in the simulator though you really have to talk about what time period are we talking about, our idols in play, our advantages in play.

Because, yeah, and I think Rachel is only as good as she is in this time period because of the 46 seasons that came before her and all of her knowledge of all of it. So think about it. If you throw Kim Spradlin into today's game, she's not marathon watching right she was just on winners at war she came in looking like like a deer in the headlight she didn't know what was going on and part of it is also her reputation of people didn't necessarily want to uh you know get fooled by Kim or just like, but so that's part of it too. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. It's just, I think the, I think any,

I think anyone, anyone's more, any player in the most recent season obviously has an edge because of the, the knowledge that they've, and, and these are, these are all diehard players that play now. Right. I mean, you're not getting Chris Nobles out there anymore. You're getting people who not just watch the show, but most of them have watched every season. Yeah. And if you're not like picking up on the evolution

at this point, you don't belong out there. Dom, I think you could even argue for Rachel that like a lot of things went wrong for her in this season that may not have gone wrong in other seasons. Like this may have been like one of the not necessarily worst case scenarios, but like this was, you know, this was not a magic carpet ride for her in this winning game. No. And that's why I have a lot of respect for it. Like she might be in another season, like have an easier path to the end.

Right. And then there's that question. She doesn't play in a tribe with Andy, who is, you know, such a hard player to read, who goes back and forth a bunch of times and comes into the merge with, you know,

her alliance with Annika and Sierra intact. And then maybe she ends up like not needing to win as many immunity challenges. Think about what trouble Andy gave her. Like he caused so much trouble. Night one. Yeah. Oh, yeah. When he pulled her out on the beach and she's like, look, I am here for you, but we can't be running off just the two of us. That's another example of how great she is to know. Look, Andy, can we go talk with in front of them? Those are things that people need to pick up on. And yeah, Andy definitely put a few monkey wrenches in her game.

But look, she was resilient. She came out of it and never gave Andy crap about it. Was like, look, this is who you are. You're going to do this. You're going to keep doing this. I think Andy was doing so much because he wasn't getting respect for his gameplay. So he's just like, all right, you don't think I'm a serious player. I'm going to stab you in the back today.

And then he'd stab someone else in the back. So to be able to navigate through that environment with a player like Andy is another huge accomplishment. Dom, I'm curious to know, was there any responses you got from your Twitter conversation that really stood out in your mind, points that were made? Yeah. You know, there were a few really good points, but I think a lot of them were a lot of the things that we hit on. That's like people like we, how do you compare conditions, things like that but i will say that the majority of people's response

um definitely fell in the kim tony vlacos and d um you know there's a lot of responses a lot of opinions and a lot of good substance you know what i mean it's just it was too much to take all in and have everything ready to go while I was trying to do a rewatch. It's so hard with, with the eras. And, and, and I think that sports is like the best example where, you know, you have like some of these, like, you know, like, uh, these little running backs and slot receivers, like who would have been like snapped in two if they played in the seventies, you know,

Rachel, like, uh, you know, could, could be a first boot in, you know, a lot of eras way back when, where they. Even Steve 46 that she was an alternate for possibly could have went home first or second. That's so weird. That's, I mean, we hear it all the time. These alternates that like it, but to come back the following season and win that is quite a rollercoaster of emotion if I were. Yeah. season and win that is quite a roller coaster of emotion if i were yeah so i i think that probably like uh we can very hard to say definitively uh greatest greatest of all time but i did want to at least come up here and yeah and give you my reason and like i it's, it's just her way of thinking these days. Like in other words,

she's maximizing everything she can out of every opportunity in every moment, which I believe if you're not doing that in this era on the game, you're selling yourself short and it doesn't mean you have to be super aggressive and always doing something. A lot of the times it means not doing something, but being aware and knowing that you don't have to just do this thing that's been done over and over and over again. You can do it differently. You just have to come up with a way to do it. And that to me is what constitutes an amazing player. And that to me is who Rachel is. An amazing player is certainly in this moment where she has just like the,

the perfect skill sets to do very well on survivor, like in, at this current moment, in this fast paced game where you've got to be thinking on the fly, but then the, also the ability to have like you know a social game that like also i think that there's like a sportsmanship uh in the game that she like doesn't get too hot with you know uh like i have like having personal differences with people even if things uh don't go her way she's able to take it in stride. She can win challenges. She can do the puzzles. She's, you know, very resilient. You know, it doesn't get let personal feelings get in the way when she doesn't get taken on a reward. So she just has a really great skill set for Survivor in the

new era. So we can just restate the claim as maybe not hard to say greatest player of all time, but we can, I can say personally, I can say greatest player of this current era based in this time, this moment in time, she's playing the greatest game. It could change next season with new conditions, new rules,

new this, new that. But for the card she was dealt, she maximized every opportunity she had better than anything I've seen in a long time, if ever. Yeah. That's, that's where I can leave it again. I respect everyone's opinion on this. And to bring it back to poker one more time that,

uh, she didn't get dealt the best car. We have other players that we could go through and, and they get pocket aces, you know, uh, they, they,

they, they start with a great pair and they play it really well where her, her starting, uh, cards are like, are not amazing. Yeah. She needed to redraw several times. And she's kind of in the tournament,

like down in chips, like halfway through, and then plays it extremely well. My Outbluff crew is going to love you for these analogies. I'm trying. I'm trying. Yeah. It's a little bit out of my element, but okay. Good enough. Dom, anything else bit out of my element, but okay. Good enough.

Dom, anything else on your mind? No, Rob. I just, I'm happy that you let me come on here and do this. I was thrilled that you said you wanted to. I love stuff like this. Yeah. We haven't spoken a while. I mean, you know, we haven't spoken a while. And I, I look, I did have a lot of thoughts on this season anyway. And again, I know it's because I know Rachel, but I had a lot of fun with it this season. It felt like I had a horse in the race. So I got, you know, I kind of really got into it.

And I just look, I have respect for the whole cast y'all they all did great uh and i hope i didn't um to all the other winners out there i hope i didn't offend anyone i think everyone that wins played great games obviously uh i just had some real strong thoughts about this season for me for some reason and uh yeah i opened my mouth probably when I shouldn't have, but that's the way it goes. But we can have fun. We're having fun. Yeah.

We're just having fun. We don't have to be so serious about everything. So look, everybody is going to have their favorite. And Rachel did a great job. Dom thinks she's the best. If you have your favorite, you're allowed to have your favorite too. Right.

And you can tell me about it if you want. That's fine. Yeah. So hopefully the comments aren't too much of a mess after all this. I'm not worried about it. Yeah. It'll be fine. It'll be fine.

Anything else you want to tell people to check out? No, man. I just want everyone to have a happy, healthy, safe holiday season. Be kind to one another. Just keep watching Survivor. It's a great thing. Yeah. Okay. Well, Dom, I appreciate you so much for being here. And best of all, hopefully you get a not too tough of a day on Tuesday and get to enjoy a couple of down days later on this week. And yeah, come back anytime. Thanks for having me, Rob. Okay. And everybody else, we've got, uh, so much stuff coming your way. Make sure you subscribe to all things RHAP, go to robertswebsite.com slash subscribe. And if you can be civil, go ahead, post your opinion here in the comments, in the YouTube comment section. I'll be reading them. I don't

know if Dom will, but I'll check it out and we'll see what you have to say. All right. And remember, yeah, be kind to one another. We're all part of the same survivor community. All right. Take care everybody. Have a good one. Bye. CBS, the season when our champions do the test. Can you cover every show? Post game, there were a thousand club condos. Only one man can really know. So we say, go, go, process to me now. You are the best that we know.

Just grab your mic and we go wild. We live by a simple credo. If Rob has a podcast, we have a hero. Rob Sestanino. Time to fly. More things make me. This is your time