Survivor winner Tyson Apostol tested, wins $25,000 poker tourney buy-in

Tyson Apostol, winner of Survivor: Blood vs. Water, was tested in patience, memory and detecting lies to win a $25,000 PokerStars Platinum Pass

Survivor is no stranger to the poker world. Whether it’s tournament players like Jean-Robert Belland (who won a World Series of Poker bracelet this past summer) and Boston Rob Mariano or cash game players like Garrett Adelstein, Anna Khait and possibly more into the future, there is a very tiny overlap of reality show and poker fandom, especially when Survivor players are filmed competing in poker on television and Twitch.

One of the regular Survivor faces in Reno and other Run it Up poker events is winner Tyson Apostol. Though he is a better reality show contestant than he is a poker player, he does seem fairly more knowledgeable in the finer aspects of tournament play than you’d expect what you would consider a sarcastic goofball of a reality contestant.

The PokerStars Players Championship is taking place in the Bahamas starting today, with the biggest poker website in the world holding a $25,000 buy-in tournament with $8 million extra in the prize pool and $1 million extra for the winner. Throughout the past year, the tournament organizers have been providing Platinum Passes to lucky and hard-working players to fill out close to half of the tournament’s entrants total.

Tyson wanted in, so he worked with 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker to compete in a “Testing Tyson” challenge. He undertook three different challenges; Patience, Memory and Reading People.

The first test saw Tyson have people tweet him bad ideas about Survivor and how well he plays and how fake the show is (not really, of course), and he has to have the patience not to tear into them for their stupidity as he’s snarkily oft to do. The Memory portion included him answering facts about his poker and Survivor life (including a question I submitted).

The final test was Reading People, where Tyson had to see fans submit videos of two truths and a lie and he had to pick the lie three out of five times. He got the first question correct on a gimme, he then tanked the next two guesses before shoving all-in on back-to-back guesses to pass the final test.

Tyson Apostol will be one of the several hundred people competing for the chance at winning a multi-million-dollar prize over several days of competition, including Big Brother Canada’s Arlie Shaban and Kevin Martin. You can check out all the action on the PokerStars Twitch channel, with action running from 12 p.m. ET onward each day from now until January 10. Good luck, Tyson!