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Photo: Netflix
Hong Jin-ho
Pro poker player
★ The Genius S1 winner · Bloody Game 3 third place
Former pro gamer · ₩3B in poker winnings
콩폭풍저그황신
In the game0 pieces
A former StarCraft Zerg pro gamer, Hong Jin-ho is now a professional poker player and TV personality. He was nicknamed 'Kong' for his many runner-up finishes as a gamer, then won the very first season of The Genius in 2013 with creative solutions and a near-unbeatable death-match record, becoming the face of Korean brain survival. Since then he has finished joint runner-up on The Time Hotel and played the Bloody Game series and Netflix's Death Game, earning a reputation as an inclusive leader who keeps his alliances together. In poker he is among Korea's best, with a WSOP bracelet won in 2022. Season 3's announcement introduced him as The Genius's first champion and a poker player with about 3 billion won in career earnings.
Did you know
- 'Kong' began as a play on the hard pronunciation of 'Hong' and, because of his many runner-up finishes, came to stand for 'second place'.
- Winning season 1 of The Genius finally gave him the champion's speech he never got to give as a pro gamer.
- Excluding exhibition events, Dead Again is his eighth survival show and his first Jung Jong-yeon survival show in about 11 years, since the Grand Final.
- He and Seo Chul-gu are the only players to accept offers from both The Devil's Plan and Bloody Game.
- He already knows Shindong and Oh Hyun-min from SBS's Game Show Yuhui Nakrak, Nucksal and Stella Jang from the mafia segment of radio's Bae Sung-jae's Ten, and John Park from The Time Hotel.
Survival show record
- 2013The Genius: Rules of the Game (tvN, Season 1)★ Winner
His solution in 'Open, Pass' became known as 'Kong-pen Pass'. He survived all three of his death matches and beat Kim Kyung-ran 2-0 in the final.
- 2013~2014The Genius: Rule Breaker (tvN, Season 2)Eliminated in episode 7
Led a big alliance early on, but lost a luck-heavy death match (an Indian-poker-style game) to Eun Ji-won in episode 7.
- 2015The Genius: Grand Final (tvN, Season 4)Eliminated in episode 10 (top 5)
Played to survive and lasted deep into the season, but lost an episode-10 poker death match to Kim Kyung-hoon.
- 2023The Time Hotel (TVING)★ Joint runner-up
Reached the final with John Park and Hwang Je-sung in their three-way alliance, but lost the title to John Park.
- 2023Bloody Game 2 (Wavve)★ Final · joint 3rd
Ran the game with Seo Chul-gu at the head of the 'Wild team' and won the semifinal 'Number Auction' with a rule everyone else had forgotten, but went out in the final's 'Color Turn' after misreading the rules.
- 2024~2025Bloody Game 3 (Wavve)★ Final · 3rd place
Never returned to a death match after day 1 and finished third in the final behind Jang Dong-min and Akeo.