Jean-Robert Bellande -- Can he win this reality show?

I love one thing more than anything else -- reality TV.  Oh, you say, what about your husband, what about your children?  Hey, this is a family-wide obsession.  If Jeff Probst and I were both drowning and you could save both of us, my son would dive in, grab Jeff, pull him to safety, and start talking to him about  Boston Rob, Russell Hantz and Richard Hatch till someone came to drag my lifeless body out of the water.

I also happen to love poker.  Watching it, playing it, reading about it, writing about it.  It's a borderline obsession -- my resistance to watching the show 2 Months, 2 Million the only thing that's keeping me from starring in next week's episode of Intervention. 

So when these two worlds collide, to say I'm euphoric would be like saying Phil Hellmuth has a bit of an ego.

When Jean-Robert Bellande was on Survivor it was like eating a hot fudge sundae on top of a brownie on top of a birthday cake served on Clive Owen.   Jean-Robert provided many entertaining moments on the show, he was both calculating and clueless.  He thought his strategic wiles would carry him to the end, but his hubris led to a too-early exit.  Yet I enjoyed his character on the show.

In the years since, I've discovered by following his tweets that he wasn't playing a character -- that's him.  He doesn't take himself or what he does too seriously, yet he is very competitive.  He's had some tournament success and has made a splash with his brash talk and over-sized personality.  But he has no bracelet and no WPT wins.  Could that dry spell come to an end this year?

As I type this, Jean-Robert has been on a roller coaster of a Day 5 at the World Series of Poker Main Event.  He's already in the money, at least in the top 300, beating his prior best finish in the Main Event.  But, of course, like any poker player, he wants more.  I'm rooting for him to go all the way.  And, from the tweets I've seen, I'm not alone.