Surviving week after week on The Anonymous isn’t easy for anybody, but for Robbi Jade Lew, staying alive in the game seemed like an uphill battle from Day 1.
Although she intentionally hid the fact that she’s a professional poker player, the rest of the players saw her as a threat after she dominated the first challenge. From there, she constantly found herself with a target on her back that she just couldn’t shake. In the latest episode, it all caught up to her.
The odds were in Robbi’s favor. She received one nomination for elimination compared to Christopher’s five. Still, Victoria won the power of The Anonymous and sent Robbi packing.
After her elimination, Robbi spoke to Reality Tea about her unceremonious exit from the show. She’s well aware that she was a threat to the other players, but still, she’s trying to piece together why everyone saw that so quickly.
Robbi came to The Anonymous with a plan
Of course, Robbi came to this game with a desire to win. She also had another goal in mind. She didn’t want to go home first like other poker players usually do on reality competition shows.
“In all of these shows, they always seem to be the first to be eliminated,” Robbi explained. “My angle was to not come off as a poker player. That was supposed to work for me, not against me.”
The first challenge made it a little difficult for Robbi to hide her smarts. When tasked with memorizing a long sequence of symbols, Robbi made it look easy, and from there, everyone thought she was the biggest threat in the house. Meanwhile, Robbi had a hard time wrapping her head around that. Plenty of other threats existed in the house, like you know, a Big Brother winner.
“Watching it back, I’m like why did so many people think I’m a threat? At that point, people had already kind of figured out who Nina was. [Xavier] already said who he was,” Robbi reflected.
Why the new players got under her skin
DANI sent everyone for a whirl when she introduced three new players to the game in Episode 4. New players along with refreshed handles sent everyone into a tailspin. For obvious reasons, Robbi wasn’t too thrilled to see those new players.
“That kind of got under my skin when the new people came in because of course, they’re likely going to be The Anonymous,” Robbi explained.
“When you’re a new person, the only thing you want to know right way is who is the biggest threat.’ I know my name came up multiple times,” she continued.
Ultimately, Robbi was right. Victoria got the power of The Anonymous during her first episode on the show and chose to send Robbi home. Part of that decision was because she didn’t want to sacrifice her showmance with Chris. The other part was the consistent mindset in the house that Robbi was the biggest threat. Either way, Robbi felt like Victoria made the wrong move.
“[Christopher] had like five people that had voted for him,” Robbi said, reflecting on the unlikely odds of her getting sent home.
“I would have picked Andy because he contributed the least in the pot,” she continued.
Robbi had a sinking feeling she’d be going home
When all of the players were standing on the dial, waiting to hear their fate, Robbi said she had a gut feeling she was going home. Then, when DANI said Andy was safe from elimination, she knew that her time was probably about to come to an end. She felt like the writing was on the wall.
Robbie explained, “The moment that Andy was saved, and he was the first one saved, I already knew it was me. It was like an instant thing. The people remaining were me, Nina, Chris, and [Xavier]. We’re the biggest threats in the house.”
Another thing that added to those feelings was the fact that Victoria took forever to make her decision. Robbi joked that she almost “took a nap” waiting for The Anonymous to make their move because it took so long. That made her feel pretty suspicious that it was one of the new players, and they were in their hideout seriously struggling with their decision.
Next time, Robbi’s bringing a different strategy
Coming into the show, Robbi said she felt like she wanted to play her game in the middle of the road. She didn’t want to be a weak player, but she also didn’t want to be labeled as a threat right away. Compared to the rest of the players, she thinks Nina’s strategy was the most similar to what she was trying to achieve.
“I wanted to be in with the people, but maybe one of those people who keeps it sort of lowkey. Kind of like how Nina presented herself” Robbi explained.
However, she couldn’t be lowkey once she had that unshakeable target on her back.
“I kind of wished that the memory challenge happened later because that automatically typecasted me right away. It’s the first impression, and I’m always battling kind of being the intelligent one in the house after that.”
If she could do it all over again, Robbi said she would probably be less communicative in the chat, even though it’s hard when you have people gunning for you. She joked that maybe everyone should have played like Wayne played, by just not saying anything.
“Maybe I should just say nothing. Maybe we should all just say nothing,” she said with a laugh.
All jokes aside, she made it clear that she doesn’t have any hard feelings about how she got kicked out of the game, although she said it’s “unfortunate” to leave on Episode 5. Still, she had a departing message for the other players.
“Sorry I was such a threat to you,” Robbi teased. “Probably a good idea for The Anonymous to get rid of me because I probably would have won it.”
The Anonymous continues on USA Network on Monday nights at 11/10c.
TELL US – WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS ON ROBBI’S GAMEPLAY ON THE ANONYMOUS? DID YOU EXPECT HER TO LAST LONGER IN THE COMPETITION? DO YOU THINK VICTORIA MADE A MISTAKE BY ELIMINATING HER?
