Is this Bay Area-bred 'Survivor' star the best to ever play the game? For the show's 40th season, 'Winners At War,' Yul Kwon returns with new motivations.

Yul Kwon on the second episode of SURVIVOR: WINNERS AT WAR, which aired Wednesday, Feb. 19 on the CBS Television Network. Yul Kwon on the second episode of SURVIVOR: WINNERS AT WAR, which aired Wednesday, Feb. 19 on the CBS Television Network. Photo: CBS Photo Archive/CBS Via Getty Images Photo: CBS Photo Archive/CBS Via Getty Images Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close Is this Bay Area-bred 'Survivor' star the best to ever play the game? 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

Yul Kwon had barely a moment to catch his breath after reaching the shores of Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands before “Survivor” host Jeff Probst singled him out.

“Yul, you played 14 years ago,” he said. “The iPhone didn’t even exist!”

It was an incisive observation. Kwon won “Survivor: Cook Islands” at age 31 in 2006 — eons ago in reality show time — but after years away, for Season 40, he decided to return to re-enter that familiar gauntlet. His physical, mental and social abilities would again be tested. Same game, different beach, new name: “Survivor: Winners at War.”

“I feel like a dinosaur that’s been time-bombed into the future,” Kwon told Probst in response. “The world has changed, people have changed, ‘Survivor’ has changed and I think I’m going to have to change.”

Kwon would indeed have to evolve, because this time, in 2020, the stakes were higher. The 19 other contestants included prominent contestants from both the show’s early years and more recent seasons, but all, like him, had been named the “sole survivor” at least once before. The prize up for grabs: $2 million.

Kwon, who now works in high-level product management positions at major Silicon Valley tech companies, has since been regarded as a “Survivor” gameplay mastermind, skilled at nuanced social persuasion and manipulation. CBS itself has dubbed him “the king of calculated strategy,” and oddsmakers think he currently has the best shot to win.

But ask Kwon, who grew up in Concord and attended Foothill Middle School and Northgate High School in Walnut Creek, and he’d say it took him years of overcoming self-doubt to get to where he is now.

“When people hear me or meet me, they think I’m a sociable person, but when I was young I really struggled,” he tells SFGate. “Being an ethnic minority was challenging. I didn’t see a lot of positive examples of people who looked like me on TV. I was also bullied quite a bit when I was younger. A lot of this made me develop self-confidence issues: I had severe OCD, serious anxiety. Whenever I thought someone was looking at me I’d have panic attacks … I’d sweat through my clothes.”

One particular bullying event had lasting ramifications. Older boys at school would hide in the bathroom and jump out to scare, push around and fight younger boys like Kwon. He became afraid to go to the bathroom, and as a result, he developed paruresis — “shy bladder syndrome” — which further hindered his social growth.

“It may sound like it’s not a big deal, but it was like I was a prisoner in my own body,” he says. “I couldn’t go to ball games, or the mall or movies, or any of those things a kid would enjoy. Even when I went on ‘Survivor’ that was one thing I was afraid of — this embarrassing secret that would get exposed on national television.”

Through the years, Kwon worked on himself. In school he started playing sports, took a drama class — ”That scared me to death,” he recalls — and gradually cultivated a support network.

“I realized if I didn’t change myself, take incremental steps to cope with anxieties to grow beyond, I’d spend the rest of my life being alone,” he says. “[It’s] ended up becoming a life-long process, to push myself out of my comfort zone. It’s hard to change yourself all at once.”

Kwon’s boundary pushing eventually resulted in an invitation that would change his life forever: an offer to play on “Survivor.”

Kwon was “terrified,” he remembers, but considered the bigger picture. When he was a kid, he didn’t see people who looked like him on TV. That was something that was now within his power to change. He accepted.

When he arrived on Cook Islands for the game, he found an early leg-up in the contest. He had been voted to Exile Island (an in-game limbo where players are sent by other competitors), where he managed to piece together clues that earned him an immunity idol. This physical item prevented Kwon to avoid being voted off up to a certain point in the game. (At the time could be used after voting, rather than before voting, as current rules dictate.)

Photo: Michael Tran Archive/FilmMagic Mark Burnett, Yul Kwon, winner of "Survivor: Cook Islands" and Jeff...

But another reason he was able to stay in the game might have surprised even himself: He was very good at getting people to vote how he wanted.

Riley McAtee, “Survivor” expert and associate editor at culture site The Ringer, attributes part of his success to his ability to stay calm, read people, and persuade them to work with him.

“He’s a very strategic player — that’s what he’s known for — and he’s underrated as a social player,” McAtee explains. “He could play with someone’s ego and get them to trust him … He was [also] the leader of his alliance, but no one was really going against him because people liked him a lot.”

While in the final nine during his first season, Kwon found himself in the minority alliance group of four people. Not to be outwitted, he managed to sway one player, Jonathan Penner, into joining his alliance, thereby making his group the majority voting bloc.

Penner, an actor and screenwriter, was later eventually voted off — thanks in part to a vote by Kwon — but after the show the two cultivated a close relationship.

“I’ve always looked up to him as a role model,” Kwon says, adding that in the years since, he’s gotten to know Penner’s wife Stacy and their kids. So when Stacy became sick with an aggressive form of familial ALS, Kwon wanted to help.

“It’s been a steady and slow progression of the degeneration of her ability to control her body,” he says. “The thing they’re hoping for now is that there’s a cure before their kids might [be at risk]. But it’s been difficult for them emotionally, physically, financially.”

It was around that time that Kwon received another invitation from CBS: “Survivor” was filming “Winners at War,” and producers wanted Kwon to return to the game.

“I thought, hey, you know what? I won my [first] season and for a while I had this 15 mins of fame,” Kwon says. “Going on TV was not a thing I aspired to do, but I had this platform so I thought I’d do something actually meaningful with it.”

Kwon spoke to CBS, and explained the Penners — “part of the ‘Survivor’ family” — were going through a devastating ordeal. He asked if they might be willing to help set up a fundraiser. “They said yes immediately,” Kwon says.

On Wednesday, ahead of tonight's episode, CBS launched a fundraising page to benefit ALS research. Kwon plans to match the first $50,000 that comes in.

“I went into [the game] knowing I’d try to help Stacy,” Kwon adds. “It gave me a lot of courage. Looking at Stacy and Jonathan, it’s incredible how they dealt with a thing that would crush anybody. I cannot fathom. The perseverance and courage — that made me feel like [‘Survivor’] is nothing compared to what they’ve gone through.”

There was, however, still the hurdle of playing the game now, more than a decade after Kwon last won. He hadn’t kept up to date on the myriad rule changes, or how gameplay had evolved to include factors that make “Survivor” more difficult, like this season’s introduction of a new currency system, “fire tokens.”

He had “a lot of trepidation” going into this season, but is banking on the notion that “you interact with [people], build trust and that kind of remains the same.”

McAtee’s observed that in Kwon’s gameplay this time around. When other players panic ahead of tribal council elimination votes, Kwon focuses on making a plan. In one notable instance during Season 40, Kwon offhandedly exposes the so-called secret “Poker Alliance” of veteran players, thereby putting targets on the backs of a few of his strongest opponents.

“I think the way people interpret me is I’m very rational and emotionless, and that’s all a matter of perception,” Kwon says of his game. “But I’m driven more by my heart than by my head. The things I want to achieve are important on an emotional level.”

Still, on “Winners at War,” Kwon appears to be keeping all that emotion under the surface.

“He’s very calm and collected,” McAtee observes. “When other players are scrambling, he’s like, ‘Ok, I just need to talk to this person.’ He’s pulling the strings … He is the center of gravity in his tribe, and yet no one has identified him as a big threat yet. He can make moves without putting a target on his back.”

A big part of Kwon’s strength is in his ability to maneuver behind the scenes. He’s quietly strategic, which has made him a dangerous and formidable adversary, especially when other contestants haven’t yet caught on to his plans.

“Survivor” may be different 14 years after he left the Cook Islands a winner, but his mantra as a competitor remains the same.

“Even if the game changes,” Kwon says, “people are people.”

To donate to "Survivor: Winners at War against ALS," visit CBS' official fundraising page.

"Survivor: Winners at War" airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on CBS.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGate digital editor. Email: alyssa.pereira@sfgate.com | Twitter: @alyspereira

