Portrait of Richard Hatch

Richard Hatch

But I've got the million-dollar check written already. I mean, I'm the winner. Survivor 1, E1
Winner

Played on

54 days played

Game record

Vote alignment82%of 11 ballots

78th percentile of 423 castaways

Immunity record1career immunity win

77th percentile of 751 castaways

Jury vote share57%of 7 jury votes

70th percentile of 125 finalists

Occupation at casting Corporate Trainer Hometown Middletown, Rhode Island

Beyond Survivor
House of Villains
Played with 29 castaways across 2 seasons See every connection ↓

Hatch has shared a beach with twenty-nine other castaways.

Biography

Richard Hatch is the original Sole Survivor, the corporate trainer from Rhode Island who won the very first season of Survivor (Borneo, 2000) and, in doing so, invented the modern strategy of the game. Where other castaways treated the show as a camping trip, Hatch built the first true alliance, quietly coordinating the Tagi four to pick off their rivals one by one and marching to a 4-3 jury victory over Kelly Wiglesworth.

He returned a decade later for Survivor: All-Stars (Season 8), where an early exit did little to dim his notoriety as the game's founding villain and unapologetic mastermind. Off the island, Hatch famously served prison time for failing to pay taxes on his $1 million prize, a saga that kept him in the headlines for years.

Brash, cunning and impossible to ignore, Richard Hatch remains the blueprint every strategist since has studied. Twenty-plus years on, he is still shorthand for the moment Survivor stopped being a survival show and became a social-strategy game.

Get to know Richard Hatch

Born in Newport, Rhode Island The hometown on their cast bio, Middletown, Rhode Island, is where they were living when they were picked for the show.

Richard Hatch's own answers from the pre-game cast profile CBS published before the season aired.

Luxury item
Journal
“I'm ecstatic! Surviving the island adventure and plunging into the interpersonal dynamics are what makes life fun for me.”
Richard Hatch, in that same pre-game profile

Alliances fans have named

Survivor never names an alliance on screen. These names, and who counts as a member, are how the fan community records the game rather than an official record of it.

Birthplace, pre-game profile and alliance facts adapted from Survivor Fandom and Wikipedia, retrieved 2026-07-21. Licensed CC BY-SA.

Fan poll Players

Survivor Hall of Fame: is Richard Hatch in or out?

Tap to vote and see what fans think

Seasons

Season Result Days Tribes Votes against Confessionals
Borneo Season 1, 2000 Tagi Rattana 6 92
All-Stars Season 8, 2004 4th voted out Mogo Mogo 6 21

Castaway network

Richard Hatch’s connections

The strongest overlaps are surfaced first; every castmate is organized by season below.

29
castaway connections
14
tribemates
3
repeat castmates
5
winners

Connections worth exploring

Repeat pairings, other-show overlaps, tribe overlap, winners and Survivor veterans rise to the top.

Survivor 1 & 8

Rudy Boesch

2 Survivor seasons

2 seasons together Shared a tribe

Survivor 1 & 8

Susan Hawk

2 Survivor seasons

2 seasons together Shared a tribe

Survivor 8

Ethan Zohn

3 Survivor seasons

Shared a tribe Winner

Every castaway, by season

Open a season for the complete cast list and the context behind each connection.

Borneo Season 1, 2000 15 castaways 5 returning players View cast

Explore the full Borneo cast →

All-Stars Season 8, 2004 17 castaways 5 winners 17 returning players View cast

Explore the full All-Stars cast →

Explore Richard Hatch in the graph → Find a path from Richard Hatch Show me another castaway