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craig wrote:

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The specter of an all girls' alliance may seem sexist. After all, why should women be more likely to align than guys or young people or Mormon triathletes? Nevertheless, it happens - almost every season, someone suggests a women's alliance. In Tocantins, it was Debbie. (When I found out about it, Deb claimed she was "joking." Hilarious, Deb. It was so funny, we had to vote her out, lest we die from laughter.) These days, every girl entering the game has a poster of Parvati and her Black Widow Brigade plastered on her bedroom wall. Russell is right to be afraid.

That paragraph makes me wonder if fear of Parvati's legacy hurt your endgame.
Todd dared to target James, but the girls keep him at F4 and he was rewarded. Maybe you should have joined up with the girls at F6 and targted JT as the biggest threat?

Stephen, you fell into the trap that Parv avoided by targeting Ozzy early. You reminded me of strategic fan but challenge weakling Katie, unable to get Tom out because of his IC streak, then getting embarrssed in the jury vote.

Which Survivor strategists inspired your game the most. As a physically weaker male, your situation is more like that of girls than the big strong guys. Functionally, your brotherly bond with JT might as well have been a showmance. Congrats on beating out Sydney! Like Tina and Amber you got the strongest guy to be your partner and then played as a pair, but in the end he was a unbeatable Tom rather than a Colby or Rob M.

Todd and Rob Cesternino definitely inspired me the most. I went in with Todd's strategy of "get one main alliance partner and then get someone weaker than you." I also really liked Rob C's strategy of targeting the outliers - getting the people who didn't have any other friends to be your friend. I did the latter - both Taj and Erinn had no other allies on their tribes. In fact, I didn't want to ally with JT early on. I knew even at Jalapao that he'd kill me in the finals, and I remember giving interviews in the 2nd week about how I'd have to eventually turn on him. The problem was just how the tribe dynamics shook out. I wanted Sydney or Carolina to be my main ally, because I knew that guys win more often against girls (and that I could beat a girl easier than an alpha male). But Carolina was against me and Sydney was 100% with Joe. Spencer, Joe and Sydney had an alliance and JT and I were on the outs of it - that's how we first got together, out of necessity. Taj was a perfect ally, and I would have gone with her all the way if she hadn't decided she was going to quit at final 3. Taj also basically shut down strategically after the merge - you could hardly have a strategic conversation with her. The reason JT was my strategic partner was he was the only other one being strategic out there! You have to play with the people who are playing. When we first merged, and JT was their target, I was almost relieved he was going to be voted out.

Parv targeted Ozzy early, but he wasn't her chief ally - she had her alliance of Amanda, Cirie, Alexis and Natalie. Parv was also really helped in every case by the way the tribe dynamics shook out, pre-merge, at the swap, and then the merge. There's a tremendous amount of luck that goes into any win. I don't hold that against a winner - you have to be able to use your luck intelligently and make big moves, too.

I really don't think there was any time before 4 that I could have safely voted out JT. You're suggesting at 6, I go with Taj, Erinn and Deb and vote out JT and Coach. The problem is, those 3 are all from extremely different groups - Taj is loyal to JT, Deb is loyal to Coach and preferred JT to me. If I approach either of them and suggest getting rid of JT, it gets back to JT. Taj would have found it unnecessary to go against him so early - and besides, she hated Coach with a passion. It was all we could do to convince her to vote out Deb before him. So I think a lot of the game is working with the individual personalities that are out there. I really believe that I was in the best possible position at final 4 - personal loyalty and a final 2 agreement with every single other person. The fact that it didn't work out for me is a function of what happened -after- final 4, not before.