No doubt you would like to believe that if it makes you feel better.

Sorry Garrett finished 17th, perhaps he and Semhar Tadesse might very well be among the best if not for "variance." Semhar did have in her profile

Why you think you will be the sole SURVIVOR: I think I'll win Survivor because I'm the girl that no one would expect to. I’m slick and sweet.

so it must have just been short term bad luck. Who can really say in the end.


All the best.

Sigh, jury votes aren't relevant to the discussion on variance and results oriented thinking.

I'm not going to argue with you about whether Garrett was mediocre or terrible. It's tough to know. He seemed to be in a great spot before the lol open forum.

I admitted in my other post that we wouldn't be having the discussion if he wasn't a 2p2er. You seem to have ignored the point I made and just restated your opinion.

We fundamentally disagree about a season's results having little to no meaning because you don't know what you're talking about. Of course it isn't like a coinflip, and of course the results are irrelevant.

The point you seem to be trying to make is that one can form meaningful opinions on a player's ability after just one season. Nobody will argue with this.

The earlier someone finishes the more likely they aren't good, but the less information we have to know for sure. Also a good chance the edit will make it seem like they're worse than they are, imo. In fact I'd be shocked if there weren't a couple solid players booted very early and we got a negative slice of their first 72-144 hours to help from a narrative.

All it takes is to end up on the wrong side of a true great player (one good enough to easily fall under the radar of a decent player).

fwiw, I don't think Garrett is a great player, and I'm sceptical that he's a decent player. I'm just not sure he's as bad as we'd consider him if he wasn't a 2p2er.

I think there is a clear distinction between results matter and only results matter. Do you believe because Sandra won twice, she is thereby the best player in the history of Survivor? I realize the term best is subjective and can't objectively be determined. Especially if you're considering each individual season as independent of another due to their vast fundamental changes. (which imo. make it near impossible to compare players from different) If you could hypothetically chose one Survivor player who has played the game in the past going into a season of Survivor, would you chose Sandra because she has the strongest results? If yes, can you elaborate on why you would chose Sandra besides her results.

The Monteroy- comes on whole wheat bread with a dash of pretension, a healthy amount of condescension, and a big **** eating grin to top it off!

Cool, perhaps one day someone will name an item after you if and when you become memorable.


She would have to be in the discussion, though a valid case could be made for other players like Pavarti or Boston Rob. Many on this specific forum characterize her as a total donk on a repeated heater, and that is just their bias as to how they like the game played speaking more than actual reality. Results do matter. A separate category for best single season player could exist as well where people could toss in people like Yul in the equation.


The game itself changes as it ages as well (even if no other changes were made), and the game is played much faster than it was way back in the days. Some players end up playing way too fast (like that Zane or whatever guy who just quit smoking).

Sandra won an early season and a fully loaded All-Star season. Anyone who does not include her in the discussion for best player is just annoyed she won, and all the variance talk that exists for her would not be as much on display if a more 2+2 friendly player was the two time champ.

All the best.

P.S. I plan to beat all of you in the Survivor pool, but if I do not I will simply chalk that up to variance and the results will not matter

I think most posters here are aware that many different play styles can be successful however the common theme amongst those that are respected are that the player had some sort of control of the games progression. Sandra never had much influence in either game and was lucky to sit at FTC with the biggest goats (Lil and Hantz) plus have a favourable jury because she successfully failed to tank her own game whilst trying to help them. If I had to pick a player type that leads itself to success it would be the Sophie, Stephen, Todd type. Never at the forefront but always holding the most information and having a workable win condition.

A small change to your post and we are in total agreement. Change

I think most posters here are aware that many different play styles can be successful however the common theme amongst those that are respected are that the player had some sort of control of the games progression.


to

I think most posters here are aware that many different play styles can be successful however the common theme amongst those that are respected on this forum are that the player had some sort of control of the games progression.


The niche that is twoplustwo likes that type of player, even though we have seen other approaches work well in the game. Sandra pretty much invented the "anyone but me" approach, which is a more passive approach that twoplustwoers generally hate and dismiss as pure luck as you did in the rest of your post.

Thanks all for the discussion today, it was fun to see all of you try so hard on something you have genuinely strong feelings about. I hope we all enjoy this season.

All the best.

It doesn't come down to the style of play you like. Like a lot of people here I have a natural preference for the Yul types, but nobody is saying that Natalie White should be trying to rule her tribe with an iron fist. Whatever approach someone adopts, there are basic principles that shouldn't be violated - don't place blind loyalty above maximizing your EV, don't get into random arguments, have a plan for accomplishing your goals, and so on. Sandra not only pays no heed to these, she couldn't discuss them with you if you tried.

You can say that results are what matter most, but if one of your horses came to you and asked how to improve their game you wouldn't just point to their results and wave them off; and if somebody who was going on Survivor asked you they could learn from Sandra you wouldn't be able to tell them, because there's nothing there. Maybe her understanding of the game (as far as it even exists) is instinctual, but there are many better players who have those same instincts but complement them with the ability to actually think about what's happening.

At least there's no question of whether or not your condescension is intentional!

Can you invent an approach like that? You see multiple players with that mentality on every season, including the ones that preceded hers; Rudy even says 'as long as it ain't me I don't care' a few episodes into Borneo.

It's a stretch to call it an approach, because there doesn't seem to be anything distinct about it. You can debate the merits of active or passive styles for different players, but 'I don't want to get voted out' is fundamental to any way of playing the game. If it is a meaningful description I don't know that Sandra abides by it - why put herself out there to keep Courtney, or spend 37 days trying to vote out Russell?

Sandra's unique combination of being comically bad at the physical aspect of the game (so she can't backdoor a win by going on a challenge run or winning the final immunity) and actively disavowing the strategic aspect of the game means she has to hope she lands in an endgame where she is popular enough to win and people will take her anyway. This is all the more unlikely because she takes pride in putting no effort into keeping people who might be loyal to her or would take her against their own interests. She thought she would lose to Lill and spent a month sabotaging her own game in a failed attempt to take out Russell, and had to rely on their poor decisions at the end. If you asked at the F3/F4 stages of her respective games whether she had played well, her biggest fans would be hard-pressed to say yes; the fact that she got there on the river twice does nothing to change that.

It's funny you bring her up because had Fairplay not quit Fans vs Favs she would have been voted out first.

Fairplay did quit (and as a Fairplay fan I was not impressed at the time). Any season and player can be second guessed to death with theoretical possibilities to invalidate any player if you really want, but that does not change the outcome of the seasons.


I will make this pretty much my last post in this debate because the show is on later and much of what we talked about will be old news anyway.

Talking about maximizing EV and everything else on an internet forum about a game played in squalor for over a month sounds good in theory, but I suspect once out there the reality is quite a bit different than the theory. As one MMA fighter said - everyone has a game plan until they are punched in the face.

No doubt Garrett was the purest firm of 2+2 style player to be on the show, and he laced all of his analysis of the show with poker references, but in the end that comes off as another variation of a type of book smarts without real world people smarts, and the latter is needed to do well in this game as well.

Would Garret have lasted longer in the brawn tribe, where he wouldn't stand out and be a hidden "brain" amongst dummies (assuming brawn would *very unlikely* go to tribal counsel)? For argument's sake, sure. But he wasn't given the brawn hand. He was dealt the brain hand/tribe.

What did he do with the brain hand? He hounded a bunch of uber-sensitive brainiacs, people who are highly smart in one thing (and kinda clueless in many others), anti-social by nature, with feverish abilities to think ahead. He was utterly clueless to the physical hardship (he was starting to crack and fade), lack of comforts like food and shelter, and the different personalities of People Who Are Not Him who are facing the same situation. He took what should have been a non-choice for tribal, and basically told his tribe members that he is a ripe pig ready for the spit.

He knows all about EV and the theories you and others talk about, and yet he got beaten down. Will this happen 100% of the time if the same game is played 100 times with the same people? Of course not, but in the end the theoretical game can only go so far, and actual results do matter. That is why we see all different types of people with different styles do well and badly in this game. The ordeal of being out there, and it's impact on various EV choices, is a lot more than many here give credit.


She perfected the "anyone but me" approach and her performances at the final tribal councils were quite good. Think Amanda could have benefited if Sandra was ghosting her on her two special final tribal performances? If you believe "nothing is there" then Sandra's final tribal communication abilities would be of no use to Amanda, correct?

When they win twice they too can enter the discussion of best player ever.

Thanks for the discussion guys and enjoy the show.

All the best.

Brook is one that comes to mind as a player that showed some flashes of being good but just got a completely lethal tribal draw. That male Vanuatu tribe divided so clearly 5-4 between young and old due to cultural and generational differences. The older guys looked up to Sarge and Sarge was going to see to it that a young guy went home. I think the best survivor player in the world would be in a very tough spot in that tribe if they were under 30. The best play was probably to lay low and hope to make it to a merge or swap, but you still need a good bit of luck to pull that off.

There are countless players who seemed to play perfectly well but were eliminated due to an unfortunate series of events largely outside of their control. Aaron in China, or one of my favorites Jeff Varner from Australia, to name a few more. There are also many players who made it very deep due to favorable circumstances, regardless of (or perhaps in spite of) their interactions with other players and strategic decisions.

I think the best way to evaluate survivor players is based on their social skills and the strategic decisions they make based on the information available to them. Likewise when evaluating a poker player, if I only have a tiny sample size of results available to me then I would rather look at the way they played in those games rather than what their outcomes were in those games.

It surprises me that somebody who seems to understand the luck and variance in poker doesn't see similar luck and variance in Survivor and sports (unless I misconstrued your position on poker).

One of the players in the running for your greatest player ever - Boston Rob - came back for Survivor All Stars and was clearly the most surprising choice at the time. Had Michael Skupin or Jeff Varner or Johnny Fairplay taken the spot, Boston Rob doesn't play that season and almost assuredly never plays again. He'd be left with only one 10th place finish to his resume. That little bit of luck that even got him the second chance is the difference between him having a chance to be the greatest player ever in your mind versus being another forgotten pre-jury contestant.

At the end of the day your position is that results = great player. My position is that the process that goes into the decision is what counts. You can't always predict what a player will do; you have to use your best hypothesis on what they'll do. You can't always bond with a player; you have to try your best. To the best of my ability, I try to assess what a player was thinking when making their decisions. If their thought process was sound but didn't work, I'll still give them some credit. If their thought process wasn't sound but still worked out (e.g. Sandra), I'll dock them. And I try to run through that as often as possible between in-show events, post-show interviews, etc.

Lastly, we don't always think hyper-aggressive players are the best. Denise is pretty highly regarded, and she played a very close to the vest game. I think Vecepia is underrated even though she never "controlled" the game. Russell is a pretty bad player as he constantly disrespects players while making his moves, which will make it extremely difficult for him to win.

All the best.

Great post. Also: mentioning Sandra ITT is the equivalent of any character throwing a chair on "The Boondocks".

Maybe not GOAT since he couldn't figure out how to win, but not a good player???

Really. For the better part of two seasons, if he wanted you gone, you were gone even if your name was Boston Rob.

Let's how not good a player he was.

He talked a past winner (on an opposing tribe, no less) into handing him an immunity idol. (JT)

He talked a future winner into essentially voting himself off. (Tyson)

He manipulated his tribe to vote out a future winner that's in the GOAT discussion. (Boston Rob)

So I have to ask, what do you think constitutes being a good player?

Monteroy's wall of texts are unintentionally forcing others to come to my defense.

Monteroy= gman06 gimmick account obv

Somebody who gives themselves a reasonable shot to win.

In my opinion, Russell is a good tactician but there is more to being a successful player than excellent tactics. What good is being a good tactician if you will always have difficulty securing votes in the end?

Monterey: I'm going to have to stop backing you.

Horse: why my roi is like 150%?

Monterey: but you ran kings into aces in your last tourny and lost on hand number 1.

Horse: umm, ok?

We need a new episode desperately.

How did he "talk" JT into anything? That was a complete mistake. He wanted to break up Sandra/Courtney before the merge, it was *Sandra* who went to Russell telling him Coach wanted him out, and "Russell's so stupid, he at that crap up."

Tyson was an idiot, but okay, good Hail Mary that worked out.

Again, this was at least partially a mistake. Rob was still drawing live after the Tyson screw-up, but loopy Jerri thought Russell giving Part the HII was some sort of noble gesture that she never got and thus charmed Coach into going with Russell. Which even Coach knew was a huge mistake.

So yeah, so okay plays and some nice rungood. I just think his schtick was boring almost from the start, but I'm obviously in the minority.

Lol. Tonight!

I don't 100% disagree. To me, what you're describing the difference between a good player and a great player.