Alina's attractive but she's a hypocritical bitch. She criticises Marty and Brenda for deriding other players when she herself called everyone stupid for taking her out. I'd take Brenda over Alina any day.

slanche: I think you're right. Kelly might be assuming the part of perfect F3 goat more than Dan, given that the recap contained lots of Dan being funny and even more of people complaining about Kelly.

Sent Rob C. my novel-length questions over FB, hopefully I'll get a response ;/

So if the recap didn't show Dan being funny and social, he'd be a better F3 goat?

And huge lol to Jane "getting a weak edit". She's gotten an uber-positive, fan favorite, "Jane is good and her enemies are evil" edit.

showing videos in multiple episodes of a survivor dancing with added music should be a pretty good indicator of a favorable edit

all indications show that CBS is trying to give Jane the fan favorite edit

I'll take the gentleman's bet on this one. Jane is going to be an amazingly bitter, stupid, horrible jury member (and there's almost no way she makes the F3, so she's like 99% to be on the jury and whine about how "the good people didn't get to the end" or whatever). I'll be shocked if she votes for the best strategist/player instead of just voting for who she likes the most.

Why does -
Equal - The jury is not bound to add up strategy points and power move bonuses. They're supposed to vote on who they want to win.

Why is this so hard for gamers to come to grips with?

ya welcome to survivor. its a popularity contest with a touch of strategy.

I'm actually coming to believe that it's not that hard as many ITT are rooting pretty diligently for Fabio. And I doubt you could have rounded up any votes for Sugar on Gabon. I think they understand it just fine, they just like calling other people hyprocrites. Love you guys. Just havin a little fun, here.

When you play a game of football, who should win: the better team...or the nicer team?

the team with the prettier colors, ldo

The rules of football are such that, no matter what else happens in the game, the team with the most points wins.

The rules of Survivor are such that the jury can vote for whomever they want for whatever reason they want. The person with the most jury votes wins. I would think a good strategy would be to be nice to the people that get to vote.

Easy game.

No one is going to argue that being nice is a BAD plan. That doesn't mean it's a strategy, and it doesn't mean it's the way people should actually vote. You can call that an opinion if you want, but then why are people only up in arms when a "nice person/bad player" wins? No one is ever upset when a Hatch or a Parvati wins, and they're supposedly "villains" and "evil."

You do realize that in football there is a fairly objective scoring system in place, right? And that in Survivor, not so much.

You have to figure out what those mokes you are playing with are going to value. Does winning competitions win points? Does providing for the tribe win points? Does making people laugh win points? Does stabbing people in the back win points? Do you win points for finding HIIs? Do you win points for using HIIs to your advantage? Do you win points for getting someone to give you their HII? There is no set scoring system. Each juror is going to have their own idea of what is important to them. They are not going to consult Kos for their voting criteria. The winner will not be determined by a stop watch. The game is pretty complex. You have to get to the end with some idea of how to win a majority vote. Whether that invloves orchestrating your end game partners to be huge duds that no one is excited to vote for, or conducting yourself in such a way that others actually want to vote for you. Sometimes the things you do to win points with one player will lose you points with others. Sometimes the things you do to advance yourself in the game might lose you points in winning the votes. It's tricky. But I think that is what ultimately what makes it an interesting game. There are all kinds of games which actually ARE measured objectively. If football floats your boat, then watch football.

looking forward to next week's episode

My Everywoman was upset when Hatch won. To be fair, she probably would have been upset if Kelly won also. (Note to 'villains': sit next to a dud! if you know what's good for you.) Heidik - Clay was also a lose - lose for my Everywoman.

My Everywoman preferred that Amber win over Boston Rob. {shudder}

My Everywoman was happy that JT won over Stephen.

My Everywoman was completely fine with Bob winning Gabon.

To be fair, my Everywoman does not get 'up in arms' about a Survivor result, but she is sometimes disatisfied.

I'm thinking by 'no one' you mean 'no one who has a valid opinion according to Kos', which in my opinion tends to be a huge flaw in how you think about Survivor. They don't populate the game with Kos clones. It's a glom of random people--one or more of whom could have more in common with my Everywoman than with you or I.

In fairness, your everywoman sounds like a very tiresome person .

As much as I wish every jury were composed of John Fincher clones, it will sadly never be so. Heidik probably seems even more unlikeable to Soncy's everywoman than Russell does, but at least Heidik was able to pretend to care about the people he was around.

Kirby: How can you say Jane is stupid after watching the recap? I also see no reason whatsoever she'd be a bitter jury member.

There were hints of this before, but after watching the recap I think it's pretty hard to say Jane isn't the best player this season (so far) with the information we have.

Most of the "fans of the show" end up voting for gameplay over likability/emotion/bitterness, and that's who I'm talking about. People like Fincher in Samoa, Kathy in All Stars, and Peih-Gee in China had every reason to vote out of anger and vote against the person who ousted them (who also happened to be the best game player), yet they voted for them to win.

Now, I realize there are people who watch the show and want Player X to win because they like them. That's fine...they're just the type of people who don't really understand the game. If you stick 15 of those people on a random season, a couple of them are bound to sneak through to the end, and one might even win. That doesn't mean they're better players than the strategist, and the reason is obvious: they're interchangeable. For every likable idiot that gets to the end, there are five of them who were booted pre-merge.

For whatever reason, any argument I make about this turns into Kos and his robotic strategy vs. "the average Joe recruit who only votes based on likability." You guys do realize that you can be likable AND be a good strategist, right? Hell, most of the good strategists we've seen have been VERY likable people.

The point is you have no understanding what being a "good strategist" in this game entails

You have a very limited view of strategy.

And again with how people "should" vote. There is no should.

Exactly, there's more to this game than making moves that take you 3 days further, 9 days further or 21 days further. You get 5-10k for coming in 20th, 100k for 2nd and 1M for first. It's blatantly easy to see that the most important part of the the game is building a jury and that requires strategy, just not strategy Kos and Russell find entertaining.

Sorry for using the "R" word, I just finished rewatching Heroes Vs Villains.

No, you just don't define strategy the same way I do. Being nice is not a strategy. There is no strategic decision behind being nice, funny, hot, charismatic, etc. There is a difference between making strategic decisions and having common sense.

Heroes vs Villains is so damn re-watchable compared to other "good" seasons *must be the HD + familiar faces"

If you guys would like a personalized survivor gif avatar but havn't seen anything you like from nicaragua so far, let me know if you want me to make you one from HeroesvsVillains as I have all the episodes in HD quality

Hell, I might even tempt myself to get rid of my usual John Cena avatar gif if I find the right scene

Watch yourself. She's a good mom. I'm glad I married her son. I even enjoy discussing Survivor with her. She has a much different perspective than mine, so I'm always interested in seeing what she thinks about the players or the plays being made. Of course, I DON'T wish for the jury to be composed of John Fincher clones. I fear it would actually simplify the game in addition to making it less interesting from a diversity of characters standpoint. When there is a loon or two in the game, or players who may not be breaking their necks attempting to win, I think it's more difficult to predict and control what actions players are going to take.