Kos-

I am very much like you in that I respect strategy and social game more than anything and were I on the jury, would vote based on that. I think the one thing that people still take issue with you on is that you seem to transfer your lack of respect for jury members who vote based upon other criteria (a disrespect I also share!) into an opinion that those players voted "incorrectly".

For example, you feel that Russel was the deserving winner of S19 and the jury voted wrong. But it was he who did not play/conduct himself, etc. well enough to get their votes. It was a flaw in his own game to not realize that that jury would vote emotionally and play that up. As you have yourself said, it's possible to be ruthlessly strategic to get to the end but still be likable to get the votes. Todd, Rich, Yul, JT, etc etc etc

By its own nature, it is impossible for the jury members to vote "incorrectly." They define their own voting criteria, and it is the player who figures out the way to appeal to that the best that walks away with the million. Every player who has ever won was "deserving" of the title by the very fact that they won.

I know, it's a very bitter pill for me to swallow as well. It still doesn't (and may never) sit well with me that Natalie beat Russel, or that Sandra walked away after S20 with the impression that she is clearly the greatest player to ever play the game because she's won twice. Ugh. But even the fact that after S19, players said that they'd vote for Russell if they had to do it over again is moot, because the versions of themselves that vote are not the ones who have had time away from the game to reflect. It's the versions of themselves still out there on the island, stressed out, tired, still feeling screwed over, etc.

Too much in these threads (and I am totally guilty of this) do we assume that the players are playing rationally, AND that they should play assuming that their opponents are also playing rationally. But after 21 seasons, it's pretty clear that the vast majority of them do not.

For Russell to feel like he got screwed (and we as well) by him not winning is equal to us trying to bluff some level 1 donkey on the river and then taking our frustration out on him when he looks us up with ace high. The fault lies in our own unwillingness to play the player.

It's not just the equity in the million, it's the significant $$ for running deep and the (difficult to quantify) exposure equity. These guys get paid for interviews, join up on multiple reality shows and, even have a shot at future Survivors (although, I'm sure there can't be many more opportunities for that left). Also, there's surely a ton of advertising gigs available for years to come.

I think it'd be straight up irresponsible to pass it up if they didn't have as much money/exposure as they already do (I mean given they're the type of people that are okay exposing themselves to the world and can clearly use their exposure to market themselves).

Given my limited knowledge of their net worth, I doubt they have enough money to pass up the opportunity.

Edit. I really like Soncy's point about respecting the average Survivor player (who will represent a significant portion of the jury, obv) will increase your chances of winning. I mean, it adds a whole other layer of deception if you can't relate to the people you're out there with. It's almost 6 weeks of having to conceal condescending vibes while enduring extreme physical and mental stress.

Also, I think people are really overestimating why these abrasive strategic players make it so far. First off, while I think there's going to be more players using the UTR strategy there has to be quite a few Sash and Russel types (only comparing them in a very broad sense) that get voted out early that we aren't really aware of (due to not being around much/editing). So, only some of them are making it to the end. I don't consider this point to hold much weight, but I think it's a small factor.

On to my main point. I really think it's more likely a guy like Russel (or Sash-again, a broad comparison ) is able to make it so far because the more savvy players want them beside them when facing the jury. I find it really hard to believe that people wouldn't don't recognize how dangerous these players are and don't get together and get rid of them, well before the end. I'm not completely dismissing Russel's game but, especially on HvV, I think a big part of him going to the end was due to his unlikeliness to garner jury votes.

My apologies if this has all been hashed out before, especially considering I didn't take the time to really delve into the argument. Reading all of the lengthy, carefully thought out analysis by a lot of posters itt really made this season more enjoyable for me. Despite recognizing this was way down the list of Survivor seasons, it's near the top of mine because I just didn't pay much attention to Survivor before.

The fundamental difference with S19 for Russell though was he went in 8-4 down at the merge and got 3 of them to FTC and was the mastermind behind the entire thing. Aggressive was really the only way it was going to work. The jury was just a bunch of nits that season moreso than any other. Season 20 was nothing like his S19 game however

Double Down, sufur:

There's hope for both of you. Those were two pretty good posts...

Well, there's no "incorrect" in that there aren't actual guidelines people must follow. To use a sports analogy, it's no different than a 20-3, 4.50 pitcher winning the Cy Young over a guy who went 12-10, 2.50. Just because the voters think wins are important doesn't make them right, and the 12-10 guy (who was obviously the better pitcher to anyone with half a brain) definitely got screwed. The issue I have is that several people ITT would argue that the 20-3 guy is better "because he won." Even if 99% of the country realizes the 12-10 guy was better, if the other 1% are the only people voting on this award, the 20-3 guy will win. Does that make him deserving of the award? Is he more deserving than the 12-10 guy?

Survivor is even harder because you only have 7-9 jurors, and they don't even get to watch most of the game. Why is everyone so quick to proclaim someone a good/bad player based on them receiving enough votes (4-5) to win? Do people assume there's no variance in a 7-9 person jury, or do they just ignore this?

There are certain spots where it's +EV to bluff a fish, right? Let's say your bluff works 60% of the time, and it only costs you a third of the pot to attempt it. When we bluff and get called by A-high 40% of the time, that doesn't make the play "incorrect." We're going to look really dumb 40% of the time, but it's still the correct play to bluff.

Everyone can vote how they like, but that doesn't mean the majority (of only 7-9 people!) is "correct." So when I argue that Boston Rob deserved to win ASS and would have received my vote, it's an opinion. Of course, I'm going to bash the people that voted for Amber because I think they're stupid, but I'm not wrong simply because Amber won. Her winning (based on the opinions of four people) does not automatically make her the "correct" choice and invalidate my opinion that Boston Rob deserved to win.

From a strategy point of view that season was a complete snoozer. Steph and Bobby Jon were entertaining but I don't think there was 1 semi interesting or suspenseful vote until Greg went out. The FTC was the worst ever.

just saw the finale and reunion

what an amazing turn around , couldnt have ended better with the trainwrecking that was going on.

sucks that jane won the fan favourite

Sorry if i didnt follow the thread too much this season and its been mentionned multiple times...

but it was so amazing how nervous sash got everytime someone asked him a direct question and he had to lie about something in front of someone else.

Dunno if you udnerstand what I meant, but he stuttered a ton when he was caught in lies between his alliances and it was very funny and awkward to me.

Your first sentence is my exact point. It is impossible for them to be "wrong" because it's their opinion. An opinion cannot be right or wrong, only agreed with or disagreed with.

If I say I like chocolate ice cream the best, it would be silly to say, "Wrong. The best ice cream is vanilla," although you'd be on your way to a pretty good Dwight Schrute impression.

If anything, the jury cannot be wrong by definition since they decide the criteria for who is deserving. They decide what is "right." You can say that your criteria of deserving is different than theirs, but neither one of is any more right or wrong than the other.

FWIW we share the exact same opinion on what makes a good player, and therefore, we both have the same ideal in who wins Survivor.
IMO, Russell is by far a better player than Natalie and over the course of 100 seasons, Russell will go farther and win more.

But facing the S19 jury, Natalie will win 100% of the time. The proof of this is that she did. I know that we're sort of getting into a determinism/free will thing here, but it's the whole thing of it had to go down the way it did as evidenced by the fact that it did. In that situation, Natalie was more "deserving". (puked in my mouth)

Oh, and ban that fkn Little King guy. Obviously, he was spoiled.

You know what makes a deserving winner? Lots of strategic scenes of you making it into the edit.

+1

russell says hi

Couldn't disagree more. Their votes are opinions just like my vote (if I had one) is an opinion.

Right, but since you would apparently vote similarly to how I would, you understand why this is frustrating. There is no right/wrong vote, but that doesn't mean our opinion is any less valid because...

This is not "measurable" (in the same way that liking Jane or Fabio is a pure opinion). However, gameplay/strategy can be quantified, as you could write out how many votes a player controlled (or at least how many they voted for the actual bootee), how often they were in a majority/were the swing vote, how many challenges they won, etc.

A lot of people ITT have said stuff like, "Survivor is not a game where you get points for each move." In reality, you sort of DO get points/credit/whatever for each move you make, it's just up to you to decide if that meets your voting criteria as a juror...and for me, it does. It's not as if I'm using an actual points system, but it's certainly based on how many votes a player controlled, how they manipulated the numbers, how they were able to get other people to carry out their moves, etc. To me, that's important (and predictive of success as a player in a hypothetical large sample).

I'm not being a dick, and these are two serious questions for people who believe that the jury's decision is always right...

1. If you are merely going to look at jury votes as the all-important element in determining a player's success, why wouldn't you merely rank the winners based on how many votes they received? Why wouldn't you consider Earl and JT the two greatest winners of all time? If jury votes are always correct, it seems like a ranking of the 21 winners should be pretty cut-and-dry, as it'd just be the percentage of votes received in descending order, right?

2. How do you explain the arbitrary number of jurors in certain seasons? This season is a great example: Fabio won 5-4, yet if the quitters had been removed from the jury, Chase wins 4-3. Why does Fabio get credit for the producers' decision to keep the quitters on the jury? Another example: why is it Cirie's fault that they seemingly shifted from a F3 to a F2 late in the game? People always say her game is one where she is unable to ever reach the FTC, yet Parvati and Amanda actually thought they had brought Cirie to the FTC (where Cirie would have won). Examples like these are reasons why I don't think a 7-9 person jury proves much of anything in terms of who is or is not a deserving winner.

But these points/credit/whatever only have the value that the jury assigns to it. The S19 jury would probably agree that Russell is worthy of more "strategy points" than Natalie, but they decided to not give those points as much weight and value as, say, "nice points" which Natalie earned more of.
You and I would've weighted strategy points heavier than nice points. They didn't. Their opinion is that "nice" is more deserving of money than "strategy." And there is no objective correct or incorrect in this.

So IOW, everyone can agree that objectively, Russell deserves more strategy points. Yes, it's quantifiable. But it's completely subjective as to how heavy to weigh that against other criteria.
Your opinion is that strategy should count for 90% of what makes someone deserving to win (or thereabouts. And I'm not making fun, I totally agree!)

But you have said in other posts that you feel that since Russell can be objectively decided as the better strategic player, he deserved to win more.
I say that the person who deserves to win is the one that ends up winning, because they filled that jury's criteria the best.

And actually, at the end of the day, Russell should probably be docked a few "strategy points" for not realizing that the jury would weigh likability (or at least basic respect) more than his strategic prowess.

I was quite impressed with Hollys turnaround. After her initial insanity she seemed to be the most situationally aware person out there. I think she goes deep in most seasons she plays.

Holly was my mvp in our survivor pool, not that it helped much.

I'm not aware of one, but there have definitely been arguments about choosing someone 'who needs it more' which is effectively the same thing.

JT did play the GOAT jury winning game. I bet he wins 100% of the time if him and Stephen played the same game and reached the finals together over 21 seasons.

It's still just their opinion. Them randomly being assigned "jury members" does not mean their opinions are automatically correct.

JT wins Tocantins 100% of the time he gets to the finals, regardless of the opponent.

We're agreeing here, Kos. My point is that no one is right or wrong, because it's all opinion. There is no correct or incorrect. So it's a nonsensical thing to say that they're "right" or "wrong" in how they vote. They vote based on how they vote, and we can say that we disagree with them, that we would do it different, that we wish they had voted based on different criteria, etc.

It is a strange dynamic that doesn't really exist in other games. It's like they're referees who get to decide on their whim what is worthy of points. It's like a bball game where one ref really digs 3 pointers, so he makes them worth 4, or some ref who thinks layups are too easy so they're only 1 point.

So the true objective score is not how well you play the game, but anticipating which refs you're going to have in the game that night and then trying to score the most points according to their point system. And going into the game, as much as you think it's bs that the refs get to decide what's worth the most points, you go into it acknowledging that the one unwavering rule is that their word is law. That in a sense, whatever they decide is "right" is "right" and you are at the mercy of their system and should play accordingly if you wish to win.

Russell refused to acknowledge that his refs awarded more points for niceness and less for strategy. His hope was that he could get to the final 3 on his terms, then try as best he could to convince the jury to award points based on his point system, with the implication that if they did, they would have to award him the prize. They pretty much said, "Thanks, but no thanks. We'll stick with our point system."

So you're right, them being assigned (not so sure what you mean by randomly) the role of jury members doesn't make their opinions "correct" but it does grant them the power of deciding what criteria the winner will be decided by. And it's moot to argue with it, since it's their opinion.

Most of the time it does not seem that you are giving your opinions. It seems more like proclamations. People don't like being told how to think. But people fight back and that does make for good internet message boards. I will say that your "proclamations" do seem to have been tempered to be more like "opinions" over the period I've been reading these boards. Or maybe I've just become used to you .

I would also argue that no one ever "deserves" to win. There is only win or not win.

See the Cy Young analogy. It's the same thing, there is just less of a consensus ITT than there would be if you went to SE and said Felix Hernandez deserved his Cy Young. They might be my opinions, but I'm going to state them as "proclamations" and argue against people who disagree. Everyone does that...including all of the people who argue against me.

The problem is that these people will, by definition, always back the winner, so they have no ability to evaluate the game before the jury vote. If they think a millionaire is playing perfectly for the first 38.5 days, but 5/9 jurors vote based on need and hand the money to a homeless guy who took a 39-day nap, do they just disregard the millionaire's game because he lost? I'm honestly not sure, but if so, you can see why I (or anyone with a working brain) would think that's a stupid way to evaluate the game.

I'm saying he wins every season if he plays that way with Stephen sitting beside him at the end.

Double Down: In Amazon and Africa, everyone knew that Roger and Frank respectively would never vote for a woman to win unless it was an all-woman final. Would this be a legitimate way of casting a jury vote in your view?

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the winner always deserves to win. Take Rob C. in Amazon: he was by far the best strategist in his season, while Jenna was a whiny bitch who only once showed any strategic capability (giving the immunity necklace to Heidi) and Matt only started playing the game - having to be tutored by Rob - in the final week or so. You can say that Jenna 'deserved' to win in the sense that her win didn't violate the rules of the game, but the use of the word 'deserved' implies that the outcome is something we should be satisfied with. Ditto for Danni in Guatemala. The only conclusion that such a results-oriented view can come to is 'Person X was able to beat Person Y in one vote based on satisfying a set of arbitrary and possibly irrational criteria', without taking into account the first 38 days of the game.

Your analogy is flawed because the criteria for determining a Survivor vote are far more broad than those for Cy Young. Baseball's stats give us a great barometer to judge superiority upon. The Survivor criteria are far more vague and by design are open to the interpretation on the voter. Your analogy only works if one (like you) has a more rigorously defined extrapolation of what "deserving of $1 million" means than the game itself affords.

I don't think the analogy works.

Pitchers don't pitch in order to win the Cy Young - they pitch to get outs and to win games in the short term and the championship in the long term. The Cy Young is an after the fact recognition of which pitcher performed the best - in the opinion of the voters - in pursuit of those goals, not a reward for actually reaching the goals.

In Survivor only two things matter - not getting voted off and winning FTC. How you do it doesn't matter except on how it plays into how the judges (your tribe or the jury) will react for the next vote. FTC is not a post-season award. It is the championship game. The person that deserves to win is by definition the one that gets the most votes from that particular jury on that particular day.

But it is fun to debate who "played" the best and which of the players was the biggest idiot. For the idiot, I'll go with Marty.