This.

Over 1/4th of your total posts on 2p2 are in this thread. You consistently make idiotic and emotional posts....Where you call people idiots and berate people for being emotional.

Get a life man, we all understand. You're a Survivor superfan. Your opinions matter a lot.

He's at a wedding, so I assume he won't be on to chime in 'til later. This frustrates me as there are very few posters who I don't think are outright idiots and it'd be nice to have his take on the matter.

I'm also going to concede here that you were right about Jaison being voted off but I still believe (and it was confirmed) that having Jaison on would have been better for Russell because Mick said he would have voted for Russ if not in the final 3 and clearly Jaison didn't feel the same way.

Let TLY rant. It's fun. Plus it might actually help him to vent. He can even roundhouse me again if he needs to.

Ok. I'm going to do some research, because I can't remember who half these people are even though I've watched every season of Survivor, but here are the former winners. What is the jerk to decent guy ratio so that we can't really delve into our 'proper strategy' discussion?

Richard Hatch: villain got to end with slugs
Tina Wesson: beat challenge stud Colby Donaldson
Ethan Zohn: nice guy
Vecepia Towery: ugh
Brian Heidik: vs. vile Clay 4-3
Jenna Morasca: over Matthew Von Ertfelda
Sandra Diaz-Twine: defeated Lillian Morris by a vote of 6-1 (pearl islands Rupert?)
Amber Brkich: won by a vote of 4-3 over Rob Mariano (bit of a travesty IMO)
Chris Daugherty: the last male in the final seven, defeated Twila Tanner by a vote of 5-2
Tom Westman: prevailing over Katie Gallagher by a vote of 6-1
Danni Boatwright: defeating Stephenie LaGrossa by a 6-1 vote
Aras Baskauskas defeating Danielle DiLorenzo by a vote of 5-2
Yul Kwon: who edged out Ozzy Lusth and Becky Lee by a vote of 5-4
Earl Cole: defeated Cassandra Franklin and Dre "Dreamz" Herd by a 9-0-0 vote
Todd Herzog: over Amanda
Parvati Shallow: over Amanda
Robert "Bob" Crowley: over Susie and Sugar
JT
Natalie

I gotta go to bed, but I'll be back tomorrow to discuss this.

wtf do you mean "calm down". do you think I'm sitting at my place fuming and hyperventilating and unable to think properly? I'm very calm, despite what you may be perceiving. And yea, I'm a fan of the show, so what if I have some time here and I'm taking the time to respond to a multitude of posts that I feel like responding to. Last time I checked this was a public forum and it's certainly well within my rights and interests and I don't see how my doing so is having any sort of adverse affect on you. And yea, I tend to be slightly verbose and lengthy with my posts, so? If you're so bothered by it feel free to put me on ignore. I'm simply enjoying myself, deal with it or ignore me.

It was tilting to see Natalie win it. However, it would have been more tilting to see one of the other three girls from the final 6 win it (Jaison, Brett, or Mick).

There is nobody who watched this show who ever thought that Brett taking Nat, or Russell taking Nat, would be anything other than filling a hole with a coat-tailer. Let's not get caught up in revsionist history.

I was shocked by the outcome, and if foced to re-think why Russell lost, I would have to say he thought the players would think like fans. Clearly, his dominace of the game was unquestionable, and most fans think that he/she who plays the best strategic game should win. The only major train-wreck you need to avoid is not pretending that you played a straight-up game. You have to do what Russell did, and straight-up say you were there to win at all costs.

Based on what we were fed by the footage, we hated Russell at first and then were in awe of the way he owned the game. He got rid of every threat, he found idols with no clues, and he made great strategic moves.

Where I did get a hint that he may be too in love with his own strategy, is when he told Mick that he hated Shambo and was sick of her and she had to go. Mick had an OMG moment, and realzied that Russell had no soul.

Russell then ran into a jury that decided they were not going to reward Russell for his great play, but penalize him for being too arrogant.

I'm not sure Russell could have played the game any different. He could have toned down the bragging, but he still needed to go to jury with the "I came here to win at all costs" type of attitude.

Most juries would have given the win to Russell. Russell (in retrospect) ran into a jury that was not inclined to reward mastery of the game, and Russel compounded that by assuming they would see his "awesomeness" and just crown him as champ. I guess he was too much of an expert as "fan", and not enough as a player.

Perhaps he played the game to long as a fan, and didn't keep in mind that it is the jury that utlimately has to support him. Again, this is all Monday morning quaterbacking.

PS. I lol at Jeff telling Brett he missed out on 1,000, 000 by the carnival contest. Not quite, Brett didn't recognize (or refused to exert) the power he had when he won immunity. All he had to do was approach Mick and Jaison and say "can either of you beat Russel in a jury vote....Let's take him down." That Brett did nothing is sad, that Jeff never brought this up as Brett's huge blunder is sad too.

Speaking of Brett, lol at his jury question.

I feel about as bad as Russell. But as many have pointed out he did screw up. Unfortunately, I think that some people in this thread are not correctly identifying his biggest mistake.

It was not his arrogance (which was admittedly also a mistake). It was his not eliminating Natalie at F5. The moment he failed to do this, I was pretty sure he lost.

He accomplishes two things by eliminating Nat at F5. First, he'll still get her jury vote (he'll just say that there's pressure from the others to keep the strong ones so that they can beat Brett and she was much closer to Russell than Mick or Jaison).

More importantly, however, he eliminates his biggest threat. In one of his confessionals he talks about how he's sure he'll beat Nat (which is absolutely wrong). He underestimated the rapport that she built up with the Galu girls, who I'm sure campaigned strongly for her at Ponderosa. Also, even if you look through the earlier part of this thread (i.e., stuff posted before finale), by far the most common person that people predicted could beat Russel was Natalie. So, if it was obvious to us, it should have been obvious to him. But it wasn't, so he lost.

I'm not certain that he wins a 3-way with Mick and Jaison. But I think that he has a better shot. Initially, I would have said that he would benefit because Mick and Jaison would split the vote, but I don't think that's the case. I really think that the jury probably discusses stuff in advance, so the anti-Russell vote would have been consolidated behind Mick or Jaison prior to he final tribal.

By the way, do we know who the second Russell vote was?

Lol, started watching recent Ponderosa videos... Jaison lost 35 lbs and is a trekkie.

And Shambo is confirmed psycho (if that was not confirmed already)

MOST EGREGIOUS TRAVESTY IN REALITY SHOW HISTORY

Um, yea, because I post in threads that interest me about topics that interest me. Again, do you have any point at all with this? I don't berate people for being emotional. I berate people for being dumb and pepper in some colorful adjectives when I see fit. There are plenty of people here that I don't refer to as idiots or in any sort of negative fashion, even when we disagree. I read a ton of forums on here; posting in the strat forums about my ranges and thoughts on hands vs. people I may play with on a daily basis does not inspire the same interest for me as posting on here about a game I really enjoy. Again, if you're that bothered, add me to your ignore list, not that hard.

You on the other hand I view as a moron. I remember classifying you as such a long time ago and I'm guessing you're still butthurt about that and seeking to gain retribution about that now. Again, I don't care enough about you to rescan your posting history in this thread to justify why I labeled you as such but I'm content in knowing that if I did it then it was probably accurate.

I have a life, it's called poker, and I maintain several interests outside of that as well. You do realize that there are people who have more posts saying simply "lol" and in just BBV4L than I do in my entire history here, and I need to get a life?

Just for you I'm going to try and rattle off another 200 posts in this thread till I hit the millennium mark.

You are wrong about this. Look earlier in this thread. There are several posts where people predict Natalie as Russell's biggest final tribal threat. I know it seems results oriented to say "he should have seen it coming", but it's not. Several people in the thread pointed out exactly this possibility. If they could see it, Russell should have.

TLY's meltdown is amazing.

Guys...try to soothe your minds a bit by realizing that we have at least a 14:1 shot or so of witnessing the greatest redemption in recorded history.

This is very true. I was pretty dumbfounded by Brett's inaction at that point. I'm not sure it would have succeeded, but he should have tried. Of course it's possible that he actually tried, and it was edited out, like most of Brett's footage.

TLY

I don't really put too much faith in those impromtu "what would have happened if" votes. This was an anti-Russel vote, and the other vote probably would have turned out the same.

BTW, I enjoy 90% of the posters here, but in this thread you kept harping that most of the posters are idiots. Nobody likes it when someone is telling people they are stupid, and if truth be known I don't think you posted anything that would give you some ownership of the right side of the intellectual or strategic bell curve. I enjoy you posts, but you are just another fan, just another poster, so relax with the "you are all stupid" attitude.

LoL @ Mr. Psychic. Sorry, this is revisionist history (or shortsightness). The only way that Russell should have possibly lost was if Brett won immunity challenges against the odds and then got the votes of his former tribe. Given how much better Russell played than the other players, this is the only thing he should have been worried about. The final challenge is nearly always a balance/endurance challenge which women tend to do better at then men. At that point, any Survivor fan had to think that she would have the best shot of stopping Brett from winning the final competition. Jaison was horrible at challenges and Mick wasn't really all that good himself.

YOU NEED TO RELAX.

You can probably jerk off to Russell again next season.

great post and....



.....who gave rusty the 2nd vote?????

I can't believe Brett was still awkwardly stuttering, stumbling over words, and mixing up phrases 39 days into this. I remember the stupid beauty queen way back on BB1 saying that it takes around 3 days to adjust to having cameras on you. I don't get how they could have made such an incorrect casting decision. Is he super cool and slick (or at least mildly well-spoken) in real life?

Fair enough - I stand corrected. I didn't see it as that significant, but then again I was in "fan" mode and thought Brett or Russell, and others would just be fill-ins.

Uhh...

I was surprised that people actually thought Russell would win... I was under the impression that he would have to do a really good job at the final TC to convince the jury, but apparently most people, including Russell himself, actually thought he would win and were shocked when he lost. When they started talking at camp about how he was the winner hands down, I was starting to doubt my predictions.

Honestly, looking at the jury, are you really that surprised that he lost? I perceived a lot of them as bitter, emotion-driven people and only predicted about 3 or 4 votes for Russell in the final. If you think about it and listened to the post-elimination interviews/watched Ponderosa, it seemed pretty obvious. The one thing I was surprised with was Erik not voting for Russell... I expected the vote to be something like 5-4 instead of a landslide.

Again, John did, it's up on wikipedia

I feel like this is partly the editors' faults for pumping us up so much only to let us down at the last second. I guess there is merit in creating a situation similar to Charles Smith's devastating last-second missed lay-ups against the Bulls in the '93 ECF Game 5, but it's pretty cruel. Does this EDGICALLY give us a better chance at Russell redemption next season? If he had been less upset tonight I would have put his odds of winning S20 at like 80%.

Think about how awful this season would have been if Russell wasn't glorified/featured the way he was.

Then think of it as a huge promotion for next season.

TLY...relax......are you 12 years old or something.