Wow, no crossover at all.

Here's what I show after Day 1:

 

	HITS	HOMERUNS	RBI	RUNS	WINS	SAVES	K	ERA
AHRENS	10	1	2	5	0	1	1	0.00
COACHBUG	4	1	4	3	2	0	25	2.34

Coach had 3 of his 5 SP Play... and has two more today, but that most likely won't matter. 

He's going to win Wins and K's. 
Ahrens is going to win Saves.

Basically I think it comes down to ahrens 8 hitters vs coachbugs 5 today for the hitting categories... and whether or not one of ahrens closers comes in an gives up an ER.


 

		HITS	HOME RUNS	RBI	RUN SCORED		WINS	SAVES	K	ERA		IP	ER
ROMO	SF
HOLLAND	KC							1	1			1	0
ENCARNACION	TOR	0
DCRUZ	BAL	1			1
MOSS	OAK	1			1
STANTON	MIA	1
GOLDSHMIDT	ARI	1
DONALDSON	OAK	0
TULO	COL	3		1	1
ABREU	CHW	3	1	1	2
		10	1	2	5		0	1	1	0	0	1	0
RIZZO	CHC	0
BAUTISTA	TOR	2		1	1
TEIXERA	NYY	1	1	3	1
CASTRO	CHC	0
BUEHRLE	TOR
BRAUN	MIL	1			1
WACHA	STL						0		4			5	4
DARVISH	TEX						1		10			9	0
TANAKA	NYY						1		11			9	2
SAMARDJIA	CHC

 

The hard part was figuring out what ahrens was going to pick, I only had 2 starting pitchers initially but I figured with so many studs pitching Wednesday and Thursday at least 4 would have to be enough (whoops) Now I need those cub bats to finally give samardzjia some run support (dreaming big) either way good luck ahrens !

I will add it up when I get a chance later today. meanwhile. Here is the final part of the challenge due tomorrow at noon EST I think it is pola and ahrens, but I will double check to make sure coachbug didn't make a comeback.

Final HOH Part Three:

You can list as many people/teams that you want that you predict will fit these categories. For everyone on your list that does indeed fit these categories, you get 2 points. For everyone that you list that does not end up fitting these categories, you lose three.

Category 1: Players that finish with at least 17 points in Spurs/Heat game five
Category 2: Golfers that finish in the top 10 of the US Open
Category 3: Teams that win a game in the World Cup on Saturday or Sunday
Category 4: Nascar driver that finish in the top 10 of Sunday's race a Michigan
Category 5: Teams in the Lone Star Conference in DII in Leahy that win Sunday's game

Best of luck gentlemen

I still think ahrens won on quick addition (been a busy day). If I am wrong about this, point it out to me. But I am expecting entries from ahrens and polabonez for Part 3

So, that is the last one. Whoever wins gets to choose his competitor in the Final 2

Ignoring things that you both have.

Mickelson is not going to make the top 10 so -3 for pola

So far, ahrens has two soccer games in hand but went 1-2 in NASCAR and 0-2 in the LSC and Todd is unlikely to make it. So at 3-5 he is -9

He needs Todd to make a miracle run, plus Argentina to win and Kawai to score enough. If all that happens he will be 6-4 and go 0. Anything short of that and pola makes the final and gets to choose his opponent.

So, with Todd finishing tied for 17th and Argentina winning, in their non overlap picks:

pola -3
ahrens -7

With just Kawai Leonard left as a difference, the best ahrens can get up to is -5, so polabonez wins and gets to choose his final opponent by 8 a.m. EST tomorrow.

After he picks it, the person he does not vote out will get to make a final speech first and polabonez will get to make a final speech second.

I will then open it to questions from the jury.

Voting will go until Wednesday at noon EST.

I was hoping not to have to be the one to make this call. I worked well with both of these guys all game. And It's a tuff call because he played a great game and will be tough to beat in the final, but a deal is a deal, and I'll be taking Ahrens with me to the F2. Sorry, coachbug.

I'll have a speech up today. Missed dubs post. My bad guys.

First off, I’d like to thank dubs, steve and raider for putting on this game.  The challenges were more difficult than normal, and more diverse which was great.  The game was really a lot of fun.

Thanks to all the competitors, especially pola for working with me again.  We always try to split up, but somehow our paths always cross.

Now for the actual speech part.  Why should you pick me?  Well, I feel like I have a few reasons why.

1.       I played a good, clean, fair game.  I never broke any deals (nor did I ever really have any deals).  I did just enough to cast doubt (the wildpike vote) and use that to help cause confusion.  I kept a few powerful allies while talking to people to keep distance in case of an attack.  I did just enough without overstepping my bounds and getting pummeled.

2.       I stayed alive.  I was on the chopping block a few times in Big Brother and managed to save myself however necessary.  Also, used others to help me in Amazing Race when Casey and I forgot challenges or needed some luck to stay alive.  Either kicked *** at the challenge or had someone help us with uturns or idols or both.  And team Gryffindor kept losing so I was almost always in danger during Survivor

3.       I made the right choices when picking sides.  I’m a huge fan of waiting until I have to decide before I’ll team up.  I like that it makes me feel valuable instead of just another vote.  And every time I teamed up with someone, it worked out.  I didn’t have to play too much until Big Brother because I kept aligning myself with a successful side.

But the stuff that I think was my best will be listed here, in no particular order.

1.       The wildpike vote.  That was the revote I’m pretty sure.  It was geos and wildpike and some idols got played or something.  Geos was the target and then the revote, nobody told me to switch to wildpike, so I just assumed it was geos.  I was so sure that geos was gone and the game was getting stale that I voted wildpike just to cause confusion.  Well, turns out wildpike was eliminated, but the confusion allowed me to gather some intel and cast doubt over the game anyway.

2.       The psap elimination.  Sorry psap.  Psap and I had a no nominate final 4 deal since Amazing Race I’m pretty sure.  He was my only deal for a LONG time.  I fully intended on working with him, but I was busy and didn’t communicate as much as I should have, so psap thought I was just trying to make him do all of my work.  But we never violated our deal, until the horvie vote.  He told me that the plan was to nominate me (to keep his other deals intact, more on that) but get horvie eliminated.  That’s how it played out, but I still felt odd about the fact that I still had to be nominated, so I decided to use that against him.  When I was up against him, I got everyone to figure out that they had deals (or thought they had deals) with psap and have everyone break deal at once.  I wasn’t the only one, but I feel like I got the ball rolling because psap did a FANTASTIC job at casting doubt where nobody trusted anyone and weren’t talking.  But once we got talking, we all had the same idea.  And it helped that I waited until just the right moment to use this info.  Plus the “geos is collateral damage now” sitemail psap sent me didn’t hurt.

3.       Using everyone casey and I could think of to keep us alive in Amazing Race.  We miss one challenge and almost get eliminated, then we have high scores and are at the disadvantage in another one.  We were always battling, but Casey and I found ways to deal and make allies and have access to others uturns and even idols actually.  Worked out well for us.

I know that I was never considered a power player this game (I don’t feel). I don’t like the attention.  But I feel like my moves allowed me to be in the position because I made the right one (they were the right ones because they worked out).

Good game everyone and can’t wait for the questions.

I'm going to follow suit with ahrens and first thank dubs, steve, and raider.   To save you all from looking back, the first challenge of this game was posted DECEMBER 10, 2013.  That is 6 months of creating challenges, calculating scores, dealing with **** you probably don't even think of playing the game.  Big thanks to you guys.

Well.... What a game.   I have had quite a bit of success in past Survivor games on this site...  and typically in those types of games I pretty much have been in a position to "know" what would happen at all times, and typically it always worked out because all you need is numbers and an alliance you trust.

This was not that time.  Not even close.

I guess I'll start with explaining my game, way back to December.   I know this will be long, but I like how some of the past players have explained everything that happened inside the game, so it makes sense for those who read from the outside of the game.  So I apologize for that in advance.

Prior to the teams being released,  I had gotten SM from onside and primetime about forming an alliance.  This was to be my primary alliance for the game.   Not this game. That changed quick.  Onside lost the first challenge of AR and sometime just before that saw a sitemail (I think sent to Arfy) from primetime wanting to target me early in AR.  So back to square one.

The Survivor section started off pretty easy and horvie, myself, primetime, wildpike, and I think e3racer formed a voting block making sure we could get to the AR Section.

I exchanged sitemails with thebish and tubby7242 around the time of the idol clues, and was able to solve 3 of the 4 idols.  I made a deal with them that I would share the idols they gave the clues for if needed, and actually did share the AR Idol with tubby and allowed him to pick his teammate.

More importantly, is that I was able to figure out that psap had the other idol here, and that was when psap and I decided to work together, because using the idols together was much more powerful than using them against each other. This would be a big part of the game for me later.

One of the idols I used to pick the AR Teams.  I sitemailed one person from each Survivor tribe who I knew to be good at the challenges and involved in these games, and asked who their "dead weight" or people who were lacking at submitting ideas for the challenge.  With the names I was given (which actually included tubby and tropicana who tubby picked for his partner ironically) I picked the AR Teams hoping it would give the rest of us a leg up on the challenge-based part of the game.  It worked out pretty well.  4 of the 5 AR Teams that I set up (excluding horvie and I) ended up not escaping that section.

The other idol I actually gave to ahrens, who used it to save him and csudak from elimination in Amazing Race.  At this point, horvie had become my primary alliance (and AR partner, and saved my *** with the challenges while I was out of the country), and we made a deal with csudak and ahrens to help each other in AR rather than hurting each other.

The third idol really had no use.... 

So AR happened... Everything was chaos... And then we get to the real bloodbath of this game: Big Brother.

The first couple Big Brother nominations seemed to go rather easily.  When the first came up, bish and stalagna, csudak was hard pressed on getting horvie and I to vote out stalagna.  We obliged, since we had worked together in AR... but this is when the questions of who csudak had been working with came up.  When wildpike came up, who horvie and I had a working relationship with, we again had to vote with the group and we started seeing that csudak had a pretty solid alliance with ahrens, bish, bully, and us.... and the next vote, we made a move on csudak... hopefully crippling that voting block.

At this point in the game, I have been working steadily with horvie all game, quite a bit with psap in our idol sharing and strategy, I've shared idols with bish (who was teamed up with usfbully), and on top of all of that have been openly talking with coachbug (who was teamed up with hardknox), and of course ahrens as mentioned earlier.

So basically, with the exception of geos... I'm somehow connected to everyone left in the game...  And it seemed like nobody actually knew where they stand.  But that vote, psap removed geos from the block to gain his trust so now I'm somehow connected with everyone, since everyone seemed to have a "partner".

This is when things get hectic.  After the csudak vote.... horvie wins HOH and I win POV and we decided to leave bish and bully on the block, because at this point we are trying to take out "pairs". 

Then, ahrens wins HOH, puts me and hardknox on the block... and I had to fight against hardknox for the votes. Psap actually saved me on this one since his and Geos votes were the deciding factor.

Then psap makes his move on horvie.  This was a strange point in the game.  At this point, I think I'm writing a letter home saying that psap, horvie, and I (with the addition of geos) have a pretty good control of the numbers game, since horvie found the "secret" idol that could have removed anyone on the block and basically put anyone up in his place at any time. Then, when I get back into Internet a couple of days later, I have about 8 sitemails from psap.  The first being something he sent to me by mistake (thinking he was responding to coachbug) about taking out horvie.  The other 6 making sure I wasn't going to say anything to horvie about it... lol.   Basically, I agreed to stay out of it directly but sent a long SM to psap explaining that I thought it was the bad move because horvie could be trusted and we had good control of the numbers at this point.  I also tipped off horvie.  I never directly told him that I saw psap's intentions (sorry horvie) but I told him enough that I was "suspicious" that psap was making a move and he should send a sitemail to psap trying to get him to change his mind.  I figured if psap was going to take out horvie I had no control regardless....  and I didn't want to go against psap since at this point he was controlling the votes if horvie went home.. but on the other hand I couldn't not try to prevent it and make sure horvie got a fair shot to stop the madness. 

As it turned out, psap decided it was the best move to get rid of horvie, and that happened.

The very next vote is when I think my opponent in this final two woke up a bit and pulled off the move of the game.  Psap's next plan was to take out ahrens here.  thebish won the HOH... put geos and coachbug up.... and geos won the POV.  So psap seemed to have control since geos would remove himself and psap (I thought) had thebish convinced to take out ahrens.  But ahrens caught wind of it... and completely turned everyone against psap.  By the time I came into the picture I had already seen that geos, and ahrens were going to take him out.  I followed suit (plus I had a made a deal with thebish that I would vote for whoever he wanted if he kept me off the block)... Not that it mattered, somehow in one vote ahrens turned everyone against psap, and that was that. 

And then I felt like the csudak of these games, knowing I had to win every challenge from here on out to get to the final two (no offense, Casey).  Geos had already started an anti-pola sitemail to bish, coachbug, and ahrens.  Matt actually tipped me off to it...  And at that point I made a final two deal with ahrens.  If he gets me out of this **** somehow, I'll take him to the final two if I win.  He did, vote 10, when he got to choose between geos and myself, and he evicted geos.

And that's how I got here.

I know I probably shouldn't have put two paragraphs up about my opponent and the right moves he made in my speech to try and beat him, but they were really great moves and TBH I wouldn't have gotten here without his help after the horvie/psap mess.

So why do I think you should vote for me to win?  Honestly, I'm ok if ahrens wins, I think he played a great game and as he said he did what he had to do to get here. 

But I believe you should vote for me because I believe  I played a more complete game.  I feel as if Matt really closed it out towards the end of Big Brother, but from December 10 2013 until today (albeit a few weeks out of the country) I pretty much played the game the best I could the whole time.  After all, I got here and typically I feel as if there is a stacked deck against me most of the time given my past success.

I can't think of any alliances I broke with the exception of csudak,  I found 3 idols which I used two of to get me (and Matt) to this point in the game, and I won 5 of the POV/HOH Challenges (all very important) compared to Matt's 2.

I won't be disappointed losing this one, but I believe the ULTIMATE GD FORUM Game title belongs to me, PolaBonez.

I welcome all of your questions and if there isn't anything I didn't clear up well enough, just let me know.

 

This is up for questions now. You can all start voting as well. Voting closes Wednesday at noon EST

No questions for either of you . You both explained very well how you played and executed your strategies . You both played a very well planned game . I Thank you both for the honesty .
This was my first time playing this game and I enjoyed it tremendously . I will certainly keep your Survivor 101 texts for the future games .


My vote goes to polabonez . ...............Ahrens you may have had it , if not for the spineless way you voted me out . I knew I was out but you should have been a big boy about it and posted it in the forum .