Quote: Originally Posted By antonsirius on 5/17/2010
colonels, if you've watched Survivor before (and it seems like you have) you should know that there are ways to screw people over in the game, without making them hate you for it. Russell is apparently not capable of doing that, whether through stubbornness or ego or whatever. Fair enough, but its those kinds of people that normally get voted off too...Russell never did which makes him the exception/special case here. He was brash, promised the world to everyone, often times said too much, etc, etc, etc and he made it all the way to the end, twice. There's something to be said for that. Tell me another person that has played like Russell that's even come close to making it to the final 3.

The goal of the game is not to make it to the final 3. The goal is not even to make it to the final 2. The goal is to make it to the final 2 matched up against someone you can beat. Sandra and Parvati understood that. Russell didn't. It is a final 3 now, no more final 2s I don't think...the last 2 seasons have been final 3s. But look at Russell's thought process here as well, maybe he thought...hey, they've both won before, the jury isn't going to want to award another million to one person, so I'm going to run with this. I think his loyalty to Parvati (which happened practically from day 1) should be commended and it was seemingly completely overlooked. Russell's good qualities were disregarded because of the jury's hatred, envy, and sour grapes imo.

As you said, Sandra talked a lot about wanting to get Russell off, but never did much about it. I didn't say she never did much about it, I said that she never accomplished that task. Did it not occur to you that Sandra might have been doing that on purpose -- that her plan wasn't to get Russell voted off, but to use his arrogance against him with the jury and make sure they were the final 2? Wouldn't you own up to this strategy in the reunion show? Wouldn't you want to say, this was my plan all along, especially after it was over and you won a million bucks? She never said anything of the sort, thus I don't think that was the case.

To use a poker analogy, Russell is great at playing the cards he's dealt, but he makes no effort to figure out what cards his opponents have. He looks down at pocket aces and pounds away with them, without considering what the flop was and what he might be up against. He couldn't take any heroes to the final 3...that's a slam dunk win...regardless of which 2 he took, he was screwed because people weren't going to pick him REGARDLESS of anything he said, he could have begged and pleaded for forgiveness and they would have said that he's lying to win a million bucks. I think there's something to be said to staying true to thyself, and the jury overlooked that as well. You may not like him, but his way got him further than your way got the 9 of you, and you're going to hate him for it...***** please. Russell cunningly and very strategically played that game, and quite frankly should have won. The blindsides, the setups, the lies, they all worked in his favor, until everyone got soft hearted and took what happened personally.

It's a weakness, and it's a big one. And it cost him two million dollars. If I were Russell and Mark Burnett wanted me to do another season of Survivor, I would have him pay me $25,641 each day I was in the current game so if he made the Final 3 again, he would have accrued a million dollars, because he will NEVER WIN given the current setup, because he has a stigma that nobody will let him live down.

Quote: Originally Posted By isack24 on 5/17/2010
If he has put himself in a position in which he can never win, he's done a poor job. Seems like an easy concept to me.

Quote: Originally Posted By wronoj on 5/18/2010here's the thing-- I think everyone hated Russell for more than just his strategic moves... at the beginning of the reunion, Jeff said "this is what it was like every day in camp" when Russell was acting like a pompous ***. That is hardly the way to win votes. But normally, a guy like this is voted off in no time...and Russell wasn't. Personally, I think Probst has a little vendetta with Russell, so he's going to play up the storylines and the "bad guy" Russell all day. Look how that last question in the reunion that CBS virtually gagged him on, Jeff said something like, Russell I'm not going to let you answer, but...and that's just crap. People would have watched and enjoyed that if it was a 10-15 minute bit of just Russell. I never got the impression from ANYONE that they were keeping Russell around because they knew they could beat him in the end. Like I said in my column, Russell is no saint, but I think he's gotten progressively more bitter and cocky because he didn't win the first time when he arguably should have, thus he was intent on coming back and playing, harder, brasher, stronger than before, and that in itself deserves respect; that in itself deserves votes imo.

Throw in his constant stream of flips on "alliances" and lies, and nobody was going to vote for him. But that's the game in a nutshell...just because he didn't control the entire game nicely enough, he gets blanked at final tribal...give me a break. He's cunning, ruthless, brash, and intelligent, and that's something MILLIONS of Americans appreciate(d) as opposed to the 9 folks on the jury that he helped vote out. I'd have voted for Parvati, and if he had kept Jerri, I'd have voted for him since both Jerri and Sandra were coattail riding. But I wasn't there, and don't get a vote. Maybe I'd have hated him as much as they all did..

Quote: Originally Posted By colonels19 on 5/18/2010

But that's the game in a nutshell...just because he didn't control the entire game nicely enough, he gets blanked at final tribal...give me a break. He's cunning, ruthless, brash, and intelligent, and that's something MILLIONS of Americans appreciate(d) as opposed to the 9 folks on the jury that he helped vote out.

Quote: Originally Posted By isack24 on 5/18/2010
And you're still missing the point. There are no "wrong reasons." Good players understand the competition and understand what it will take to get their votes. If he didn't understand, or understood but didn't care, he wasn't playing the game the right way. Dude, my problem is, he didn't win because he wasn't a good player, he got blanked because nobody relatively liked him and they were all envious of him and his position...he lost for the wrong reasons because people can't separate his game from his attitude. People can hate Dennis Rodman all they want to for his antics on and off the court, but can you honestly say that he isn't the best/one of the best rebounders ever? I don't like Kevin Garnett, I think he's phony, but I still respect and give credit to him for being the future HOF player that he is...point is, you can not like someone and still respect the game that they played, but nobody respected Russell's game because their feelings were hurt. He was ruthless and it got him to the Final 3...who's to say that he would have gotten to the Final 3 if he played differently?

You've created some alternate game where the most deceitful player wins. You sound like Jeff Probst's mouthpiece That's fine, he won "Colonels' Survivor Championship," He's undoubtedly the BPI Sports Sole Survivor of all time! but that's NOT how Survivor works. I completely understand that, but it seems like all of Russell's accomplishments and gameplay were cast aside just because he was mean (for the lack of a better term) during the process. Its a game, its not real life folks. The jury hated the player and in turn disregarded his game because of it, and that's complete crap...like I said, its this kind of "good guy wins" sentiment that is going/beginning to poison the game, and I think it will reflect in the show's viewership. If he doesn't/didn't understand that, then he simply wasn't a great player. What Russell figured, and arguably its a good strategy REGARDLESS OF THE END RESULT (there was no way he could win), that since he's playing now with Survivor "All-Stars" and not Survivor Newbies, that they would respect his cunning, coniving, ruthless, scheming game, because they knew/understood how the game worked and had played for many days in the past. Like Russell, I was SHOCKED at the lack of respect for his game, no matter how "morally wrong" it may have been, it worked and he voted every single one of those 9 folks on the jury out of the game, so instead of giving him kudos for scheming and getting you out of the game, you're going to shout "MEANIE" and vote for someone that played the game less/poorer just because they didn't vote you out? Really? Voting based upon hurt feelings is utter crap, and I really think that the collusion aspect needs to be looked into. Perhaps Russell's biggest gaffe was not having a husband/wife in Afghanistan....I take exception with the fact that emotion overrode logic here, just as it had last time...and then for Natalie and Sandra to act like they deserved to win and played the best game? ******* please...you should give yourselves to Russell for one night for those Ws. Russell Hantz, hands down is the best player in Survivor history, and its clearly unfortunate that the final end results don't bear that out.