The whole point of the game is to “not get to the end” but to also win people over while doing so. The balancing act here is to manipulate people while earning their respect and even admiration. Russel is so blatant, that he does neither, which is why he is not a great player. He fails at the final stage of this game and will continue to do so until he gets on a game where everyone else is just as loathsome.

There are 5 stages (not the 3 that people usually see) to this game.

Stage 1: Create a sub-alliance that you plan on breaking at the beginning. Day 0 alliances are what counts. Do not be the power player

Stage 2: Tribe vs. Tribe. Work hard at camp, complete well but not too well at challenges, just enough to avoid tribal council, but not so much that if you are there you are a target.

Stage 3: The merge. This is where the Day 0 alliance comes into play. Keep it intact, find the outsider from the other tribe and bring them higher up into your alliance than they are now. This is where breaking your Day-0 alliance starts to be important and you sacrifice the power player in the Day-0 alliance to prove your loyalty to that pawn.

Stage 4: Keeping your core alliance, less the sacrifice, and less the pawn survive until you need to “turn it on” for individual immunity. This is what buys you votes as others get “picked off”

Stage 5: The Jury. This is the part of the game that has to always be in your mind through every stage, but not played until you hit the merge. You are not trying to piss people off, you are trying to earn their respect. If I were to ever make it this far, I would sprinkle brutal honesty with praise. “I’m here, because you’re not. Yes, I set you up, blindsided, and got you out of here. Now you’re there, and based on how I put you there, I deserve your respect.”

This is where Russel fails miserably. This is why I would place Todd Herzogg as the top of the game as this is how he played. Hatch is not that player because most of his competitors played vacation, not Survivor. Colby didn’t get it done, neither did B-Rob. It is a mixture of the “feminine/masculine” game play that is required to get to the top and to get the majority of jury votes, and that is the balancing act.

If Russel or you others want some sissified game that has the motto, outwit, outlast, outprey, then start that game and he will win. But that isn’t the game, and I don’t want to watch that game.

survivor is a social game,and on a scale of 1-100,russhole’s social game was about,a 1.thats not good enough to win a million dollars.all he did was pound the game with an iron fist,and what goes around comes around

The NY gru’s that thought up this change should be exiled on Bikini Island.
Only one reason $$$$$$$$$$$$