Still More Survivor Blogging

If I'm going to continue to write about Survivor, I should probably program a macro, because typing "Koror's winning streak continues" over and over is going to get tiresome. Koror is in a good position to go into the merge having never lost an immunity challenge. One potential stumbling block, ironically, is a result of their complete dominance. Now that they have eight members to Ulong's four, they're going to have to put a lot more strategy into who they sit out in challenges. They could play the women in the reward and the men in the immunity, but that would be basically sacrificing the reward, because as bad as Ulong is, I doubt they could find a way to lose to Katie, Caryn, Janu, and Jenn. Of course, if one faction within Koror wanted to throw an immunity challenge in order to vote off someone at Tribal Council, the easiest way to do it without arousing suspicion would be by inopportune challenge assignments. Nevertheless, if they want to win both challenges, I think the best way to do so would be by playing Gregg, Coby, Janu, and Katie in the reward, and Tom, Ian, Jenn, and Caryn in the immunity. Of course, if they win one more immunity and there's no tribal shakeup and they wait to merge until ten, the numbers in the next challenge (8-3) will be such that it's impossible not to sit someone out twice.

The interesting part of last week's episode, though, was Gregg's strategic move. Apparently he saw that Katie, Ian and Tom were going to be difficult to separate when the time came, so he was on the weaker side of that alliance. Meaning that there are now three factions in Koror: Greater Greater Koror (Ian, Tom, and Katie), Lesser Greater Koror (Jenn and Gregg), and Lesser Koror (Coby, Janu, and Caryn). Gregg did the math and proposed to Coby a secret four person alliance between Janu and Coby and Gregg and Jenn, that would kick in after they had gotten rid of Caryn (and presumably Ulong). I had a post I was thinking of writing before Survivor: Palau premiered that would have basically laid out this strategy as a solid path to victory. As evidenced here, the biggest an alliance can get without breaking is probably four; any larger, and eventually someone will recognize that they're in a minority. This could happen with four too, which is why Coby and Gregg's arrangement is ideal. They have two solid pairs, as opposed to an alliance of three with an outlier. (Incidentally, Chris's best play last season was to convince Eliza that their alliance with Scout and Twila was the former, when actually it was the latter). The secrecy is important, because until you're in a tribe of seven or less, four is still not a majority, so an obvious bloc of four would represent a threat.

The trick with a strategy like this comes when it's down to the final four, and the alliance must start eating itself. If you have two solid pairs, it's impossible to put together a majority, and there's a good chance at forcing a tie. The easiest person to flip in this scenario is the person with immunity, because in the event of a tie, they'll lose their immunity and be forced to pick rocks out of a hat. No one with immunity would want to risk this, meaning they'll vote against their partner to avoid a tie. The counter-intuitive strategy then, would be for both members of a pair to throw the immunity challenge. This move, however, requires more trust than it's reasonable to expect in a Survivor endgame. Imagine proposing throwing the challenge to your partner: "If I get individual immunity it will force me to vote for you, and vice versa, so let's both give up on the challenge." A reasonable person hearing this would assume they were being played. It would be best, then, to leave final four immunity challenge alone.