Strategic Overview of Survivor, Episode 2 – Skips and Stones May Lose Some Games… but What Does This Have to Do With Survivor?

To draw a parallel between Survivor and its significant ratings competition at this time, the Winter Olympics, the Heroes are emulating the U.S. curling squads. Both winless to date, the men in particular find they have leads even right to the tenth end (last frame), only to fritter away the lead by sliding bad stones (misplacing shots). Galling for the men is the missed last shots come from the skip (leader) who helped win the bronze medal on the sheet (ice rink) in 2006.

With the Heroes, in both immunity challenges now the same thing has happened. It’s never good to lose these challenges, but it’s worse when the dynamic begins to seep back into camp life and has produced the exactly the opposite result as was predicted. Rather than the egos of the Villains hampering their challenge effectiveness, the losses of the Heroes have begun eating into their unity. To be blunter, it’s never good for survival when the likes of James begin to criticize the mental aspects of challenges and the tribe begins to take strategy cues from him.

Worse is when people such as Cirie, who should know better, actually come down on his side of the argument. If the men had recognized that they could stick together and grabbed the strongest female in challenges, Stephenie, then they could have been a potent force. Instead, they have fractured early, creating a set of J.T., James, Rupert and Amanda against Tom, Colby, and Stephenie. This left Cirie and Candice on the outside, who logically joined forces.

Granted that a split has come, then the next mission of the majority must be to weed out the weaker players, especially when down by two already. Players may be evaluated according three strengths: physical, mental, and strategic. But for the strategic player at the stage where teams compete in challenges, only two of those are desirable in your comrades, physical strength and mental acuity. You do not want to carry weaker players in this area who are less helpful in winning challenges, and you certainly don’t want to carry such players who are good strategists who in the short run hurt the team and who in the long run can hurt you.

At the last vote, no group had a majority, and because mysteriously James was being listened to, the natural division was between the four and three, meaning the two held the balance of power. From the perspective of the four, this simply was wrong thinking. Within this group, it is clear that the weakest physically was also one who does add some mentally but who is better than most at strategy: Cirie. Stupidly, instead of being the obvious one to pare, she was courted by the plurality by somehow letting James dictate that the best female at challenges and thereby at this juncture the biggest asset to any of the males become the target.

Given a lease on life, Cirie then proceeded to squander any advantage that she got out of it. Her goal at this point must be to make herself as invaluable as possible to the majority and, if you don’t add much physically or mentally to group challenges, this is achieved by making her vote necessary for the majority to stay that way. Therefore, her vote (and taking Candice with her) should have been with Tom, Colby, and Stephenie and thus against Amanda.

Creating this 5-4 split would have meant she’d have bought safety through at least another oust, and if Candice stuck with her they’d be safe until potentially that entire four had been eliminated – if that point ever came. Instead, she has left herself as vulnerable as ever as part of a 4-2-2 formation – if the four wanted to get rid of her next time, her partner Candice has no incentive to force a tie and there are the five votes against her.

This is precisely what the four should do if it comes to another boot – tell Candice what will go down, force her to comply, and then do it, keeping Tom and Colby for the challenge abilities. Candice naturally would be next if necessary. Unless the string of bad strategic decisions by others continues, unforced strategic errors by Cirie will cost her quickly.

Among the Villains, Rob appears to be consolidating power over that tribe. Russell is smart to suck it up and suck up to him for now. So far the internecine warfare has yet to break out when, from their personalities, it seemed far more likely to happen to them. But when it does, the two or three males who swallow their pride and allow one to lead will be the beneficiaries. Rob may be the train and if he can get a couple of others to catch on – Russell perhaps one and a couple of strong females – they’ll win the battle of egos and be in good position at a merge.

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When not watching for strategic elements in Survivor, Jeffrey D. Sadow is trying to teach about strategies inherent in international relations, diplomacy, governance, political campaigns, and lots of other neat stuff as an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport.

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