Survivor: Vanuatu – Advice for the Final Four

Survivor is a game about choices – who to ally with; who to vote out; who to sell out; and who to bargain with. More than anything else, it's a game of people. Sometimes, people make mistakes.

I always figured Chris held the critical vote in Survivor: Vanuatu when there were five. Three was the magic number to get rid of somebody at this stage. No more, no less; any voting coalition that controlled three votes decided who went home. However, due to the incredibly vicious nature of the women, emotions blocked a lot of potential combinations of voting coalitions. Frankly, Scout and Twila were starting to resemble Ami and Leann before their power was stripped away and they were sent to the jury.

So Chris, like Kathy back in the Marquesas, ended up controlling the vote when there were five. Frankly, everybody knew it. Julie, after winning the reward challenge, took him on the trip with her in an attempt to sell him on a new deal with herself and Eliza. Actually, it would have been in everybody’s best interest to have taken Chris if they had won, just to lobby him. He controlled the vote – the only thing that matters in the end.

Indeed, Chris did play both sides, telling both they had his vote in a deal. It was the right move. Way back when Dolly was eliminated, I pointed out that the game rewards players who make two promises and break one, as opposed to somebody who won't make any promises. If there was a mistake, it was that Chris didn't calm the jitters by telling each faction he was suckering the other. The combination of each side thinking his vote was theirs was his insurance that they didn't decide to write down his name instead. Instead, he caught somebody on the wrong side of the vote – but was it the right person?

Chris's choice will be debated for some time, and probably regarded as good one if he wins, and a bad one if he doesn't. While I believed that all things considered, he would be best served by getting rid of Twila, it has to be pointed out that it's been a long time since she's won anything, and Eliza and Julie both won challenges in the last episode.

While he probably would have had a more secure game if he had gone with the younger pair, he must figure that the fights would tilt the odds on Eliza being the next target instead of himself, and leave the two oldest women in the game as his competition in the final challenge. In practice, sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. In Africa, the oldest woman won immunity; in Thailand, she was out first.

So with the end game upon us, what should each player be doing to advance to the finals and win over a jury? It's advice for the final four.

Chris: You picked your team and it should advance you to the final three, where I assume you figure you can beat either of the women in a challenge. There are no guarantees in life, but that's not a bad position to take. You made and kept your final four deal, and also left Eliza holding the sack at tribal council for the extra Twila vote. You don't have any choice but to get rid of her at the next tribal council unless something happens to break up the power couple of Twila and Scout. Your worst case scenario is if Eliza wins immunity.

Presuming she doesn’t, you have to win final immunity. I'd suggest your opponent in the finals should be Scout, as it might cement the men's vote and Scout is in hock with some of the women. If you make it, your key selling points to a jury should be adapting to each situation and seizing opportunities as they came.