I just had an interesting experience, where myself and another player were both in two alliances of 5. We reached out to one another and agreed that, if we worked together, we could play these two alliances against one another, cover each others' butts, and sail through to the finals. We were working together very well for the first half of the game, and since we were controlling almost all of the votes in the game, every eviction went the way we planned it to go.
But, my ally got scared when, with 8 people left, one alliance swelled to 6 (including us) and the other was still only 5 (also including us). He targeted a player that I had planned to take to my Final 3, and, without my knowledge or permission, had that player evicted. At that point, the trust between us was broken, and I couldn't have him exposing me for being in both alliances, so I had to take him out.
I was still able to navigate my way to the final 3 after losing him, though, due to a little luck and a solid final 3 alliance that didn't betray me, but my game would have functioned much smoother if that main ally of mine had just stuck to our plan. That's a good lesson for this game, you have to trust your allies, but you can't trust them ALL the way. Everybody is playing their own game, and if you really want to predict what a player will do, ask yourself what you would do in their shoes.
