Hi Jury!
I’ll start with 2 crucial statements, because I feel like these are important points of my game.
1. I know that I lied to all of you that are on the jury and even to my fellow finalists many times, but never once did I do it to hurt someone personally. Everything I’ve done in this game was strictly strategic and I did to get my secret day 0 Duo and myself to the end.
2. The truth is Chris and I have joined together and we have been the secret duo controlling most of this season. We successfully managed to get to the end without being exposed a single time.
Now I’d like to tell the Jury what I’ve done in this game from Day 1 and once again I’d like to apologize aforehand, because I lied a TON, however I own it, I own my gameplay.
I came into the game wanting to be very social at first and not necessarily dictate the votes, but just mainly observe. Observe how people operate, observe how they are playing under pressure (like do they get paranoid? etc.) I also wanted to build strong 1 on 1 bonds, so when time comes, I could use those 1 on 1 bonds to my advantage, which I feel like I successfully made happen.
Coming into this game I knew Chris and we had to hide that we are a duo, so when I saw Kevin in the game, I instantly knew people would consider him and I more of a duo, which I let people believe. Him and I worked together this whole time and voted together up until F4. I also met Willie in this game and we instantly hit it off. I really liked him and we created the Willie+Coco 13/9 duo and stayed loyal to each other throughout this entire game. Luke was the 4th person I really felt like I got very close to. Just like with Willie, we instantly hit it off and he was awesome to chat with throughout this game. I really enjoyed chatting with him and also working with him in this game.
The reason why I highlighted these players, because on Day 2 I told myself in the confessionals: I will be making a deep run with these players and I will be making sure that we reach the end together, except if someone flipped on us (which Luke did). Another main reason I highlighted them is because the main part of my gameplay early on was solidifying very strong 1 on 1s with them. I said DAY 2 that I will be getting to the end with these players and I managed to make that happen, because we took control over like every round behind the scenes.
One of my biggest behind-the-scenes moves very early on was securing Willie’s complete trust. So, Cody made a 4-person-alliance with me, Blu, Kevin and I, however, I found out that Cody also created a chat with Will, Chris, Jay M and I used that knowledge to my advantage. I went to Willie and I lied to him that something is making me nervous and that I don’t want to keep secrets from him. I told him that he was my closest ally and that I have to tell him the truth that Cody made an alliance chat of me/blue/kevin/i. He was shocked and then admitted to me that Cody also made an alliance of Jay M/Chris/Him. This was an EXTREMELY crucial point of my game because from here on, I got Will’s trust and he voted with me every single time and he stayed loyal the whole time, even when he should have 100% flipped on me.
Another important part of the very early game was intentionally telling Luke that he was in danger and that I was upset about it and was trying to find a way to save him. I feel like this move on my part helped me establish a strong game-related bond with him.
During the early rounds, Kevin shared it with me that he had found the pre-merge idol. Knowing this information was really helpful for me and it proved to me that Kevin did consider me his closest ally.
During the first 3 votes, I voiced my ideas but I didn’t flat out control the rounds. I did have some control over Lorenzo’s eviction as I was hard pushing for him.
One of the most important early rounds in which I had a lot of control was Final 14 aka the double eviction. By that point I had an alliance of 6 with Matty/Cody/Kevin/Blu/Jay H./Me. Chris’s name was thrown out HARD in that alliance chat, especially by Matty/Blu, so I instantly told him and we knew we had to try and get some of them out. Chris went on call with Jay H. (by that time he knew about everything, but Jay H. also admitted it to him) and fortunately Jay H. wanted to push for Matty.
I shared the entire plan with Kevin, Luke and Will. Meanwhile I knew from Chris that Jay H. got other people on board with this plan. I knew where every vote was going to land and I recognized it would be a 8-2-2-2. I realized that there would be too many votes on Matty. So, I made a MOVE here.
I knew my alliance of Blu/Cody/Kevin/Me expected us to vote for Niko, but by that point I put the plan in action to get rid of Matty. However, I knew where every vote would land, so I knew that Matty would be leaving regardless. So, I went behind my „real alliance’s back and I ended up convincing Kevin to vote NIKO with me, who was a challenge beast, to ensure we have control over which 2 players went home that round.
That paid off because not only was I able to keep up the act that I was with my Cody/Blu/Kevin alliance, because they thought I voted Niko, but also everyone in my other alliance thought I had voted out Matty. I managed to pull it off without anyone really realizing it or calling me out for it.
Final 12 was also a hectic round. There were only 6 of us up for elimination and at first Chris pushed for Wender to go, meanwhile I pushed for Devyn. I felt like Wender and I had a better relationship, so I really wanted him to stay here.
This was the round where I found out a lot regarding Blu. Blu offered a final 2 deal for Chris „because no one would expect that” and that made me wary of him. Blu also gave me the ammo I needed this round. He spilled to me to that Devyn was talking about Chris and Jay H and that people were considering that Chris/Jay H were a duo. I instantly used this knowledge to my advantage to flip the narrative and push for Devyn to go. I claimed that Devyn and Blu were hard pushing for Chris to go. Chris and I managed to flip the vote against Devyn.
To sum up the pre-merge portion of the game: At first, I laid back, made strong bonds with certain people and used all the information I got to my advantage to make people think I was their very close ally. I feel like I had a lot of control over the F14, F13, F12 votes.
MERGE:
The Merge finally happened at Final 11. It didn’t really make a difference because of the One World Twist, but it was still a huge milestone for me. During this early merge Chris was heavily targeted for his supposed duo of Jay H and we needed to get players out, who could be very dangerous on the long term for us. At the final 11, I rallied my allies of Kevin, Luke, Will and convinced them to vote for Cody by telling them that Cody has been targeting Will for a while. (He did drop his name around that time, but he wasn’t like coming for him hard). This worked like magic and suddenly the 5 of us gained majority to send Cody to the Jury Villa.
In this very round I also managed to win the 1st Individual Immunity Challenge of the season. During this day I was barely online, yet I still managed to receive the highest number of rocks, which, in my opinion, shows how well I have been playing the game socially. I did not have to make a single deal with any of the players, I did not promise anyone rocks and yet here I was with the Immunity AND a clue to the hidden immunity idol. I quickly shared the idol clue with Chris and we looked for the idol. I found a list of all the sky level accounts and we looked through it. Chris found part 1 of the idol on the list and then we had to search everywhere for Part 2, but in the end, I found the second part.
During this tribal council, the tension was high and the pressure on me was even higher as Chris fully expected to be voted out, but I had to listen to my gut and I just knew that we had the votes to keep Chris safe, so eventually I saved the idol for a future round.
I decided to tell Kevin and Luke about the idol individually to make them trust me even more, but I pretended that they were the only ones knowing about it.
Final 10 was mainly interesting about the Touchy Subject Results for me. I purposefully wanted to throw this comp. I knew that I was already looked at because of the F11 social comp win, I knew that I would possibly be getting some of the good answers here and I didn’t want to win this Touchy Subject, as I felt like it’d put an even bigger target on me. In the end, even I was surprised at the fact that I got answered for every single good question.
To me, this shows how well I have managed to integrate myself into the game and how well I was able to hide the fact that I had an immense amount of control over the last few rounds. I got answered who would you hang out with irl, biggest hero, most trustworthy, who is likely to return to all stars and who is most likely to win. I feel like that SHOWS how well I was playing to some extent, but not to the full extent. People thought I was just social and part of the majority, but what they didn’t know is that I was pulling the strings behind people’s back UNDETECTED and WITHOUT EVER BEING EXPOSED.
So, the Final 9 was the round I finally created the 5-person-chat of Luke, Willie, Chris and Kevin. Chris wanted Wender to leave, meanwhile the rest of us wanted Jay H. to leave that round. We all agreed on in the end to vote for Jay H. and I would like to address the self-vote here. So, I was so determined to follow along with this plan that I was talking about it for hours in my confessional. I even told Jay H that unfortunately I’m locking him in and I was so certain about what I’d do this round that somehow it slipped my mind that I didn’t actually lock him in and i fucking fell asleep on the couch. But you could count this vote on Jay H., because that is where it was going to land and everybody knew it.
However, the most important event that happened in Final 9… was something that was not related to the votes this round at all. As I’ve been talking to Luke, my instincts were telling me that something was happing there with him, like my Survivor Instincts were telling me to watch out for Luke. I started to become worried that maybe he wants to get rid of me for being a threat or flip on our alliance. So, I came up with a plan one morning. I went to Luke and pretended that I wanted to vote out Chris. Just like I expected, he was instantly down with this idea, he was instantly was saying how he would like to vote out Chris at Final 8 and I agreed to it. I feel like this was a huge social move, because Luke also spilled it to me that he was talking to it about Wender and then we talked about possibly getting Jay M and Ben on board with this. So this allowed me to see clearly how the end-game would begin.
Final 8 was the DARK ROUND. The first thing I did was that I identified that Kevin had won individual immunity and asked him not to tell anyone about it, then I lied to everyone else that I had won individual immunity so that they wouldn’t target me and it completely worked. Then what I did was that I pretended that I was fully on board with getting Chris out with Luke, Wender, Jay M and Ben, meanwhile we agreed on the other side to vote for Wender, because he could be a late game threat. Knowing the votes would tie and knowing that it wouldn’t be revealed if I played an idol or not, I decided to use the idol on Chris, RESULTING IN THE ONE AND ONLY CORRECT IDOL PLAY OF THE SEASON and sent a late-game threat, Wender, off to the jury.
Final 7….. one of my biggest moves. Not knowing what had happened last round, Ben, Jay M and Luke still wanted to vote for Chris. I pretended that Chris must have had an idol that he played on himself and that this round was finally the round for him to leave. However, things got complicated. Luke actually nearly managed to flip the votes around, when he tried to convince Will to vote Chris out. Will came to me in PMs, admitting it to me that he was leaning towards eliminating Chris, but I couldn’t let that happen. I had to come up with something on the spot. I told him that we shouldn’t and couldn’t trust Luke, because he made a final 4 deal with Me, Ben and Jay M. This shocked Will and he completely believed me and then he admitted it to me that he also had a final 3 deal with Ben Luke and Himself. I convinced him that getting to the end with me and Chris was the best route for him. I made Will go against his own interest by making him keep Chris in (who he ADMITTEDLY DIDN’T TRUST) by convincing him that getting Luke out was the right move for both of us (which was NOT the right move for him, as Luke clearly trusted him). This round was a lot closer than what I had originally expected and massive props to Luke for that. In the end, I feel like this once again shows that how strong of a social and strategic game I’ve played by managing to sway Will.
The rest of the season: Final 6&Final 5: straightforward vote off for Jay M and Ben, who were outside of our final 4 alliance. I enjoyed getting to know them in this game, but at the end of the day, I was going to stick to my alliance.
Final 4: This was really difficult for me. I managed to get to the end with the 3 players who have had my back from Day 1 till the end. Knowing that I had to backstab 1 of them right before the end was TOUGH. When Will won immunity, I knew that I had to vote Kevin out…. which was by far the most difficult decision I had to make in this game. In order to avoid getting a vote or get into a tie, I lied to Kevin that Chris/Will were voting for me and that I beg him to tie it on Chris. The votes landed exactly how I expected it to be though, 3-1 against Kevin. I felt horrible for doing this, but I was so close to the end that I just couldn’t risk going out here.
SUMMARY:
I believe that my strong social and strategic gameplay allowed me to play a very cutthroat game without ever being called out a single time or without ever being in actual danger of going home.
Even though, I should have been the target at F6 F5 F4, I managed to avoid being voted out without even having any protection of an idol or immunity, which, in my opinion, further proves how well I was positioning myself in this game.
Many times, I pulled off huge moves and many times I could have been exposed or called out, if people compared notes about me, but I always managed to find a way to SAFELY get what I want.
I went to all my tribal councils fully knowing what would happen as I either was involved in the successful the plan or was the one actually coming up with the successful plan.
I would like to thank Chris for being my duo in this game from Day ZERO and for working so hard to get us to the very end. This is exactly what we set out to do and I’m really glad we could do it.
To the jury and others, I’m genuinely sorry if I upset you in any way in this game, because that was never my intention. I just simply did whatever I thought I had to do to get us here.
Thank you for reading my plea!!!!