Hello Jury!

I would like to firstly thank all of you for making this season so competitive, I had a great time!

~Premerge~
Not much happened for me premerge voting-wise, as the Vincent tribal was my first tribal experience this season, but I was still playing with what I had. I started out on the Krabi tribe, and on this tribe my main goal was to make as many early connections as I could. I had a previous relationship with Armanti and Isla, and I befriended Michelle early on as well. We were a strong tribe, we were winning challenges early on. So naturally, I didn't have much to do in terms of strategizing. So instead, I began looking for the Krabi hidden immunity idol. I searched through many accounts on tengaged, and while I never actually found the Krabi idol (I'm not sure anyone did), what I did end up finding helped me solidify a bond that ended up taking me all the way. I stumbled across the HUA HIN immunity idol. When I found it, I debated for a bit on what to do with it. I could've just bookmarked the page and try to claim it if I got swapped, but instead I figured it was better to know who had it. I looked on the Hua Hin tribe, and the only name I recognized was Renny, who happens to be sitting next to me. I skyped Renny and we caught up and eventually I said something along the lines of, "I was looking for my tribes idol and I stumbled across yours, im assuming you want it?" Of course Renny took it, and he got the idol for Hua Hin. What I wasn't expecting, however, was him to tell me he was willing to GIVE it to me had we found ourselves on the same tribe. This came to me as a complete shock, but of course I accepted. Sure enough, the first tribe swap had us both on the Phuket tribe. He handed me the idol and I was now in possession of the Hua Hin immunity idol. 

On Phuket, my strategy was the same. I reached out to Ahmed, John, Nicky, and Essence, another one of my key allies, while on this tribe. I felt pretty secure. We didn't lose until the next swap, so at this point I hadn't been to a single tribal council.

The first tribal that I DID end up going to was the tribal right before the merge. I felt pretty good with everyone on our tribe except for Vincent, who was coming after me in a separate game. I was talking with Armanti and Renny, who were my 2 closest allies at the time, and I threw Vince under the bus. It eventually spread to the rest of the tribe, and he was voted out unanimously.

~Merge~
At the merge, as you all saw I didn't start out strong. I was completely out of the loop, and me and someone in my f3 at the time were sent to exile to duel. I ended up winning the duel, and I was granted access back into the game. That, right there, was my wake up call. I almost went home with an IDOL. I went into full survival mode. I still had my relationship with Essence, which helped me get back into the loop on my return. She told me that they were afraid Yoshi was going to play an idol so they were going to split and that the real vote was for Tiffany. Meanwhile, Tiffany added me in a group with me, her, yoshi, renny, and john i believe? But they wanted to target Kelly, who was the leader of the majority alliance, for obvious reasons. The next vote was the Yoshi vote. Obviously with Tiffany leaving Yoshi was on the bottom. I was in that company as well, and I was trying to wiggle myself out of there. The vote seemed pretty straight forward on Michelle for them, but I voted for Kelly that night, reason being I was unaware of Essence getting any votes at all. Then Ahmed made his move against that alliance. It ended up tying between Kelly and Essence and on the revote, I was heavily pressured to vote both ways. I could've taken Essence out of the game, and it was definitely considered, because I knew that Essence had probably the most connections out of anyone left. On the other hand, I could vote Kelly, force rocks, and shake up the game. I ended up casting my revote for Kelly, and it couldn't have gone better for me. I played it off as a mistake to Renny due to the chaos of the vote, and he bought it. That gave me an in with the minority. And seeing that I helped to save the majority by voting for Kelly, they believed I was in with them as well. I was finally in a good spot. I win immunity the next challenge and I find the rehidden merge idol that day. I now have a locked spot in f8 with two idols in my pocket, one that nobody knew about. Me winning that immunity turned out to be a lucky break, because Kelly then made his move against that alliance and ousted John. That left Ess coming to me, as we were the only two left out of the vote. I solidified my bond with her, and the final 8 tribal was I believe my defining move in the game. There's the group of Michelle, Renny, and Ahmed who are voting for Nicky, and there's the group of Kelly, Essence, Adam, and Nicky looking to vote for Michelle. I was truly in the middle. I could've gone with Kelly's group and taken Michelle out of this game. Or, if I flipped back to work with Ahmed, Michelle, and Renny I could force rocks and see where the cards fell. At this point I still had 2 idols, so, assuming that we were going to rocks I played the Hua Hin idol to make sure I was safe. I had asked Will if the premerge idols got rehidden, and he told me no. So I played the Hua Hin to ensure that nobody could find ANY idols. What I wasn't expecting that tribal was for Adam to self vote and Nicky go home 4-3-1. That came as a shock, but even though I wasted an idol I made the right decision and I was back in the numbers. Final 7 was pretty straight forward, as the 4 of us voted Kelly out, who was a big threat to win the game. That brings us to final 6. First of all, I was exhausted after running the longest endurance of my life- 18 hours and 40 minutes. But after a quick nap I was ready to start strategizing. Renny had come up with a plan to take Ahmed out, but that fell through after he won immunity. So our options were between Essence and Adam. I found myself in yet another swing vote position, this time with Renny at my side. Essence was the bigger threat to go on and win the game, so Michelle and Ahmed decided to vote for her in about 10 seconds. Me and Renny, on the other hand, were more hesitant. Ahmed had won the last 2 challenges, and we didn't think Adam would be able to beat him in any challenges. Keep in mind, Ahmed had told Renny he was going to tell me that I was getting votes in an attempt to flush an idol that he had no proof of me having. He was right, but at the time it made him look very foolish due to me and Renny being so close. So long story short me and Renny decided to flip. Essence had Adam voting for Michelle so ideally the vote was going to go 3-2-1. However, Adam self voted for a third time and went home 4-2. Me and Renny made the right decision as us and Essence held all the power in the final 5, and Ahmed and Michelle had no idea.

~Finale~
I went into the finale with the hopes of bringing Michelle and Renny with me to the final 3. However, after Ahmed won another challenge, things got complicated. Me and Renny were in the middle again. Since it was the last time to play the idol, I will admit I didn't try that hard in the challenge, because I knew I was safe. Me and Renny found ourselves in the middle again. Essence was still a humongous threat to win the game, but we discussed what would happen if we voted Essence out, and we didn't think Michelle would vote Ahmed out, all while being someone who was very desirable to take to ftc. So we decided to take vote for Michelle. Ahmed came to Renny again after he FLIPPED the previous tribal saying that he wants to flush my idol again. Him and Michelle made a fake group chat basically saying that they were voting for me, because they were scared I was going to play it for Essence i guess? Knowing what I did, we had the numbers regardless, so I played my 2nd idol on myself and Michelle went home. At final four, Ahmed won immunity again, and it was here that Essence was the most obvious vote, as much as it hurt me.

~Conclusion~
I believe that I played the best all around game out of the three of us sitting here tonight. While Renny and I had many coordinated moves together, I feel like I did more things by myself to further myself in the game than he did.

Ahmed's immunity run is impressive, for sure, and I have nothing but respect for him after the endurance challenge. But Ahmed proved time and time again that he was not good at the strategic aspect of this game. He never realized how close me and Renny were the entire time, he failed at flushing my idol on 3 different occasions, and he simply would not be here if it wasn't for his immunity run.

I did my best to form real relationships with all of you, I found 2 idols, won an immunity challenge, and I wasn't afraid to roll the dice in this game. Thank you all for reading all that (if you did lol) and I am looking forward to answering your questions! Thanks!

Thanks all for a great season - this was some of the most fun I've had in a group game, and I'll be sad to see it end. I'll try to keep this concise: I think I played the best game of the three of us sitting here. Having played closely with Ahmed and Kyle all game, I was privy to a lot of their strategy, the good and the bad (and the shockingly bad, but we'll get to that later).

- The pre-merge was quiet for me (and for anybody on Phuket 2.0 lol). The major events of the premerge were, as Kyle mentioned, him finding my original tribe's idol and giving it to me, and then I gave it back to him. Kyle and I actually got to FTC together in another game (we beat Vlad) a few months ago and I liked working with him and wanted to be able to do it again, so I gave him back the idol as soon as we were back on a tribe together to form trust. During the premerge I also started talking with Ahmed, Ess, and Michelle, bonds that would prove crucial later.

- At the merge, the final three plan with Ahmed and Michelle was established, and the idea was to keep it lowkey. As we all probably recall, there were a lot of plans floating around, thus the 4-4-3-1 vote. I decided to target Armanti at this tribal after Kyle told me his ideal final three was me, him, and Armanti. I hadn't talked to Armanti much yet at that point so I wasn't sold on the idea of locking in a final three with him, and wanted to take out one of Kyle's other allies in hopes of securing his bond with me.

- Final 11, I get added into a group chat with Tiffany and Yoshi and a few others. I hadn't really worked with Tiffany or Yoshi yet and didn't get a good vibe from that group chat, so went with the crew voting Tiffany.

- Final 10 is my first shot at taking some power in the game (and I won immunity!). I am the one who organizes the group of six to target Kelly - I've already got Michelle and Ahmed, and I have Kyle, and Yoshi and I started talking and we get along well, and I figure he's got limited options, and John and I also bonded so I get him on board too. The tricky thing, Ahmed doesn't want anybody knowing he's part of the plan, and none of them believe me that John will be on board, so I can't actually tell anybody we have a majority (John asked and I lied and told him I had an extra vote advantage). But then Ahmed gets antsy and decides we should try to split the vote between Ess and Kelly. This is the first time I see the fatal flaw in Ahmed social/strategic game - he ALWAYS wants to make a "BIG MOVE" even if it makes no sense. More on this later. So that vote gets split and it turns into a mess. I'm going to refute what Kyle said - I did NOT buy his excuse that his role in that rock draw was a mistake. Kyle was all of a sudden very opposed to voting Ess, so I figure "Okay, Kyle and Ess are secretly close." I wasn't going to call him out, I want him to keep feeling comfortable working with me, but he tipped his hand this round and confirmed that he and Ess were a duo. I was the only person during that TC actually trying to run the numbers and see where everybody was voting to try to prevent a rock draw.

- Final 9 - During this round I tried to regroup the five remaining players (me, Michelle, Ahmed, Kyle, and John) who voted Kelly last round, but didn't want to have two back to back votes where I was trying to run the show, so I take a step back to recalibrate. Ahmed ends up lying to Michelle and I and he votes John, and I figure, okay, Ahmed is telling me and Michelle we're his number ones and he wants to go to FTC with us but is willing to betray us, that's all I gotta know.

- Final 8, so at this point we've got the four in the Kelly-Ess-Adam-Nicky alliance, the me-Ahmed-Michelle alliance, and then Kyle's got his deals on both sides. I'm able to pull Kyle in on our side. During this round I also chat with Nicky, and I figure if it comes to a rock draw, let me get my side to target Nicky so he'll be safe, and maybe he and I can try to make something work. Alas it wasn't meant to be and Adam self-votes, resulting in a 4-3-1 vote.

- Final 7 - And this is the round that we finally got the majority over the Kelly-Ess-Adam alliance. This round has another example of Ahmed overplaying, he comes to me and Michelle to talk about some plan that Kelly pitched to him where he should throw his vote on somebody else (can't remember who and can't check since Ahmed removed me from our alliance group chat) and I was baffled - how, this far into the game, was he still buying what Kelly was saying? This was, again, Ahmed being too eager to try and make a BIG MOVE for absolutely no reason. Luckily, my logic prevails, and we take out a huge threat in kelly.

- Final 6 - Now this is the round where it becomes clear that Ess's allies have shrunk and there's now room for me to work with her. I cook up a plan to vote out Ahmed - when I pitch this to Michelle, she is pretty openly hesitant about it, and I'm like alright, Michelle is really locked in about going to the end with Ahmed despite what everyone is saying to us every time they get voted out that he's a big threat to win, so I know I've gotta really lock in plans with Kyle and Ess. Michelle and Ahmed are gung-ho on getting Ess out but the way I see it, who would I rather have in the final five if something goes wrong? Ess, who is willing to work with me, or Adam (mapboy! <3) who has self-voted a few times and who I didn't work with? So I decide to vote out Adam, and it works out. During this round, Ess messaged Ahmed and said something along the lines of "I heard you're voting me" just to get his goat and Ahmed IMMEDIATELY folds and says "Who told you?!" Now if this was me, I would have replied "What are you talking about?" but he gives away the plan immediately and start theorizing that Kyle leaked the plan to Ess. While Ess did know the plan, she was also just an obvious target this round. Ahmed had no cover up when she confronted him. Ahmed starts messaging me and Michelle about how he was going to try to get Kyle to waste his idol - he decided that of me him and Michelle, he should be the one to tell Kyle people are targeting him because he's closest with Kyle - false, I was closest with Kyle. Kyle is my biggest ally, and I think that's a shady move, so I go and I tell Kyle everything Ahmed is saying and exactly how Ahmed is going to try to get him to waste it so that Kyle can play it up to Ahmed. Ahmed would later claim that he knew from the final six that I was no longer working with him, but this is clearly not true.

- Final 5 - with Ahmed winning another immunity, it would seem the obvious choice is to vote Ess, right? She's got a lot of friends on the jury, she's played a great game... The plan I push and successfully executed was to take Michelle out - the idea here was that if Ahmed lost the final immunity challenge, I didn't think Michelle would vote him out, and I didn't want Ahmed to be able to do firemaking, so I took out his closest ally. This vote sucked because I actually got along really well with Michelle and in my ideal scenario, she'd be here in the end with me - but we all know, it doesn't matter what your FTC plans are if you can't get to FTC, so I had to change things up. Ahmed tried again to flush Kyle's idol (even though it was final five so obviously Kyle was going to play it??) - he was worried Kyle would play the idol on Ess. Didn't even matter since the majority (me, Ess and Kyle) were voting Michelle, but this is another important example of Ahmed overplaying and totally misreading my relationship with Kyle.

- Final four - Unfortunately it came time to vote out Ess - my purple rock passing buddy who could teach a Survivor masterclass in how to lower one's threat level. I think its worth noting that during this round, Ess asks Ahmed something like "Are you voting for me?" and he responds "I haven't heard yet" - like, there's four people left, what is there to hear???

Sorry that ended up being longer than I intended. I hope this shows that I was driving a lot more strategy in this season than may have seemed apparent. While Ahmed's presence in the game was attention grabbing, and anybody winning five immunities is a huge accomplishment, I think its clear that his strategic game was lacking. He tried to make too many pointlessly big moves, many of which backfired.

The only shot I'll take at Kyle is that I don't think he was in the driver's seat much. I know many of us had conversations with Kyle where it was mostly him asking questions about what we thought, and, of course, that's a fine strategy for him to collect information, but it becomes clear quickly that he's not giving you much information back. It is what it is, I think Kyle is a level-headed player, I just don't think he drove the action as much as I did.

Thanks for reading all this - I'm happy to answer any questions you have and look forward to being roasted.

Hey Jury,

Thanks all for a fun group game. Was stressful, drama filled, and crazy, but enjoyable.

I just want to start and say that I won’t down play Renny or Kyle game play, talk about their flaws, or say why they don’t deserve it because we all worked hard to get here and had different acceptable strategies. I’m not here to say why THEY don’t deserve to win, I’m here to say why I, MYSELF, deserve to win. Talking about their flaws would only look bad on me and make me look like I’m scared of their overall game play.

Coming into this game I knew I was in for a messy battle when I saw so many tight friend groups in the game and I had nobody super close to me. Pre-Merge game was pretty simple, I was at one tribal only. During that tribal I made it my goal to take out Lifeiscool because I knew he was close to Michelle and I wanted to have a complete 100% right final 2 alliance with Michelle since that is how I play, and it Paid off well.

Prior to merge I was added to a 5 man person alliance consisting of Ess, Ben, Mathboy, Nicky, and myself. I was also offered a final 3 deal with Ess and Ben. To me that wasn’t ideal for my game because Ben and Ess are such power players with tight friends that it would be too difficult for me to win. So I decided to stick with them until I felt ready to jump ship.

As some of you may think immunity wins was my only path to final 3, but there were four rounds of potential to take me down- two of which I had MANY votes on me- yet I didn’t go. Having to make side deals and splitting votes was my essential key at survival when not immuned because it kept the cast out of loop who voted where, and it had me be able to swing votes to my advantage. Hence the occurrence of many split votes this season.

Im going to go into detail my perception on how I viewed each tribal from my stand point:

MERGE
Before my Immunity Run:

MERGE DAY 1: 12th - Armanti R.  [THREE VOTES AGAINST ME]
- For this round I had found out from Michelle that the other side wanted to split between me and Kelly. So I started working on a few outsiders aside from my 5 person alliance to vote with us. I managed to string along renny and Michelle and Ess got John on board. I was the one who told my alliance vote Kyle because I knew him and IT were a duo. Before tribal I had convinced Kyle to vote Kelly to throw his vote off me, so I wouldn’t go into exile. It ended up working out in my favour and making the vote 4-4-3-1, sending in a powerful duo together to exile.

MERGE DAY 3: 11th - Tiffany P.
- There was rumour of Yoshi having an idol this round. By then I started making alliance chats with people outside my core of 5, and made a final 3 chat with Renny and Michelle to draw their trust to me even more. Ess and I were able to have the vote split between Yoshi and Tiff incase an idol was played. Yoshi was suppose to go home, but I made sure more votes lied on tiff since I felt Yoshi would be easier to work with in the future.

MERGE DAY 4: 10th - Yoshi S.
- This was the round I wanted to make a move against my 5 person alliance. Ess was playing such a great game that it was becoming threatening to me so I wanted her out. Finding an Idol and knowing they were voting Michelle, I wanted to some how get the votes to split and have ess leave. This was my biggest mistake in the game because I was too fixated on getting Ess out I didn’t take into consideration the probabilities of other things happening. Although I successfully idoled Michelle, my final 2, the person I wanted to go didn’t due to rocks.

MERGE DAY 5: 9th - John C.  [THREE VOTES AGAINST ME]
- I took my mistakes from last round and learned from it. I knew I was the target this round after the commotion I caused. Renny and Michelle had come up with a plan to blindside Kelly saying they had Kyle and John on board. To me it felt too good to be true and learning from yesterdays mistake I decided to look all options possible, so I approached Kelly offering to take out John since I knew he[John] voted Kelly the round prior. Kelly agreed. So instead of voting with my core I threw my vote on John to avoid the 3-3-3 vote I was expecting. Allowing me to avoid a revote draw and staying.

My immunity Run started here:

MERGE DAY 6: 8th - Nick S. // NotNicky333
- At this point I felt in a better position because Kelly, Nicky, and Adam all trusted me. I knew Kyle had an idol because when I found it, it was already taken. So my goal was to try and blindside him to take out his idol. My goal was to string in Nicky and Adam- along side Michelle to vote out Kyle. Sadly, Nicky leaked everything to Kyle and Kyle ran back to me letting me know what was said. I decided to scrap the plan and let it go to rocks to try and rock out Ess or Kelly. I knew Kyle would play his idol then if we told him it was going to rocks. So it was a win-win for me having the idol flushed and trying to rock out someone. What I didn’t expect was Adam to self vote on accident which sucked because I would have rather kept Nicky hence why we voted him to tie it.

MERGE DAY 7: 7th - Kelly O. // Kelly0412
- Mentally this was by far my hardest vote to vote someone out. Not many expected my relationship with Kelly outside the game, as we both relate to each other on an empathetic level and help bring each other up. Sadly, he was just such a big jury threat to me, and given his group game track record I figured he’d be able to separate outside friendships with strategic gameplay-and take it as a compliment to be voted out. Fearing Kyle was the swing, I had told renny and Michele to make a final 3 chat with him to draw him in closer with them- to which they did. This helped solidified the solid 4 vote to take Kelly out. A big NOTE for this round, I was also debating on throwing my vote and making it 3-3-1 so Kelly wouldn’t be mad at me. I told my alliance that Kelly wanted me to vote a certain way, so my alliance would understand and not be mad, but right before tribal I felt it would make me appear weak so instead I went along and made it 4-3.

MERGE DAY 8: 6th - Adam R
- This was my hardest day in the game. Doing the 18 hour challenge was mentally exhausting, which I was planning not to try super hard in. But during the challenge, Michelle leaked to me Renny’s plan to blindside me this round and I knew well in advance where renny’s head was at. I worked my butt off to ensure his plans would be thrown out the window and avoid the 4-2 vote on me. I had to keep reassuring him I’m good with him so he wouldn’t suspect Michelle leaked to me the plan, but ever since this round I never trusted him and knew he would turn on me and Michelle eventually to get me out. Adam basically gave up at this point and I was trying to get him to vote ess to tie it since I had a feeling renny was flipping. He wasn’t replying to me at all and sadly he self voted and got out. 

MERGE DAY 9: 5th - Michelle R
-  Michelle was my ride or die, my final 2 to the end. We leaked EVERYTHING to each other and kept each other in on the loop on who was shit talking us. It sucks because I had my suspicions Renny would blindside Michelle once I won immunity due to the potential 2-2 vote in f4. If I had more time I was going to try and string Kyle in to blindside Renny with an idol play convincing him it will grow his resume. Sadly it was a 15 min voting round and had to just throw the vote on ess. In the improbable event Renny did vote with michelle and I, I had told them to make a fake chat saying kyle is the target to make sure kyle wouldn't idol Ess. Sadly I had my doubt and even in my voting confessional I wrote saying I have a feeling Michelle is leaving, but there wasn’t much to be done given the short time.

MERGE DAY 10: 4th - Ess Ca
- Again a short round, I knew this round it was me vs Ess which was expected as we both were perceived as the biggest jury threats left. Why else would everyone target us? Nothing but respect for the way Ess played this game, stellar social game and also a competition threat. Her and I became such big rivals after my first strike against her.  She hands down had the best resume for the jury and pissed off the least people. It would have been stupid of me to tie it or make a move against someone else, and allow her to have a chance to make f3 since she would win.

I played a very cut throat game as people can see, many rounds when someone left I was to blame for it and attacked for it. Almost every last word someone had mentioned my name before leaving the tribe chat. Even with immunity I put a lot of thought into every round to ensure I had things go my way. When not immuned I had to split votes to stay safe, even receiving 6 votes against me- I still stayed safe. I hope people can eliminate outside emotions and realize I play all my games to win no matter which friends are there. No hard feelings to anyone and please feel free to ask me any questions. To anyone I hurt, hope we can still be friends after.

ok i have my questions - one for each of you. i will post each of them and you can feel free to respond to them whenever :)

for renny:
a lot of people saw you as ahmed's sheep for much of the game, but you have said otherwise to me personally as well as in your speech. what was the turning point for you and what was your first move that you made as yourself, rather than as ahmed's right-hand-man?

for ahmed:
you were clearly a comp threat throughout this season, but your strategy is undoubtedly questionable. i won't ask about comps, because they are not very relevant to me -- what was the most strategic move you made in this game that actually ended up being successful?

for kyle:
you did a lot of flipping on the majority/minority alliances which is typically a very risky move that ends up getting yourself voted off. why did you choose this approach, and did you manage to make certain votes happen yourself, or did you tag along with whatever the majority was doing each day?

you did a lot of flipping on the majority/minority alliances which is typically a very risky move that ends up getting yourself voted off. why did you choose this approach, and did you manage to make certain votes happen yourself, or did you tag along with whatever the majority was doing each day?

Hi Essence! Thanks for the question...
Answer: You’re right, I did do a lot of maneuvering that including flipping multiple times to make my way here. When I was exiled at the merge, I saw it as a wake up call and I realized that I was going to do whatever it took to make my way to this very seat. And yes, part of that was trying to be with the majority as much as possible. But yes I can name 3 occasions where I was targeting different people.

Vincent- My first vote premerge, I went to Armanti and Renny and told them I did not trust him AT ALL. I continued to paint Vince as someone that nobody could trust, and I got him voted out unanimously.

Adam- In the final 6, you were the easy vote for Michelle, Ahmed, and even Renny for a while. I wanted to prevent Ahmed from winning to the end and I thought there was no real purpose for Adam staying. Luckily I talked Renny into voting for Adam and he went home.

Michelle- I will admit that Renny came to me with this plan, but I was actually planning on coming to him with that exact plan, he says in his speech that it was his sole move and I went along with it, but in reality I was planning on doing the same thing.

Hope this answers your question, feel free to ask any more!

you were clearly a comp threat throughout this season, but your strategy is undoubtedly questionable. i won't ask about comps, because they are not very relevant to me -- what was the most strategic move you made in this game that actually ended up being successful?
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Thanks for the Question ess. There were two rounds equally on par with what I consider most strategic and successful, both involving the same strategy. Splitting votes to save myself.

I knew going into merge, any round I was not immuned I would be a big target. I had already felt the effects round one when people wanted to vote me into exile. Combating this I used splitting votes to my advantage. Having convinced Renny and Michelle into voting with me, and you convincing John,I was able to gather enough votes to split 4-4 between kyle and It. The problem was the other side would have all voted me. Throwing Kyle vote off me onto Kelly right before tribal single handily avoided a 4-4-4 vote keeping me safe and sending him and IT into exile together, a strong duo.

This again happened the round you were coming after me. Instead of voting with my core of Michelle and Renny I approached Kelly with the idea of voting John out. Splitting votes again I used it to my advantage to throw my own vote on to John to avoid a 3-3-3 vote keeping me safe.

In short, splitting votes to protect myself for many rounds was my best strategic play because I knew I was a target and although it’s difficult to convince larger groups to vote a certain way. It’s much easier to get small sub voting block groups to vote In my favour. Both plays came out successful and played out in my favour.

for renny:
a lot of people saw you as ahmed's sheep for much of the game, but you have said otherwise to me personally as well as in your speech. what was the turning point for you and what was your first move that you made as yourself, rather than as ahmed's right-hand-man?

Thanks for this question - I think there has been a misperception of the alliance in the eyes of the other players as well as in Ahmed's speech that because he was in more people's messages or more in front of everyone's faces that I was following him. It couldn't be farther from the truth.

I don't know that there was a "turning point," because Ahmed was never my number one ally. I frequently disagreed with him and steered the strategy in our alliance to better/more logical plans. I think of the disastrous split vote at the final 10 where he went in gungho about getting you out and didn't make any effort to navigate the revote.

Every move I made in this game I made for myself - like taking out enough members of the Kelly/Ess/Adam/Nicky alliance that I could then detach myself from Ahmed/Michelle. To have jumped ship on Ahmed/Michelle sooner would have been a guaranteed fifth place or worse for me. Voting Armanti out was a move to weaken Kyle and make him closer to me, voting Adam at final six was a move to strengthen the opposition to Ahmed. Ahmed now claims that he knew from final six that I was turning on him, yet he continued to include me in intimate strategy conversations. He takes credit for telling Michelle and I to make a fake group chat with Kyle to lure in Kyle, yet he doesn't know that I'm messaging Kyle "Hey, Michelle is about to start a fake group chat, it was Ahmed's idea, its all BS."

I hope this helps clear things up - I understand perception is reality, but I was as much Ahmed's right hand man as Sandra was Russell's.

thanks ladies!

hi finalists, i will post a statement then a question.

Ahmed -

i dont know what to say to you really, i am always paranoid in every game, so im usually NEVER blindsided however you did blindside me, you basically made me look like a big fucking idiot for defending you and flipping to save you because you were my friend and i thought our friendship meant something but clearly this game that you... tryharded and put an insane amount of work into, just simply meant more. people say i was a jury threat but thats funny i was vile and disgusting to everyone so i wont take that as an excuse for voting me out. Ahmed I think you just simply overplayed and did whatever it took to get to the end not realizing that well... you screwed over all your friends and personal relationships for no reason and you will leave this game without a win and without any friends.

so my question for you is:

Why did you spend 18 hours on an endurance competition in a game you had no chance at winning?

Kyle/Renny:

Well! i would be lying if i said i EVER had a convo with either of you, quite frankly i voted one of you and my mind will probably not be changed but i will ask a question to you guys anyway.

What is your favorite Britney Spears song and why?

Congratulations final 3, you guys did what we couldn't do and stick it out till the end. I'll go ahead and address you all with a question/statement.

Kyle, you were a nice guy. You always made sure to talk to me and you were fine to communicate with. With that being said, your strategic game was lacking. Where was the BOLDNESS? We get it, you were voted out at final 12 and came back. I believe the correct move is to play UTR for a couple rounds, but I feel like you just played UTR the whole game. My question for you is simple, how did you play the game BOLDLY? What did you do that made you stand out?

Renny. You and I didn't talk much, so I don't have a lot to say. I like the way you played strategically, and socially I guess you were fine. My question is to you, why should I vote you to win if the minute we started talking you voted me? Surprise me.. you're the front-runner for my vote.

Ahmed. Oh Ahmed. I like you as a person, I really do. I think you are funny and stand for what you believe in. You've also helped me with TG comps a lot, which I can never thank you enough for. You also played this game very well strategically, you controlled a lot of it. Despite relying on rock draws, or what should have been rock draws a couple of times. Now onto where you struggled.. WHERE WAS YOUR JURY MANAGEMENT!? I *WANT* TO RESPECT YOUR GAME BUT YOU HAVE THE WORST JURY MANAGEMENT I HAVE EVER SEEN! You made it seem like you only cared about yourself, and it leads me to believe you are truly a bad person. I have two questions for you. How did you try and manage the jury? I'm assuming since you cared so much you at least had to try. Also know that it failed with pretty much everyone but Michelle. My 2nd question is how can I vote you to win if I view you as a "bad person?" Are you a bad person? I don't even know. There is a correct answer to these questions, you just have to find them. Also, the only thing I ever said to Kyle was that his name was out there. Never leaked anything specifically what he said, so stop talking about that.

Thank you everyone, and good luck to the finalists.

Ben, I’ve told many people this. What I am in games is not who I am outside of games. I can turn off the friend switch when I’m in a game because that’s what I joined for. To play a game. I get you were hurt, but if you think I devalued our friendship you are strongly mistaken.
You may think you were vile but you had so many friends in the merge that had you made f3 you were an extreme jury threat. On top of that you had at least 12+ votes casted you and survived them all, that’s a big jury threat in my eyes.

I do want to wait till after the game to properly talk to you but just know I am sorry and i do hold our friendship close to me as we have always been there for each other during tough times in our life- something I don’t take lightly. I do hope you realize one day that I played a game and that’s it, I didn’t mean to hurt you this bad. In a game of chess you don’t let your friend win and this works the same.

As for your question. I knew I was the vote that round after Michelle told me what Renny said so yeah I stayed up 18 hours straight to win it so I could make it one day further.

Well! i would be lying if i said i EVER had a convo with either of you, quite frankly i voted one of you and my mind will probably not be changed but i will ask a question to you guys anyway.

Honestly, Gimme More mainly because I hear it a lot when I play gta lmfao

Nicky, i'm happy to hear you don't hold games to heart and can appreciate a person outside of it.

As for game wise, you aren't wrong. I do care for myself. Why? This is a game with ONE winner and only ONE winner. Why would I put others before myself? IT makes no sense to me if anyone ever said they care about others before themselves.

Does this make me a bad person? No. Not once did I personally attack a SINGLE jury member in this game or degrade them on a personal level. I keep this strictly game only and as a cast playing as competitive as all of you I would think game play would be appreciated FIRST over personal friendships.

To ask how jury management was done is complex because every person is different. For me I feel like me being the leader of blindsiding someone as others hid in my shadows has them equating it to bad jury management while others would think of it purely as great game move. I kept all my conversations with everyone respectful no matter if they were with me or not. I lied just as much as anyone else in this game lied, heck- you even lied to me at one point. Why does my lying discredit everyone else's and make me look as a bad person? Because I actually spoke to most of the cast?

I want to make it clear that lying to someone does not make me a bad person nor does it dis-credit jury management. It's just me playing the game for myself to make it to f3 as should it be everyones goal. Keeping it on respectful level with everyone was me managing the jury.

Kyle, you were a nice guy. You always made sure to talk to me and you were fine to communicate with. With that being said, your strategic game was lacking. Where was the BOLDNESS? We get it, you were voted out at final 12 and came back. I believe the correct move is to play UTR for a couple rounds, but I feel like you just played UTR the whole game. My question for you is simple, how did you play the game BOLDLY? What did you do that made you stand out?

Hi Nicky, thanks for the question
I played this game boldly by clawing my way from the bottom. After I came back, your right, I did have to play UTR for the next round. But once I got my footing back, that’s when I started making my moves. Firstly, I flipped and forced rocks at f10 to acquire the ability to work with both sides, and it put me in a power position after I won immunity at f9 and found my 2nd idol. Then, at f8 I intended to force rocks again and flip on you, Kelly, Ess, and Adam, which is why I played an idol that night. I wasn’t expecting Adam to self vote but had he voted, we would have gone to rocks.

I can understand why you believe I played UTR the entire game. That was the intention. I wanted everyone to believe that but in reality I was making game shaking moves behind the scenes. The Yoshi vote out, getting you voted out, even giving Renny an idol on day 1 were all risky moves for me. My goal in the game was to keep a bigger threat in front of me the entire time up to the end. And I did that. I didn’t receive a single vote after I was exiled. All in all, after I came back I felt I had nothing to lose and I played every round like it was my last.

I hope that answers your question, thanks!

What is your favorite Britney Spears song and why?

If U Seek Amy - sneaking the word fuck onto mainstream radio was badass, reading about all the legal stuff that came up with that song existing is wild