- Sun May 30, 2021 1:36:12 pm
#8976
Hi Amanda,
Just so everyone knows off the bat, things are truly good between us, from my perspective. I know you just want Glyn to win with a burning passion and are doing whatever you can to help haha. But I do appreciate the question because it gives me a chance to really dive into things I think people may have missed about my game.
I truly think the the idea I needed comp wins to make the end is being extremely overblown. At the top 6/7 sure I needed wins, but we all needed comp wins at that point. Comp wins at the end are why Glyn and I are here and why you and Jennie and Spiral are not. But up until Adam went out I think my strategic and social games are entirely what carried me and that my strategic game was the best of all the finalists in terms of ensuring I made the endgame, regardless of who was in power. Social and physical games to me are not really goals in and of themselves; they are both tools that helps boost your strategic game. Like I said in my intro I think the initial part of my strategy was having good reads which were based on info I got from conversations. For example, I was able to see through Glyn’s “Adam and Susie = last duo" statement and know that Glyn was BSing me when he kept saying he wasn’t sure if you (Amanda) really wanted to work with him any more late in the game. That perception is social game. Or another example is me realizing after pushing Jennie about you and Glyn being a duo that she wasn’t quite ready to turn on you when she said things like “oh yeah let’s keep it in mind.” What matters socially in big brother is more than just what is said, it is what you take from what is said (what you believe or doubt, etc.) and what you do with it.
I think I had strong social connections that boosted my strategic game and kept me from being nominated until Final 8 (I think I said 7 elsewhere but it was the final 8 Adam boot round) and kept me unanimously that round. Prior to final 8 I had only won 2 comps, the first of which was entirely a social comp (taking turns eliminating people). So I needed to keep working relationships open so I could jump between you (Amanda), Glyn, Sezer, Chelsea, Spiral, Adam, Susie, or whoever was in power and make sure I wasn’t being put up.
I will get into more details about how I built relationships with people in my social game in my answer to Jennie’s question. So I’ll focus on strategy here. And I did reference a lot of my strategy in my intro statement, so please refer to that. But what I’m going to do here is specifically discuss a few elements of my strategy and compare myself to the other finalists on those terms. Like I said there my goal was to remain flexible and make changes to my strategy and moves when I could. In doing that I HAD to consider comps, I’ll make that my first paragraph here.
One, a good strategy considers comps. Comps in this game are not fluke accidents, they are things to be anticipated and prepared for. And Parker is wrong that comps matter more in Survivor, I don’t even know what he’s talking about. They 100% matter way more in BB since comps literally determine who has power to set nominations. It’s not even close. So when i strategized in this game I considered who was good at comps and made sure to set my self up so that I would be safe if those people won power. That is why I cozied up to Chelsia and Adam and later Susie, and even to Jennie when she went on a late run and I had to decide whether to campaign for her or you. And if I was such an inept social pariah, why did I not get any votes ever when most weeks I didn’t have any sort of immunity. Maybe it’s because I HAD SOCIAL AND STRATEGIC BONDS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO WON THINGS. I even salvaged my relationship with Glyn enough to have him keep me safe the week he won HOH. In fact I think Glyn and Parker’s key oversight in this game was not considering the impact of comps. I think it was a strategic oversight of you and Glyn to let me get closer to all of Chelsia, Susie, and Adam than you two were to them and to allow me to gain their trust. It meant that you ended up having to hope that Chelsia didn’t win more challenges, that someone would veto you on Susie’s HOH, and that Adam wouldn’t keep up his run late in the game. And in the end, hoping that I didn’t keep winning or that Spiral wouldn’t win. It’s impossible to look at strategy in this game without considering competitions. Also, four of you (Glyn, Parker, Amanda and Spiral) basically had the same general strategy in this game. But only ONE of you made the final, those aren’t good odds. I’m the only one who played like me (flexible/aggressive) and I’m here.
A second facet of my strategy was that I would team up with big comp threats and keep comp threats around to always be the lesser target since I was also throwing most challenges in the early game. That’s fairly self explanatory and I talked about it elsewhere.
A third facet of my strategic game that I think is being overlooked is my ability to influence votes through social ties I built to people like Sezer and Jen. Glyn takes a lot of credit for the parker vote out, but literally I thought at the time Glyn was making a huge mistake. If Sezer simply voted that round Glyn was in a very compromised position with Parker staying. I was really hoping that vote would solidify me and Jennie and Sezer too. Parker takes credit for convincing Sezer to keep him due to an alliance Parker admits was fake….ok. But I had an actual extremely close alliance with Sezer and we debated that vote for a while, with me constantly reassuring Sezer the votes were there to keep Parker despite what Glyn was saying. I also take some credit for the Shahbaz vote out. Jen was super on the fence on that vote (and yeah I know Glyn and Jennie and Amanda had an alliance with her), but if Jen was telling me the truth she was super on the fence even to the final moments and I encouraged her to keep Sheila. Then with 15 minutes to go before the vote was due she asked me if we should switch our votes to vote Sheila out, and I purposely logged out of the website (which sometimes is honestly the best strategy) logged back in with 5 minutes to go before the vote and said it was too late to change. Those are just two examples of votes I had a part in. But even other vote outs like Natalie’s and Jennie’s I used the fact I had voted to keep the evicted houseguest to gain last minute info (see my answer to Aisleyne for more).
A fourth part of my strategy which I discussed in my answer to Spiral was making big moves on my HOHs to take out people who threatened me specifically (even if they weren’t “big comp threats” to the house) and in the process trying to to blow up people’s games, force them to reveal their preferences, and really cause massive change in the house. Essentially setting off an atomic bomb. Not going to repeat all the points here, but please check it out in my answer to Spiral. I think in comparison, Glyn and Parker were more reliant on following the path of the house, and hoping in the end, they were the ones still standing out of the house. But I wasn’t afraid of change and being aggressive and honestly, that makes me very much not a bitch.
James
miss you!