Hey everybody what's going on Rob sister Nino back with this week's survivor burning question final burning question before we get to Wednesday nights finale and

every week I look and I think and I am searching for inspiration and I often turn to the patrons of Rob's podcast as I'd like to say the greatest reality TV community in the world and I said patrons I need your help help me come up with

the idea for this week's burning question and by far this week's most popular request was to explore the question of when should a player turn on their ally that was the dilemma that jam jam pondered in the latest episode whether or not to vote out Jamie or to turn on his ally Caroline who just made a big move she played the idol for Carson and everybody was talking up caroling

was talking up caroling even caroling but for a survivor player this is a fundamental decision that must be made to weigh your chances of winning in the end against your allies versus the possibility of not getting to the end without their numbers to help you get there.

So while there is not a one size fits all answer to this very complicated equation I do think that there are some best practices that we can glean from the past 43 seasons to help determine if jam jam made the right decision and how future players should approach this question.

So when we go back into the history of the show the way that we look at this question is going to change a little bit the way that old school players had to look at sitting in a final two is different than how modern players not only have to deal with a final three but also the final four fire making which kind of creates a soft final for the players to work in.

So this was a season with a final two these last few votes might be exceedingly cutthroat for the TK three but that's another story survivor history is littered with players who did not know when to cut an ally at the appropriate time to maximize their chances to win the most famous early example was back all the way in survivor the Australian outback when Colby won the fall in comrades channel at the final three on day 41 of survivor second season.

Imagine 41 days that's like two seasons Colby he decided to cast his one vote against Keith Famy to take Tina to the end where he made one of survivors biggest blunders to lose four to three to Tina didn't want to cut his ally on the winning side of knowing when to take out an ally Brian Heidek in survivor Thailand taught survivor players how to do that don't is not the best influence for everything but he had a sense.

Of which of his allies he could beat and knew who he would lose to when he decided how to take apart chewy gone when they got down to five now the most complicated question for players ends up being when there is a big threat to win in your alliance and voting against them would require help from people outside the alliance if you strike against an ally too early you give the chance for these replacements to eat.

Either turn the tables on you before you reach the finals or become a more palatable alternative for the jury in every final three there's always going to be one player that's going to win and the other two who won't and one is typically going to get zero votes to but we don't need to explore that right now the trick for a survivor player is to be able to tell if you are the eventual winner or the loser of any.

Given final three match up many times we chalk up a survivor players win to a performance at the final traffic council but I wonder if we might underrate the great winners ability to read the landscape of the game and know that they hold the winning hand in the final three match up against their allies so many great players wanted to keep their alliance together as they headed towards the end of the game resisting other.

They're tempting offers look at Todd who stuck it out with Courtney and Amanda in China Boston Rob he worked the whole game to get to the end with the match up of Natalie and Philip him famously had so many different options of who she could have gone to the end with in survivor one world but she chose to stick it out with Chelsea and Sabrina

Cochrane stuck with dawn and Sherry from the chance that he got to work with Sherry at the merge Tyson he stayed with Jarvis and Monica and kept them loyal the whole way through Jeremy from the final seven on kept his pack with Spencer and Tasha and Sarah LaSena she made her final three deal with Troy's in and Brad towards the end of the game and knew that that was a winning combination for her.

These are the only times that a player knew they had the game in the back but all these players work to get a group from a certain point in the game to ultimately sit in the final three with their allies in all these cases the player that one was confident that they needed to go to the end with that specific group and they were able to get the eventual losing finalists to also buy into that plan.

Now for the players who came up short they should not have sat at the end with that game's ultimate winner while some of them may have lost the game due to a bad final tribal council performance the bigger weakness in their game I think was their inability to self assess or to act on that self assessment to get a more favorable match up for the final tribal council in my opinion there's a big difference between great and not as well.

They're not great players in their ability to know the perception of the jury while still in the game. Now while it's not true in every case many of these players willingly went to the end with a player who was going to smoke them in front of the jury the looting themselves into thinking that it was anybody's game at the final tribal council when it clearly wasn't.

If you went to the final tribal council and lose the game to your alliance I think it's fair to say that you should have cut your ally if there was an opportunity to do so.

Now there are cases when a player realizes they can't win and they're happy to take the runner up money but again that's not something that we're getting into here the tricky part is going to be getting the timing right because the earlier you turn against your allies the harder it's going to be to get to the end without them and ideally it's best to try to wait for the game to be.

It's best to try to wait until as late as possible because that also ensures that there are less angry betrayed allies on the jury even if you get there look at the Sean in survivor 41 so that step one on the float chart can I beat my allies or alliance in the final three at the end of the game if the answer is no and you're playing to win the game you need to turn against your alliance so this is pretty straightforward so far.

And it makes a lot of sense but the thing that's going to change this equation for better or for worse is going to happen in survivor 35 heroes versus healers versus hustlers with the introduction of the final four firemaking things are going to get more complicated because while many of us super fans complain a lot about the inclusion of the twist which in full disclosure I think it's antithetical to the idea of survivor where people vote out and we're going to get a lot of attention.

Out every single elimination except for the one most important of the season I digress I do want to plan about how this creates a really critical decision point for players who may be considering cutting their allies now in its introduction season 35 Ben was going to go home he lost the final four challenge and there was an alliance of Chrissy and Devon and Ryan and they were headed to the final three following Chrissy's immunity win.

However, the introduction of the fire gave Ben a second shot when Chrissy had to select who was going to go into the final four firemaking she picked Ben and Devon and Ben beat Devon where he rode his streak of improbable communities all the way to the win.

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