Only four Houseguests remain on Big Brother 17 and we’re just a few more hours away from having the latest eviction results revealed. For those surviving Houseguests they’re about to face several more tough decisions on who to keep and who needs to go for their best chance at making it to finale night’s F2.

Several of the Houseguests have discussed the concern of falling in to a “winning out” situation so while we wait for tonight’s special eviction show, I thought we could take a look at what that means and who could be in trouble.

Vanessa and John had debated the issue of bringing the showmance, Austin and Liz, on to F4 and beyond because of the challenges it’d create when neither opponent in a F3 would consider keeping the third wheel over their partner. In that case it’d be a battle of winning nearly every competition in front of them to get to the F2. That’s “winning out” and here’s how it’d work.

Let’s start with John as the example. Say he voted out Steve in the F5 eviction which would leave us with Austin, Liz, and Vanessa. Vanessa wouldn’t be competing for F4 HoH and maybe Austin or Liz would target Vanessa, but that’s a big risk for John to take. He’d need to either win that HoH or the following Veto to secure his safety and a spot in the F3 where he’d need to keep winning.

At Final 3 we reach the last HoH competition of the season which is made up of 3 rounds. Round 1 winner faces off against the winner of Round 2 in the third and final round. The winner of Round 3 then decides who he or she will face in the F2 and at that point the comps are over.

If John gets to F3 against Liz and Austin, should Austin have survived eviction, then John would have no choice but win either Round 1 or Round 2 and Round 3 to get to F2. So from F4 stage John would face up to five competitions and have to win three specific comps out of the last five to reach the end.

The great thing about this mix of F5 players is most of them should be fearing a “winning out” requirement for their chances to get to the end. Of course if the showmance remains at F4 then those two basically double their chances with a backup player fighting on their behalf. Should it just be Liz, as I’m expecting, then she’ll be on her own, kinda.

A Final 4 of John, Liz, Steve, and Vanessa may split up in to teams of John and Steve vs Liz and Vanessa. Maybe. Vanessa probably thinks she can win in F2 against any of the three, but if the others have that same thought they may be putting her high on their target list and really, they should.

John told Austin and Liz, during his pitch to flip and vote Steve out, that they needed to target Vanessa next in F4. I think there’s a good chance both he and Steve could take a shot at her if she doesn’t win Veto in F4. Again, they should, but this season has had so many “really?” decisions that maybe they’ll surprise us on that one.

Vanessa and Liz would probably target Steve out of fear that he’d be a comp beast in these final rounds where you have to recall events and competition results. Those aren’t easy but Steve is one very smart guy and knows how those comps work so they should be worried about him.

We’ve got a fun last few days of Big Brother ahead of us no matter how tonight goes, but clearly these HGs risk making things even harder on themselves if they keep that showmance intact. Think they’ll take the “winning out” route or split them up before fighting for F2?