Soooo… that didn’t *quite* play out the way it was supposed to! Apparently folks have LOTS of questions on this vote so rather than trying respond to questions individually, I thought I’d put together a quick summary of what I was thinking last night. It goes without saying that this is a spoiler-free complement to what you’ve seen on the show! (Note - this is of course all strictly my perspective on events. Others’ perspectives may of course differ)



“Why am I suddenly leading the vote having sat back until now?”



Good question. There are several importance pieces of context here from my perspective. Firstly, and this can be easy to forget, this was the literally only the 2nd time anyone from the Contenders tribe had been to Tribal Council! We had been once before for the relatively straightforward Laura vote. Contrast this with Dave and Luke who had each been to five at this point, not to mention the dozen or so that Luke had been to in his first season! The difference in experience was vast. I knew this was a huge risk and I tried to mitigate it by (obviously unsuccessfully!) attempting to manage the vote.



Secondly, while the tribe swap was phenomenal from a pure numbers standpoint (as you heard me say in the episode); in terms of specific tribe makeup, we saw that it was not ideal for me. As you may recall from my rundown of the Contender tribe pecking order from a few episodes ago, of the seven former Contenders now on Champions beach, I had placed Daisy and John in a group at the top (along with Shaun and Matty); Sammy in the middle with me; and Hannah, Sarah (and at that point in time) Baden in a group at the bottom. The point here is that (again from my perspective at the time), this was not a particularly cohesive group. The different blocs in the group of seven had not really voted together before. And in fact I remember thinking that there were people within the seven who were barely on speaking terms. This was far from ideal, and correctly or incorrectly, I felt that I had little choice but to try to manage the different blocs into a cohesive voting strategy.



“Why vote for Dave/Luke?”



I think this is relatively straightforward, but it’s probably worth including for completeness. As I said at Tribal Council - Luke and Dave are both extremely strong players - particularly in the social game. Even before the tribe swap happened, I had been on record in confessionals about the fact that I viewed Luke as by far the biggest threat in the game. I knew about his compelling family backstory; I had seen the quality of his social game in his first season; I had seen him make it to day 50 or so despite very limited game knowledge going in; I knew his style was unpredictable; and I’d heard interviews with his former tribemates who had said he would likely have won the jury vote. All in all, a terrifying combination.

I knew less about Dave obviously, but as we saw last night, I knew he had somehow found an idol and orchestrated the swap with Shaun. I also knew from the Champions voting history (and from conversations with him in the day or two that we had been together post-swap) that he had been at least partially responsible for breaking the sports alliance. He had also told me that he and Luke were inseparable, having been “forged through fire together” at multiple Tribal Councils.



So with that context in place, we get to Shaun’s idol.



"Why tell the other Contenders about the cross-tribe idols?”



As we saw in the episode, Shaun had shared the details of the cross-tribe idols with me. As discussed above, I was already fearful of Luke and was now increasingly concerned about Dave as well. How could I get the other six Contenders onto the same page? Whilst it may seem obvious that the former Contenders would want to vote for one of the two original Champions; don’t forget, both Dave and Luke are masterful social players. They are both incredibly charming, and as we saw in the episode, experts in finding and exploiting small cracks. So Dave’s idol became the tool I used to try to galvanise the Contenders against Dave and Luke. Daisy of course (and possibly John) already knew about it, but to the remainder of the Contenders we saw that it was new and compelling information. From the episode it appeared that Daisy’s concern was that, in revealing the details of Dave’s idol, I had betrayed Shaun’s trust. This is fair. From my perspective though, the tribe swap was a new dynamic that made the information too important not to share, in that, for example, it made a split vote necessary. I was also conscious that most of Dave’s alliance members were now on the same tribe as Shaun anyway, and as such would likely be well aware that Shaun was holding the other cross-tribe idol. I also knew (as we saw on the idol paperwork) that the cross-tribe idols could only be played pre-merge, meaning that: Dave had to play his idol soon (which increased the galvanising effect on the former Contenders who were all potentially at risk of being idoled out pre-merge), and also that the value of the information relating to Shaun’s idol was lower than would be the case for a regular idol given that it had an expiry date.



It’s probably also worth noting here that (as we saw at the Burger reward), Dave had told Shaun (and later me also when I asked him about it) that he had in fact already played his idol to save Pia. I didn’t know whether this was true or not, but I proceeded on the assumption that he was lying about this, and incorporated this into my pitch to the former Contenders.



“Where on earth did you get a coin from?”



Absurdly, we had literally found a coin washed up on the beach either that day or the day before. (No, it didn’t come from the same place as the supposedly magic Contender beans).



“What was the point of the coin toss? Wouldn’t whoever out of Dave or Luke didn’t play the idol have just gone home anyway?”



When we initially formulated the plan to split the votes 4/3 across Dave and Luke, the obvious question was - who do we put 4 votes on? No-one had a strong point of view either way. In my view, Luke was the bigger threat but I didn’t want to be on record as having had a preference for voting out one rather than the other. I felt it would be safer in the long-term to position the vote as simply Contenders vs Champions. This was the first argument in favour of the vote being random.



Perhaps more importantly however is the following hypothetical scenario. Imagine that the Contenders agree in advance to place 4 votes on Luke and 3 votes on Dave. Assume that Dave/Luke meanwhile plan to vote together against me. Assume then that Dave/Luke convince one Contender to defect and vote with them. If this Contender defector had been nominated to be one of the 3 votes for Dave, then suddenly the vote is 4 votes Luke, 2 votes Dave and 3 votes me. Because the defector knows where the other votes are going, s/he is able to reveal that there will be 4 votes cast for Luke, allowing Dave to correctly play his idol for Luke, meaning that I go home! This demonstrates the (perhaps not immediately apparent) way in which, even in a very strong-looking 7-2 scenario like this, a single defection can actually flip the Tribal Council outcome.



So to guard against this possibility, I proposed the coin toss as a random vote generator in the voting booth for the decisive 4th vote. The elegant simplicity of this approach is that literally no-one knows the breakdown of the vote split until moments before the vote is cast. In theory this should also serve to bind the seven more tightly together, in that it reduces the incentive for any one individual to defect. Any potential defector would have incomplete information, meaning that Dave/Luke are unable to play an idol correctly with certainty. They could of course still guess, but that is a variable that can’t be eliminated entirely.



Although of course I tried… ;)

Because I knew that Dave was the person actually holding Shaun’s cross-tribe idol, I was confident that he would not play it for Luke if it meant that he was a 50% chance to go home himself. So whilst you of course saw me physically toss the coin in the voting booth; I was always in fact planning to vote for Luke. Hence the… “Sorry Lukey. Heads I win, tails you lose.”



“Why whisper to John just before the votes were cast? Was this purely theatre?”



Haha, no! I actually had a reason to do this! This was in fact an insurance policy against something that had been bugging me from the moment we left camp to go to Tribal Council. Firstly though, a bit of background is necessary here. As you may recall from my rundown of the Contender tribe pecking order from a few episodes ago; I had placed Hannah and Sarah in a group at the bottom. Again this is only from my perspective, but I was conscious that a tribe swap might have represented a great opportunity for a couple of people who had perhaps been at the bottom of their tribe to potentially change their position by aligning with new tribe members (who would of course happily promise them anything!). So with this as background, it transpired that not long before we left for Tribal Council, I saw Hannah and Sarah deep in conversation with Dave and Luke (I think this may have actually been briefly shown in the episode as part of the scramble). This was disconcerting to say the least, and my focus on this may have in fact contributed to me being less aware of what Daisy was doing with John and Baden!



As we left for Tribal Council my head was spinning with the possibilities. If Hannah and Sarah defected, what would that mean for the vote? Recall from the episode that we had formulated a plan to vote based on age. That is, the 3 youngest Contenders (Baden, Hannah and Daisy) would vote for the younger of the 2 Champions (Luke); leaving the 3 older Contenders (Daisy, John and Sarah) to vote for the older Champion (Dave). An aside here - for those who are asking why I proposed this age-based system rather than the more traditional “men vote for one person, women vote for the other”. In this instance, although we had 3 men and 4 women, which on the surface appears as if it would have worked, recall that I wanted to cast the decisive vote myself via the coin toss; which would have left 2 men and 4 women for the required 3/3 split. So the age-based approach just made more sense…



But back to Hannah and Sarah! So had they defected and voted with Dave/Luke, that theoretically would have meant 4 votes on me (or Daisy, or John, but for simplicity let’s assume it’s me). Hannah’s vote was supposed to be for Luke, and Sarah’s vote was supposed to be for Dave. So instead of a 3/3 split with me casting the decisive vote, I would suddenly be left with a 2/2 split (plus my my vote), up against 4 votes for me. Meaning I go home. In this scenario, I needed to find a way to ensure that a total of 4 votes (including my coin toss vote) were cast for Luke (remembering that, at this point, I’m betting that Dave will play his idol for himself). I know that John and Daisy are the other 2 Contenders who are supposed to be casting votes for Dave, so my only option is to ask one of them to change their vote from Dave to Luke. By doing this at the last possible moment before the votes are cast, there is theoretically no opportunity for the changed vote structure information to circulate and for Dave and Luke to change their voting strategy. John was the most accessible Contender (he was seated at the end of the row), so, as you saw on the episode, I asked him to change his vote to Luke. Had the Hannah/Sarah defection scenario played out, then we would have seen 1 vote Dave (who then burns his idol), 4 votes Luke, and 4 votes me. With me then (hopefully!) surviving the revote 3 votes to 4, and Luke going home.



Paranoid - sure!

Overthinking - probably!

Outplayed - definitely!

One final note - all of the above of course assumes no knowledge of the fact that we have seen that Luke actually has his own idol! But that’s the beauty of this game. No matter how hard you try, you likely can’t anticipate everything…





