The past week’s episode revealed how the voting for eliminations will work:

“The winning team of the daily challenge wins immunity from elimination and the Power Vote, meaning their vote counts twice against another team. In addition, the teams vote in private, but the team who are voted into the elimination then get to choose who they want to compete against, and may only choose from teams that voted for them. They will compete for $1,000,000, with the winners taking it all.”

With this in mind, I will breakdown the strategies that can be used when voting, or when being voted in.

#1 Bury the weak team in votes

Simple idea, toss your vote to a weak team who you are not afraid to face in elimination. Faith and Angela can expect to be voted into the next elimination as a rookie female duo with low expectations. Yes, they did pretty well in the first challenge, but many of the other teams have at least one competitor who have proven themselves as formidable competitors in the past. It is the simplest strategy in the game. Unless, you are the second or third weakest team in the game, because then you become the automatic pick to go against on the opposite side.

#2 Go for the game target

We saw Paulie and Natalie nominated this past week without knowledge of how the voting would work. It seemed like the easy option as they had vendettas within the house and were a newbie team. If teams knew they could be called out by them, they would probably have voted for Faith/Angela instead.

#3 Burning your vote

Burn votes will be very powerful in Final Reckoning. Knowing which teams do not have votes could save you from elimination. If you are aware seven teams will be voting for Faith/Angela, tossing a vote towards Tony/Bananas guarantees you another week in the game. However, this strategy could burn a team late in the game. Ironically, Paulie and Natalie’s move to vote for Sylvia/Joss was smart because they could not be called out, unfortunately, had they voted Faith/Angela, it would have been a 5–5 tie.

#4 Manipulation

By convincing a player or two to burn their vote on a team, the team with the supervote could stack their vote onto that team, forcing the players that voted for them into the elimination. Can you trust your friends in this game? Three teams might be aligned, but is it smart for them all to target someone? Each team only accounting for 1 vote makes every vote matter.

What to do when you get voted in?

#1 Go for the weakest team that voted for you

Obviously the simplest strategy is to go for the team you think you have the best chance at beating in elimination. The only deterrent is fear of looking weak. If Tony and Bananas call out Faith and Angela and lose, they will be hearing it on social media for a long time. Hilariously, this was the reason Johnna chose to face Sarah in the Ruins, because she was afraid of the possible embarrassment of losing to Casey.

#2 Shoot for the stars

Joss and Sylvia have the potential to be a great team. But right now they are ranked a bit lower because people have not seen much from them individually. They are not well established. If they call out a strong team like Tony and Bananas, and take them out, people will look at them as one of the strong teams in the house.

#3 Go for your enemies

The more enemies you can take out within the game, the less players will target you when it is their turn. Simple as that.

#4 Pick a fight

If you know you are going in, start a fight with a team you think you can beat. Make them angry enough to vote you in so that you can get revenge.