The Vote

Well, I just sent my vote in for the heads-up finale of Survivor Poker: Donkey Island. In the end, it came down to my fellow Fish-mates, veryjosie and smboatdrinks, both of whom in my view played a very strong game. All along I knew that, come the last vote, I would vote for the person who deserved it the most based on their play throughout the series. And I think I know who that person is.

First, let's start with Josie. Now, I'm not even going to try to say I was privy to a small fraction of all the inside shit going on on Donkey Island over these past few weeks. There are entire camps that I had no insight into whatsoever, obviously given some of my posts along the way. But all that said, I had access to some pretty solid intel at all points of the game, which was an unexpected surprise for me coming in. I had pretty regular conversations on strategy with a couple people on the Donkeys, and Josie and I emailed and chatted regularly pretty much start to finish about things. This worked out well for me because I actually got pretty well into the game, I ended up liking the whole thing far more than I ever thought, and, frankly, I know a lot of the guys in the contest pretty well all things considered. And I never had a single design about winning the series, or even lasting long at all, so I didn't have even the beginnings of hard feelings towards any of my teammates who had backstabbed me. I had no agenda to get revenge on any of those guys or anything like it, and frankly more than anything else, Josie and I had I think a symbiotic relationship. She fed my interest in the series and in strategizing and in all the inner workings and decisions and backstabbery, and in return I provided my thoughts, based on what I knew.

Anyways, this isn't a post about me and my run through Survivor Poker, right now I'm talking about Josie. My point was I had a lot of insight into what she was doing, and without going into specifics, often times Josie and my conversations involved specific offers or even specific emails she was sent by other participants in the game. And, as there's no point at all to not letting the cat out of the bag right now, Josie basically ran all the decisions, almost from the getgo. I read her post and she might be understating her involvement in the early decisions a little bit, but from the fourth or fifth tournament all the way straight to the end, Josie was calling the shots. Every single week, every single tournament, in the latter part of team play, and all the way through after the merger right up to the very end, if you got on her bad side, you were gone in a flash. Josie would snap her fingers, and you would just disappear, no matter who you were or which team you came from. And this is not to say that the other players weren't active doing their own things, setting shit up, allying and fake-allying and backstabbing others. I was privy to emails and such from a few different people along the way, and I am well aware that everyone had their own shit going on. But when it comes right down to it, most of those other alliances ended up not meaning shit in the end. Josie called the shots, Josie made the plans, and Josie spent literally hours strategizing, thinking through scenarios, considering who her biggest danger was right now, etc. etc. etc. Trust me, I know she did. You just can't say enough about what a good job Josie did from the beginning in planning this thing out, and it showed as in the end she was literally always two or three steps ahead of those who would have had her undoing.

And then there's Boat. And admittedly, Boat was not someone I spent much time emailing or chatting with during Survivor Poker -- at least not after he dipped his knife in acid and slipped it quietly between my second and third vertebrae to end me before my time on Donkey Island -- and like I said I know of an alliance or two he was involved in after the merger of the teams occurred roughly halfway through the series. So I know he was moving shit and he was shaking shit -- you don't last through 16 other blonkeys in this thing without making some shit happen for yourself. But the bottom line is -- boat and Josie aligned from Week 1, from Day 1 really, and more than anything else they simply did what was so damned impossible for everyone else on Donkey Island, over and over and over and over again -- they stuck together. And I don't say this lightly -- Boat did a really good job in this game, albeit in a more passive way than Josie who played much more the leadership role in the process. But Boat actually did two things very well in Survivor Poker, things that aren't nearly as easy as you might think. First, he chose his alliance well. Josie, obviously, was a great choice for Boat, and she stuck with him straight through to the bitter end just to prove it. Picking the right alliance isn't nearly as easy as it may seem -- just look at me, who was forced to try to ally with a couple of slimy weasels. Or look at Jordan, allying with Goat just so Goat could f him up. Or, likewise, Goat allying with Jamy. But Boat picked exceedingly well in whom he chose to ally with. And, I think it's fine to admit it now, there were a couple of moments there where Josie wasn't 100% sure. At one point Boat was working on something as some kind of a contingency plan with one of the final 5 or 6 players left, and Josie was getting nervous. He wasn't admitting it to her, but it was pretty obvious. So even that alliance had its moments -- I am sure on both sides -- but it was a very good choice for Boat. And that's the other thing that Boat did so well -- he actually stuck with his fucking choice despite all the temptation to do otherwise. We saw how hard this was for the Fish first when they were guaranteed passage to the merge if they just stuck with my plan, but then they turned around and voted me off, all but assuring themselves that their ranks would be cut in off over the ensuing month. We saw the same thing time and time again, and most flagrantly with the Donkeys who simply could not just vote together as a group by the time the merge happened and who literally gave it all away, every single one of them. Well, boat wasn't able to stick with the quasi-alliance he and I had, but he did a fabulous job of sticking with Josie, and it paid off. He played a great game of Survivor, and is fully deserving of being where he is here at the end.

There's another reason that I definitely considered voting for Boat in this, I should mention, and this has nothing to do with Boat to be honest. While I said all that up there that I thought Josie played a great game, the bottom line is, by the time we were down to maybe 8 players left, it was in my mind unbelievably obvious that Josie was the ringleader and needed to be taken out immediately. And yet, somehow, nobody ever did anything about it. With about 8 left, it was obvious. With about 7 or 6 left, people openly starting posting about it, which I chose not to do. But still, everyone knew, but nobody did anything about it. It was excruciating when I think about it, watching these monkeys repeatedly let Josie grow strong and stronger over like 5 or 6 tournaments in a row, literally eliminating her biggest perceived competition day after day after day after day, and nobody did anything. Josie undeniably played a great game, but this shit was also handed to her. Absolutely handed to her. I mean, not literally handed to her. But the Donkeys had Josie and the entire Fish team dead to rights, and then they fucked it up. They made a terrible decision like four straight weeks, and just stood there and let Josie's rise to power be consummated. Even among the Fish -- where, make no mistake, there were active attempts to unseat Josie brewing each and every week around the middle of Survivor Poker -- they simply could not get it together to eliminate the ringleader until it was too late. But watching how badly everyone played in the face of an obviously mounting threat from Josie -- and knowing the bloggers' general history of cowtowing to the new hot chick on the blog and then having to watch the same sad scene play out once again with Josie over and over again through this series, I can't deny that some small part of me definitely considered voting anti here and surprising in support of smboatdrinks just for that reason alone.

But in the end, I voted for the right person here to win Season 1 of Survivor Poker: VeryJosie. I have a lot of respek for what Boat did in the series, and as I said above there is little doubt in my mind that he is fully deserving of his top-two finish. He played the game very, very well, and I take nothing away from him for being more of a passive and less of an active participant in getting there. But I just didn't want to vote for the guy who ultimately in my view rode the coattails of the person who he is up against heads-up here. Boat did an awesome job picking and sticking with Josie, but Josie ultimately is the reason that Boat ended up here where he is.

I think to sum up my feelings, if Josie had gotten voted out in week 3, I think there is almost zero chance that Boat lasts to the final 2. But Boat could have gotten voted out in week 3, and I can't see how that would have changed Josie's chances of ending up here much at all. Boat deserves a lot of credit, but Josie is the reason that both of them are here ultimately, and for that she gets my vote.

Well played to both of you two, well played.