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Sshaaz wrote:

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John = Galu, John = good terms with Shambo, John = most strategic Galu left.

Galu+strategy+Shambo+possession of idol being fact and not assumption = bye John.

Agreed completely.

For my money, the John boot is the most interesting move Russell has made so far. My knee jerk reaction was that it was a bad move, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

I thought it was a bad move at first because it involved taking an unnecessary risk. Shambo's vote for Dave was immutable. But there was a possibility Galu could come together, vote for Mick and force a 4-4-1 tie with the Foa Foa 4 voting for John. As Stephen has argued in his blog, Shambo would have realized Russell had played her and she might have conceivably switched to Mick in the revote, if only out of spite.

It didn't seem like Russell to take an unnecessary risk like that. So I found myself wondering a) why he thought he could get away with it, and b) why he chose to take it in the first place.

One of the strengths of Russell's game is his ability to read people. He must have felt confident that Dave's joy at being saved from Shambo's wrath would be so overwhelming that it wouldn't occur to him to look past his "anyone but me" relief. Still, I'm puzzled that Russell asked Dave to bring Monica into the plan. With the 4 Foa Foa votes plus Dave, they had enough votes to guarantee a John boot. So why take the risk of Monica spilling the beans to John? Only three days earlier, Monica had tried to swindle Foa Foa with a fake John boot. Why wouldn't she try something like that again? I suppose Russell might have been counting on Monica hating John even more now for turning on Laura, but I'm still leaning towards thinking that pulling Monica into the plan was an unnessary and unjustifiable risk.

But while I fault Russell for letting Dave tell Monica about the plan, I'm willing to consider that Russell had valid reasons for taking the risk of going after John instead of Dave in the first place. The whole idol thing strikes me as a minor consideration which the editors chose to focus on because it would be easy for the audience to grasp. But as Sshaaz argues, Russell had much better reasons for getting rid of John now instead of later:

- Shambo hated Dave and Shambo liked John. Russell knows Shambo well enough to realize that she can be still be counted on to hate Dave at the next TC. Whereas if Dave had gone home this week, Shambo's vote might have been harder to secure when it came time to get rid of John. Shambo is an emotional player. With Laura gone, Russell realized the gift he got in the form of Shambo's hard-on for Dave. So he decided to string her along for just one more TC while getting rid of a bigger threat, whom Shambo happened to like.

- The next vote could have represented a 4 - 4 tie opportunity with Shambo being courted by both John and Brett, both people she likes. But with Dave still around, Foa Foa will have a much easier time keeping Shambo in the fold and their numbers advantage over Galu.

- John was the best strategist left in the game. And he had good relationships with both Shambo and Jaison. Why leave him around to whisper alternative scenarios in their ears?

It's debatable whether Russell made the right call taking John out now, and what happens next may or may not justify it. But I'm willing to give him credit for not taking an unnecessary risk without justification more compelling than the discovery that he has an idol, which is reliably the worst kept secret in Samoa.