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I revised this from a few years ago when I wrote this...

1. Tina. This woman is scary good, y'all. She knows how to manipulate people and remain in power at a level that I don't even think she consciously understands how good at this game she is. It's no surprise to me that she was voted off first in ASS, because she was DANGEROUS. The only other female player in sixteen seasons that even comes CLOSE to her natural ability at this game is Cirie. Always thinking. Always looking for an opening. She masterminded Mitchell's ouster and ferreted out Jeff's previous votes. Always in the power group. Had all of the final four willing to take her to the end. Did a great job of placating Rodger and Elisabeth to keep them from making a counterstrike.

2. Yul. Brilliant, BRILLIANT player. Kept his tribe alive, and was a master of negotiations. He essentially made Jonathan his bitch, and managed to beat Ozzy in a final vote, which was no small accomplishment. I don't think he was able to maintain control over the game quite as well as Tina did, though.

3. Richard. I have to rank him high, because he essentially INVENTED the game. He knew he needed an alliance, he knew how he could best use Sean, he knew that he needed to get rid of Rudy without overtly backstabbing him, and he knew Kelly was the safest opponent for him to face. I think, though, that ASS showed that the colossal weakness he had was his social game. A player like him now would never make it past the merge.

4. Parvati. Finally, YEARS after Tina played, we FINALLY have another woman who wins not because she won the final immunity challenge and lucked into an opportunity to take a much-hated player, but one who was actively leading an alliance. Parvati played an excellent strategic game (building bridges with the fans tribe that others seemed to not), she aligned herself with some women as strong as herself, she hoodwinked people into not using idols... all this, and she also capitalized off of what I call the Amber Factor: she was severely underestimated by the other people on the tribe based on her prior performance.

5. Tom. Dominant physical player who was able to captain a near-unstoppable team and then convinced his biggest threat to throw himself on his sword. He won, in some ways, out of intimidation... that nobody felt that they SHOULD be able to compete with him.

6. Todd. He was a good player, calling the shots. If anything, he showed a Cesternino-esque fanboy tendency to overcomplicate things. He managed to overcome a reputation for sneakiness and betrayal, and still win. However, his BIGGEST piece of luck was that Amanda choked in the endgame... making undeliverable promises to Denise and Peih-Gee and then stinking up the joint in the final TC to the point that Courtney(!!) was the bigger threat to pull an upset in the final TC. I am biased and probably ranked him a bit higher than he probably deserved because I've been wanting a fanboy to win for years.

7. Vecepia. She's so hard to categorize because she revolutionized the game. She showed how to win without being in power. I keep vacillating, nearly eight years later, about whether she was an incredibly innovative strategist or an opportunistic parasite who managed to make the final two with someone who blew the final TC. (When ranking these, I considered ranking Vecepia anywhere between #4 and #11...) I will say, though, that of all the winners in the post Richard Hatch world, I think she was the most innovative in terms of creating a new way of playing the game. I can't say I really enjoy her "use others as a human shield, cut deals with whomever is in power, and take the weakest to the final" strategy, but it is the way that most of the other female winners (as well as Chris and Aras) have won this game.

8. Brian. I think he's the most overrated winner in a lot of ways. Yes, he did dominate challenges. Yes, he did cut deals with everyone to guarantee himself the final two. However... he was SO CLOSE to blowing his master plan with his unbelievably poor social game that he nearly lost to Clay, and actually, only by the grace of the fact that Clay's a bit racist and he had the foresight to choke out a semi-sincere apology to Helen did he win. I remember that they determined during the reunion also would have lost 5-2 to Jan. JAN, people. I just don't see that big of a difference between him and, say, Stephenie or Dreamz in terms of gameplay other than the fact remains that he got away with it. I think, looking ahead fourteen seasons, that Russell's failure to see how close Brian was to blowing it was a major weakness.

9. Earl. In a dull season of chaos, poor playing, and even poorer sportsmanship, Earl managed to play pretty well. That being said, he had THE EASIEST path to the final, and he set that up for himself. All he had to do was acknowledge that he couldn't beat Yau-Man and vote him out, and then he got to face Cassandra and Dreamz together, so that even if he had an abysmal final tribal council performance, he'd still probably win unanimously. All he had to do to win the final vote was show up. I like Earl, and I think he made some smart choices, especially in allies and realizing who would and would not constitute a good opponent in the final. He is very fortunate that he wasn't forced to face Yau-Man, because he'd have been a (deservedly) distant second to him.

10. Jenna. You know, at the time, I couldn't stand her, but several completely loathsome and vaguely sociopathic Big Brother winners later, I've softened on her. I do think that she was absolutely the second best player of her season after Rob. The one thing that I do appreciate about her game is that she (and, to be fair, Heidi as well) knew how to read a jury. She knew she needed to get rid of people like Roger and Christy and Joanna and Jeanne if she wanted to win, and that her target audience was men under 35, and Heidi. Paradoxically, she won because she was perceived as the least likely of the women to win the last two ICs, and was wrong. Jenna did capitalize well off of Rob's blunders (ousting Christy, and letting one of the girls into the final four) as well as Matt's inability to both read a jury and correctly determine who he might have had a chance of beating (Butch, probably, and I do believe Matt v. Rob would have been a closer match-up than Matt v. Jenna.) She knew what the jury needed to hear, and gave it to them, and Matt... bless him, he didn't have a clue.

11. Danni. You know, I like her, and I think she played the social game and the endgame well, but her win was a lot like Lisa's in Big Brother 3 in that she didn't win because she was a superior player; she won because everyone hated her opponent and the power couple of Rafe and Steph were dumb enough to take Danni, the woman without an enemy on the jury, to the final 3 instead of Lydia or Cindy, and she won her way into the final. I guess I'd say that her win was mostly due to her ability to convince Rafe and Steph to do some really stupid things.

12. Chris. Okay player who managed to make some decent moves at critical times, usually with some prodding. Vanuatu was maddening because the players with strategic acumen had no social game, and vice versa. I would agree with Scout's assessment that he was up to his ears in BS, but he was smart enough to team up to take the disliked Twila and Scout to final 3 instead of the more jury-friendly Eliza and Julie.

13. JT. He made some good moves, but I think the fact of the matter was that he had the charm to get away with a lot more, and probably the best final TC performance ever to allow him to rout his alliance partner Stephen unanimously. I think in a lot of ways Stephen propped up JT strategically and made more of the hard calls, but JT ultimately had the jury liking him more, and had less blood on his hands.

14. Sandra. What a weird season. She ended up in a really favorable position almost completely by accident. Of Rupert and the Rupert-ettes, she was the least threatening, so she slipped through the cracks. Darrah was ousted because she was the biggest threat and would have beaten any opponent she faced, for no apparent reason other than she was the least obnoxious in the final four and Ryno had a crush on her. And Sandra had arguably the most beatable finale opponent of anyone save Earl and won, basically, because she used her "anyone but me" credo to outlast Burton, and Lill decided she'd rather lose to Sandra than Fairplay. It's weird, because in some ways, Sandra played very well in that she guaranteed herself a place in the end stages of the game due to her ability to cut deals and target others, but I also feel like the circumstances that actually got her to the final were random and based more on luck than just about any other finalist. I do genuinely wonder how Fairplay would have fared had he made the final, though, against either Sandra or Lill... would he have fought for the million or would he had preferred the limelight and acted like a jackass?

15. Amber. She had an advantage: that nobody saw her as a threat, physically or strategically, going into this season. Combine that with a good alliance partner to play bad cop, and the fact that she DID pick up some pointers from her enemy, Tina, on how to advance in the game... she surpassed all expectations. And, besides, I find there's a kind of grim irony in her win. Would ANYONE watching Outback think that the girl was capable of winning a future season? Also, I do feel that if we rate Amber as an individual as opposed to Rob and Amber as a team (which is to say, assuming that the goal was to get the two of them to the final two, and it mattered not a whit which of them won) she suffers... Rob and Amber as a team ranks probably about 5 spots up. And I will give Amber some credit for thinking about the jury more than Rob.

16. Aras. Ehh. Decent leader and a likable enough guy, but let's not kid ourselves, he was the third best player in that final four, and he owes much of his win to his Fairy Godmother Cirie for convincing Danielle to vote off every single person she had a chance at beating. That being said, he was a stable force in one of the most scattered and bizarre endgame alliances.

17. Natalie. Her game is essentially a lot like Amber's only not nearly as good. She won in a straight-up popularity contest. Did Russell outplay her? Absolutely. Did Russell deserve to lose by ignoring that the jury was full of overly emotional non-players who allowed an 8-4 advantage to be whittled away? Definitely. At least Natalie was instrumental into talking Monica and Kelly into taking out Erik, so I'll give her credit for that.

18. Ethan. He's not a master player. Then again, in a season where EVERY SINGLE post-merge player blew an opportunity to guarantee their alliance final four out of sheer spite... he was probably the correct winner for this season. He was just a really nice guy that all three of Lex, Tom, and Kim were willing to lose to. And, since he got to face the easiest of those three in the final TC, he wasn't really held accountable for the fact that Lex and Tom did much of his dirty work aside from maybe his anti-Silas plotting. This is why I loved watching him in ASS... he actually had to claw his way through the game instead of having the game handed to him on a silver platter, especially with Lex now realizing that, hey, this guy is really charismatic and poses a major threat.

19. Bob. He made some good moves, such as making the fake immunity idols (to take out his own alliance?) but I think that the biggest influence on his win was, truthfully, that Sugar was the strategic equivalent of drunk behind the wheel. Sugar had zero chance of winning and a disproportionate amount of power over the determination of the endgame, and we ended up with the bizarrely non-competitive final three that we got. I don't feel like, for the most part, that he made his own destiny so much as Sugar did, but admit that up against the final three he was up against, he deserved to win.