One thing to add though to this (which I am sure you said somewhere in the entire back and forth.)


The best player is also not the luckiest player. Look at any poker match, and you have a famous poker player like Phil Ivey going up against an ametuer. The ameteur can best him maybe 5/50 times let's say. The ameteur is lucky he beat the best player, by saying getting good cards or reading a situation correctly. But luck also only affects the game minutely. You can have nothing to go on get lucky, or you can use skill to get by, which will nine times out of ten outrun the luck.

It is more scientific than that. Luck is a small part, but you need to be good with speed, perception, and theory to also survive. Paul for example, picked Craig off quickly as the mole. He focused on him, theorized how he could be the mole and who was on his trail, and was fairly quick with his quizzes. He was the best player in the game. A big asshole, but a great player. He lost one night beause he wasn't fast enough, and Mark/Nicole were. Now we can debate on Mark if he was just lucky that night, but fact of the matter is he was using his skills to figure it out as well. Maybe his skills were a bit weaker than Pauls or Nicoles, but he still had them and it still got him to the point he needed to be.

And these skills are all interchangable. Perception, speed, being able to problem solve and theorize with other people is part of a Mole game. If it was The Amazing Race, speed, athletic ability, financial skills, and planning ahead is what is needed to survive, and most of the time the best teams do survive the Amazing Race. In Survivor, you need to be physically strong or mentally strong, and a wide array of skills can get a player to the end.

Hell, just look at last night. Sugar was the best player in the game this year (or at the very least, tied to Ken for that honor.) yet she lost because of bitter grudges and of who she brought with her to the end. Yeah, you can argue that all you like as to how unlucky she is for not winning, but she had the right combination of skills to make a major impact on that game, and shape the game for the people around her.

So basically, luck is a small part of it, but really has no bearing to the skill of the player, and therefore the best player, who has the skills needed for the game, may not always win. Or simply put, skill will trump luck in the long run, because skill is what brings a person far into a game like this.