I've noticed that Sucks loves to rank the game's players, and I'm all for it. Just some observations I've noticed in the last month or two:
1. Most people tend to rank on who they like (and who they associate with), not on who really played the game the best.
2. It is pretty much impossible to rank these players based on their having played, at best, two times. So many different factors go into Survivor, from tribe placement to tribe dynamics, to pure luck environmental factors, to varying rules the players played with on their season -- that making a judgement call on who is the best Survivor is extremely difficult.
All that said, though, I think 20 seasons does show you the best TYPE of player for Survivor. And I think, with a couple quick guidelines, you can also narrow down whom the best Survivor players to have played so far have been.
My thought is this: In any other sport or game, it's played so many times that you can figure out, over time, who is the best player or team in almost any given sport. Tiger Woods might not always win, and sometimes he might completely blow it, but clearly he's the best golfer around. Phil Ivey doesn't win every poker tournament, but few would argue he isn't one of the best poker players alive. And so forth and so on.
We, as viewers, don't get that same experience with Survivor. And, moreover, Survivor is a rare game where players' previous games (and knowledge of their play) comes back to haunt them. It's like playing the board game RISK. If people know you're a conniving back stabber, you might win every now and then, but for the most part no one's going to let you get to the point where they'll let themselves get back stabbed again. Same deal with Survivor on All Star editions.
As a result: I think the true criteria to figuring out the best player is to take everyone's original seasons and to say, "if this player played the game 100 times with 100 random tribes (each made up of people who knew nothing of the other players' previous games), how well would he or she do?" And. . . If you took the 20 winners and had them play the game 100 times against one another (without their ever remembering a previous game), how well would they do?
Then, just maybe, you'd be onto something.
So. . . with that said, I'd love to hear some thoughts.
Start with what strategy you think is best and what strategy you would employ if you played the game.
Finish with ranking the 10 best players based on the "100 random draws with no previous knowledge of each other" criteria. (And if you're voting with your emotions, please don't post. It's not about supporting your favorite player. It's a fun discussion of how best to most often win Survivor.)
1. Most people tend to rank on who they like (and who they associate with), not on who really played the game the best.
2. It is pretty much impossible to rank these players based on their having played, at best, two times. So many different factors go into Survivor, from tribe placement to tribe dynamics, to pure luck environmental factors, to varying rules the players played with on their season -- that making a judgement call on who is the best Survivor is extremely difficult.
All that said, though, I think 20 seasons does show you the best TYPE of player for Survivor. And I think, with a couple quick guidelines, you can also narrow down whom the best Survivor players to have played so far have been.
My thought is this: In any other sport or game, it's played so many times that you can figure out, over time, who is the best player or team in almost any given sport. Tiger Woods might not always win, and sometimes he might completely blow it, but clearly he's the best golfer around. Phil Ivey doesn't win every poker tournament, but few would argue he isn't one of the best poker players alive. And so forth and so on.
We, as viewers, don't get that same experience with Survivor. And, moreover, Survivor is a rare game where players' previous games (and knowledge of their play) comes back to haunt them. It's like playing the board game RISK. If people know you're a conniving back stabber, you might win every now and then, but for the most part no one's going to let you get to the point where they'll let themselves get back stabbed again. Same deal with Survivor on All Star editions.
As a result: I think the true criteria to figuring out the best player is to take everyone's original seasons and to say, "if this player played the game 100 times with 100 random tribes (each made up of people who knew nothing of the other players' previous games), how well would he or she do?" And. . . If you took the 20 winners and had them play the game 100 times against one another (without their ever remembering a previous game), how well would they do?
Then, just maybe, you'd be onto something.
So. . . with that said, I'd love to hear some thoughts.
Start with what strategy you think is best and what strategy you would employ if you played the game.
Finish with ranking the 10 best players based on the "100 random draws with no previous knowledge of each other" criteria. (And if you're voting with your emotions, please don't post. It's not about supporting your favorite player. It's a fun discussion of how best to most often win Survivor.)
