Reality News online has interviews with the contestants, analysis, etc. I haven't read it all yet, just the recap of the final, which was pretty solid, as usual.
http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/ae.pl
From the strategy story there by Jeffrey Sadow:
It wasn’t that Russell had a bad strategy, but that he just did not have the talent to pull it off successfully.
In the pantheon of Survivor great performances – of which for all his groveling protestations, his will not qualify – his strategy resembled that of one of the greatest, Brian’s, who made it into the Reality TV Hall of Fame with his play. In that season, Brian conceptualized himself as the center of a wheel and set up three to four alliances that emanated out in spokes. He made deals with each of these players, independently of the others, and hid them so cleverly that none of them knew until it was over that they existed; each thought he was Brian’s preferred partner until the end.
Even more beautifully, the way Brian maintained it was to envision and carry out a pecking order of eliminations that cast more blame on the others than on him, so he maximized his chances of retaining jury votes not lost out of scorn for his betrayal. He never presented himself as the front man but as part of a unit as he sluiced off allies until he manipulated his way in front of the jury with his preferred match. It was just enough to win.
Russell appears to have attempted something similar, but there were two major differences in how he actually executed this strategy. First, his judgment about people was much worse leading to a series of ham-handed actions. From the start, he picked allies that mostly turned inconvenient quickly.
http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/ae.pl
From the strategy story there by Jeffrey Sadow:
It wasn’t that Russell had a bad strategy, but that he just did not have the talent to pull it off successfully.
In the pantheon of Survivor great performances – of which for all his groveling protestations, his will not qualify – his strategy resembled that of one of the greatest, Brian’s, who made it into the Reality TV Hall of Fame with his play. In that season, Brian conceptualized himself as the center of a wheel and set up three to four alliances that emanated out in spokes. He made deals with each of these players, independently of the others, and hid them so cleverly that none of them knew until it was over that they existed; each thought he was Brian’s preferred partner until the end.
Even more beautifully, the way Brian maintained it was to envision and carry out a pecking order of eliminations that cast more blame on the others than on him, so he maximized his chances of retaining jury votes not lost out of scorn for his betrayal. He never presented himself as the front man but as part of a unit as he sluiced off allies until he manipulated his way in front of the jury with his preferred match. It was just enough to win.
Russell appears to have attempted something similar, but there were two major differences in how he actually executed this strategy. First, his judgment about people was much worse leading to a series of ham-handed actions. From the start, he picked allies that mostly turned inconvenient quickly.
