THE OPENING GAME - TRIBE VS. INDIVIDUAL


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This is the start of what I hope to be a series of articles that will begin to bring a little more order to this site. In particular, I'm hoping these articles will eventually replace my Survivor Strategy Guide, an ungainly document to say the least. Many ideas from the guide will be re-explored here but hopefully in a more coherent, and concise, manner.

What is the opening?

In this first essay, I want to talk about opening strategy, in particular the conflict that can often emerge between playing for the tribe and playing for yourself. Here I am talking about the period of the game which ends once a tribe is down to six players, or there is a player swap, or a merge if neither of the first two have happened yet. After this point strategies will shift and the game becomes far more about positioning oneself for the post middle-game.

The goal: Get your tribe into the majority.

The goal of the opening in any game of strategy is to leave you in as good a position as possible in the middle-game and that, of course, means leaving you with the maximum probability of winning the game. But defining exactly what is a "good position" is not quite as obvious as it sounds.

Let's start with the question of having your tribe in the majority come the merge. How important is that? The history of the game speaks for itself. In the nine seasons that have been completed at this writing, in seven of them the majority tribe produced the eventual winner. The exception being Vecepia from Survivor-Marquesas and Chris for Survivor-Vanuatu, both examples of games where the majority tribe broke down. Not good odds for the minority tribe members but if that is not convincing enough for you, consider the following simple argument.

The "T" is for team.

We have to first limit the variables we are exploring so let's imagine a game of sixteen almost identical players starting off in two equal tribes. If everything were equal, each of these players would start off with a 1 in 16 chance of winning the game, but we are going to vary one thing. A tribe can be one of two types. In a T-tribe (T for team), all eight players are going to play as a team and make their primary objective to take the other tribe "out of the game" - I'll come back to exactly what I mean by this when I talk about the middle-game - before they turn on each other. In an I-tribe (I for individual) all players play as individuals and which tribe a member belongs to will not effect how they give or receive support. Let's study the match-ups of these two types of tribes and how it effects the probability of each member winning the game.

T-tribe vs. T-tribe or I-tribe vs. I-tribe: As these tribe types are identical, neither tribe has an advantage and thus the probability of a particular individual winning is still 1 in 16.

T-tribe vs. I-tribe: Clearly the T-tribe has the advantage and if they stick together (which they will by definition), and if the I-tribe always plays individually, the T-tribe will end up on top every time. This means that in this situation, the probability of a particular T-tribe player winning has climbed to 1 in 8, while the probability of an I-tribe player winning is pretty close to zero.

If we assume that tribes pick their type at random (a gross simplification but one that works for this illustration), it means that half the time each member of a T-tribe will have a 1 in 16 chance of winning (when they are up against another T-tribe) while the other half of the time they will have a 1 in 8 chance of winning (when they are up against an I-tribe). Overall, this gives the T-tribe players a 3 in 32 chance of winning (0.5*(1/16)+0.5*(1/8)) which is three times the chances the I-tribe players have! Clearly the T-tribe is the way to go.

So rule one is to play as a team. Vow to each other that you will each do everything you can to make the eventual winner one of "us" and not one of "them". Of course privately, you should all acknowledge that the person you want to be that winner is yourself (no one should expect the others to be there for the sole purpose of helping them win), but outside of that, you need to consider having one of the other tribe winning the game as the worse case scenario, a cardinal sin that brands your entire tribe as the losers. And finally, and this is the kicker, you have to believe it! If you don't, but the other tribe does, then they'll walk all over you.

You would think that so simple a concept as playing as a team would be obvious to everyone but often, after a few days, tribes will lose that "us" versus "them" perspective. Their thoughts will drift away from making their tribe and new home functional and towards internal, political battles. There is the obvious Pagong tribe from the first season, who didn't vote as a tribe until the third immunity council after the merge, but there have been many other I-tribes since then. Samburu from Africa, Sook Jai from Thailand, Mogo Mogo from All-Star, and more, all lost the idea that they were battling other tribes for their existence and became preoccupied with their own internal conflicts. Not surprisingly, each of these tribes suffered a painful death in this game.

So clearly we want to be in a T-tribe so that our tribe will control the game, thus increasing our own chances of winning. One key to strategic thinking is to assume that your opponents are thinking strategically as well. If not, you'll walk all over them anyway, but if they are you have to be prepared to counter them. Thus we should assume, for now, that the tribe on the other side of the island will be a T-tribe as well and thus the only way that we will be in a position to control the middle-game is if our tribe is in the majority.

Winning challenges means simplifying leadership.

This obviously means winning immunity challenges, so you don't have to vote off your own. You would think athleticism would play a big roll in winning challenges, but it doesn't. Certainly it has it's place, and I'm not one to advocate removing all of a tribe's workhorses in the early going, but athleticism doesn't seem to be the common thread that connects the tribes that win immunity and reward challenges. Interestingly, it is leadership, more specifically, the number of people vying for leadership that makes the difference. This could mean leadership around the camp, leadership in the challenges, but most importantly it means leadership in voting strategy. Ideally, a tribe needs to have one source of leadership in a particular area. Note that this could easily mean separate individuals, one who is captain during challenges, the other directing the course of the game, but these two individuals need to, for now, be working together. Also note that this doesn't mean that everyone is working to help the leaders win and it doesn't mean that players aren't working to eventually dethrone a leader, but for now, while tribe unity is so important, the majority of the players are accepting, and respecting, the leadership of these individuals. It is important in the opening phase of the game to have the majority of the tribe pulling in the same direction.

All the best tribes have had their captains. Tagi had Richard Hatch, Kucha - Mike Skupin (note how this tribe fell apart once he was gone), Boran had Lex Van den Burghe, and the list goes on and on. Note that these players aren't the ones that necessarily go on to win, nor should they necessarily be considered the best players of that tribe, but having this one tribal chief best increases the chances of the tribe winning challenges. I'm going to borrow a term from Whobdi's John Nash's Survivor and refer to these tribes as N-tribes. The evidence is pretty strong that tribes that can first achieve this N-tribe status have the best chance of taking control of the game. Let's take a look at that evidence.

Season
First N-tribe
Leader
Tribe in
majority at F9
Borneo Tagi Richard Tagi
Australia Kucha Michael Ogakor
Africa Boran Lex Boran
Marquesas Rotu John Rotu
Thailand Chauy Gahn Brian Chauy Gahn
Amazon Tambaqui Roger Tambaqui
Pearl Islands Drake Rupert Drake
All-Star Chapera Rob M Chapera
Vanuatu Yasur Ami Yasur


It's pretty overwhelming. The only exception is in Australia and there is little doubt that Kucha losing their leader in an accident played a roll in that tribe falling to pieces. If one looks down the list of these tribes, it should be readily apparent that these tribes were not necessarily the more athletic. What defines these tribes is the structure of their leadership. If you think about it, this shouldn't even be surprising. Think about any team involved in competition and where that team would be without a coach or captain that the team respects. Many of the challenges before the merge are specifically designed to test the players ability to work as a team, so it shouldn't be surprising that the ones that don't have solid leadership will suffer. More-over, constant battles between vying leaders at the home camp is bound to be draining and demoralizing and that can't help but be carried over into the play at the challenges. As well these internal battles inevitably means that players are thinking more about resolving the conflicts within the tribe than winning challenges, and resolving conflicts often means voting someone out. This means that psychologically many players are not going to be in the best state they can be when it comes to competing to win immunity. I mean, how badly are you going to want it if you know that losing means perhaps removing a source of anxiety back home? This desire does not need to be state explicitly (although often it is) for it to begin to effect the efforts of some of the players, and I can guarantee you that if the other tribe was completely focused on kicking your ass in the challenge, you are probably going to lose.

Playing for the tribe helps the individual.

So as an individual player, in the early going the best way for him or her to improve their chances of winning the game is through the well being of the team. That means contributing to the tribe both around the camp and in the challenges, both physically and psychologically. This not only increases the chances of your tribe winning challenges, but it also increases the chances of you not being one of those early boots yourself. By my count, twenty-four of the thirty-five players (that's 69%) that were voted out during the opening were directly because they were contributing the least in the challenges or around the camp, or they were socially in conflict with the majority of the tribe. By the way, these twenty-three people were Sonja, Stacey, B.B., Ramona, Debb, Kel, Maralyn, Kimmi, Diane, Jesse, Linda, Peter, Patricia, John (Thailand), Tanya, Ryan (Amazon), Daniel, Janet, Joanna, Nicole, Ryan S, Tina, Rudy (both from All-star) and Mia. So put everything you have into the challenges and do your best to work well with people around the camp even if some of those same people are driving you crazy. This could easily be the most difficult part of the game because anyone can find themselves on the outside looking in right off the bat when it comes to group dynamics and if that happens you are in a lot of trouble with likely very little you can do about it.

It's okay to be the leader.

Work to have your tribe achieve that N-tribe status as soon as possible, but for God's sake don't throw a challenge to do it. If there is a natural leader on the tribe, then fall behind that person's leadership both around the camp and in the challenges, but don't be afraid if that natural leader turns out to be you. Many folks will say it's bad to be the leader citing that only two of the nine N-tribe leaders (Richard and Brian) went on to win the game, but I don't think it's a valid argument. First off, two in nine (22%) are not bad odds considering that we are starting from one in sixteen (6%). Even if you compare this to how the rest of the N-tribe members did, two in nine is still pretty good. There were seventy-one members of the nine N-tribes mentioned above of which only five went on to eventually win. That's only 7%, so I'll take 22% over that any day. Leadership is definitely a double-edged sword, but one shouldn't be afraid of it. By the same token, one should not feel obligated to battle for it. Again, at this stage it's the over all functioning of the tribe we are looking at. We'll look at how to play it's specific rolls in a later instalment.

Some folks might be looking at that 7% win rate of N-tribe members mentioned above and be thinking that this is not much better than just random chance and saying that this whole N-tribe stuff is nonsense. It doesn't matter what you do, it's just all luck. Well certainly some of it is just dumb luck. When Mike fell into the fire, Kucha lost their leader through no one's fault and never did take control of the middle-game. Besides Kucha, Tambaqui (the all male tribe from Survivor-Amazon) also didn't retain their N-tribe status, but this time it was their fault as Tambaqui fell apart as soon as there was a player swap. So it's not just about achieving N-tribe status but maintaining it to gain superiority over the other tribe. Neither Kucha nor Tambaqui did that. You could argue that Rotu and Yasur didn't either when they voted for the opposition in the final two, but I'll save that conversation for another time. For now, let's throw Kucha and Tambaqui out of the mix as they lost their N-tribe status. That leaves fifty-five players in tribes that were the first to achieve N-tribe status and maintain it, and of these fifty-five players, five went on to win. That's now 9%. What's fun is to compare that to the 3/32 theoretical probability of a T-tribe member (remember, T for team) winning the game, which is also about 9%. This number doesn't seem like a lot but recall that it is three times the probability of a member of the other tribe winning and all we've done is worked on being a united tribe and have discussed nothing about individual player position and strategy within that tribe. Perhaps the increase is a small one, but that is how strategy games work, create small advantages that can be exploited later to create big advantages.

Swaps.

Yeah, but what about all these player swaps that they have now? Doesn't that just throw all this out the window? Actually, it strengthens the argument to have a strong tribe and to win challenges in the early going. A tribe in the majority come a swap has a good chance of controlling both tribes and really taking the game by the horns. Moreover, a T-tribe is far more likely to remain loyal to it's own members come a swap, thus further increasing their chances of being in control come the merge. So the end point here to create a cohesive team atmosphere within a tribe and have only a single source of leadership. The tribe that can do that first will be at a significant advantage.

Find a partner.

So let's say a player has done everything they can to gel with their tribe. They are ra-ra team, working around the camp, and giving their all in the challenges. They are not getting into leadership battles or perhaps even stepping up to the plate themselves if no leader is emerging. Yet, despite all their best efforts their tribe loses an immunity challenge early on and are seeing themselves going to tribal council. First off, from the very early stages of the game - within the first couple of days - a player needs to make a solid relationship with one other player within the tribe. This has to extend beyond friendship into an agreement not to vote for each other and to watch the other's back. If you want to extend this to a formal final two pact, fine, but this kind of self-supporting partnership is gold and is absolutely necessary for later success. This will become readily apparent in later instalments, but for now I'll just point out that every single previous winner has had one of these paired relationships from the very early stages of the game. At the very least, as long as the relationship isn't exclusive towards the other members of the tribe, it will help you avoid being an early boot, though it certainly is no guarantee.

Some people would say that your second (the other half of your pair) should be someone who is abrasive so that you can win against him or her in the final two. I couldn't disagree more. First off, I think that will decrease your chances of making the final two at all and secondly with likely only eight members in your tribe, many of whom will be aggressively making alliances from very early on, the important thing is just to find someone that you can trust to work with you. If you find that person, don't even think about turning on him or her unless you get yourself into the endgame, that is the final four.

If there is a battle for leadership, a leader should go early.

So back to the topic at hand. Your tribe has just lost it's first immunity challenge. How do you play? First off, don't be too aggressive in your stance. Trying to work the perfect boot for you may only turn the ire of your tribe mates towards you. Sometimes it may be best to leave well enough alone. That being said, here are the factors a tribe should consider for their first boot or two. Is there a leadership struggle happening? If there is, you should be looking at removing a leader to simplify the power structure within the tribe. Think about which leader should go and how the tribe will function after that person is gone. Will it be better or worse? Will any allies of that leader fall behind the new leadership or will removing said leader be viewed as an open declaration of war and drive a wedge between opposing factions of the tribe? Again, the idea is to simplify the social dynamic of the tribe, not make it worse.

Think about social harmony.

After leadership, the next factor to consider is social harmony in the tribe. Is there someone who is just a thorn in the other players' sides (whether deservedly or not - that matter is rather irrelevant)? Is there a player that just is not gelling with the rest of the group and can be removed without upsetting too many, if any, other players getting upset? Such players should be voted out. A happy tribe is a winning tribe.

Think about players that win challenges.

Finally, the last factor to consider is athleticism. Is there a player that is a physical detriment at the immunity challenges? Don't weigh the results of just a single challenge too heavily as the challenges vary and require a lot of different skills, not just physical strength or speed, but if there is a player that is easily not up to the challenge than that player becomes a viable target. All these factors should be weighed along with how the tribe as a whole is swinging and if the tribe is swinging in a direction that you find acceptable, even if it is not perfect, then you should go with the tribe. If, however, the tribe is swinging towards it's own self destruction or towards booting your second then you shouldn't feel obligated to play along when such a direction likely takes you out of the game anyway. In such a situation, you should feel free to play aggressively and try to swing the vote in a different direction.

But, don't play too aggressively ... yet.

A fairly common practice is one of simply targeting perceived threats right off the bat which usually involves brainlessly targeting athletic and charismatic players. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, if a player feels his or her back is against a wall then come out swinging, but otherwise lay off. If a perceived threat can be removed under the criteria mentioned above, that is the removal of that player simplifies the power structure and increases tribe unity, then go for it, but otherwise lay low for a while. Turning your tribe into a war zone in the early going is far more likely to simply result in that tribe self-destructing and losing challenges. Here's food for thought, the very fact that a particular player is so readily perceived as a threat means that such a player will have more difficulty drawing support in the middle-game, meaning that player is actually far less of a threat than you imagine.

Some examples.

I think it would be best to finish off with some examples taken from previous seasons of Survivor.

The Good:

The Tagi tribe from Survivor-Borneo: From very early on relationships were forming starting with Richard bonding with Rudy and Stacey with Kelly. To call these formal alliances is likely too strong a word but the potential was there as Stacey seemed to be wanting to drawing the ladies together to go after Rudy. They lost their first challenge and most of the players agreed to take out their obviously, physically, weakest player in the elderly Sonja. What was interesting was that Richard put a solo vote on Stacey this first time through, likely already recognizing that either she or himself had to go. Though I'm not a big fan of throwing single votes around like this, I am pleased to see that he recognizes the true threat to him in this tribe. N-tribe status was achieved with their next immunity challenge loss. By now, Richard, Rudy and Sue had formed a formal alliance and, with the help of Sean and Dirk, removed Stacey. Stacey was a great choice from the perspective of this dominant trio as it not only simplifies the leadership structure (in regards to game direction, not tribe life as Richard was already the leader around camp and during challenges) but removes a player that was contributing very little anyway. After Stacey was gone, Kelly fell into the Richard-Rudy-Sue alliance and with Sean and Dirk not even playing, Tagi became a very solid N-tribe.

The Bad:

The Lopevi tribe from Survivor-Vanuatu: Chris formed a very early alliance with Travis as his second backed up by Lea, Chad and Rory giving them the obvious majority in the nine member, all male tribe. A secondary power was forming out of the younger men headed by John P, clearly splitting this tribe into two camps. One of the leaders had to go. The problem with removing John P is that he was popular, a strong contributor, and his removal would have clearly drawn a line in the sand between the older and younger players. Chris on the other hand was directly responsible for them losing their first challenge. Lea, Chad and Rory were really the ones to make the call and it was a tough one. Although I think removing Chris in the interest of tribal dynamics would have been the better way, it would have forced these three into the role of T-players (see the Early Middle-game Strategy) while removing John P would have had them sitting a couple of steps higher in the tribal hierarchy. Either call is arguable but in the end they played it wrong by removing one of John P's supporters thus ensuring the tribe remains divided while leaving a competing leader in the mix. John P went on their next chance, but by then the lines were too firm and this tribe was nowhere near being functional.

The Ugly:

The Maraamu tribe from Survivor-Marquesas: Three dominant males formed immediate pairs and there was trouble from the get go. Hunter paired with Gina and was backed up by Patricia, Sean paired with Peter and was backed up by Vecepia and Rob paired with Sara. Hunter was taking on the leadership role and it looked like the others were willing to fall under that leadership, though there was obvious tension. When they lost their first challenge, consensus was drifting towards the lowest contributor, which was Sara. A leader could have gone first but that leader should likely have been either Sean or Hunter, but both will result in a still divided tribe. Sara represents a reasonable compromise of interests. It isolates Rob and leaves him forced to join one of the other two camps as a minority member and if Sean could manage to work under Hunter, things might have worked out fairly well, though it would still be tenuous. What happened though was things got ugly real fast when Peter suggested in an open meeting that perhaps Patricia, as a middle-aged over-weight woman, should go. This is a classic example of not leaving well enough alone. Hunter and Gina turned on Peter, and Rob was more than happy to help along, now that it wasn't Sarah going, and Peter turned out to be the one taking the walk. This was a mistake from Hunter's perspective, as simplifying leadership works better for him. After the dust settled we were left with a very disfunctional tribe that, not surprisingly, lost it's next challenge as well. Hunter returned to booting the useless Sarah, and Rob, very rightly, didn't want to see his second go and went over to Sean and Vecepia, this time targeting Patricia. Again, we are still left with a very ugly tribe consisting of three pairs that are nowhere near gelling. I can't blame Sean and Vee for accepting Rob and Sarah into an alliance, as they certainly were getting nowhere with Hunter and company, and I can understand them still attempting to try and work under Hunter's leadership but after the dust settled this time it was clear that Hunter was no longer willing to lead them and we were left with a tribe that despite two boots was still nowhere near achieving N-tribe status.