I fully understand why someone would vote for jandal over me. I mean, I have only won 1 HoH, for jandal’s 2 (plus 4 Vetos). I’ll expain my pov, but first there’s something i want to say: Some of you might have no clue, others might have guessed and others are sured of it, but jandal and I have been allied since we all were merged in the same house. At some point we included Selwink in the alliance, but i will talk about it later.
This said, I can take full credit from my HoH win in the High Risk challenge. I only lost one round there, in the first run of the final, and proved to best the strongest in a game that i hadn’t previously played.
If we look at jandal’s HoH wins, first we see the GeoGuesser. As there was no rule that forbid players talking each other about that challenge, we did it together. I was able to quickly find the first picture, and in the second picture jandal was able to identify a logo of a company which rents cars or something like that (i cannot remember it now) and that company was only present in three Russian cities; Moscow, St.Petersburg and Ufa. As Moscow buses were similar to the one in the photo, we went with Moscow. The problem was with the last picture, I thought that the flag it’s visible in the photo was either Bolivian or from Ghana. We decided to split here to have a greater chance to win, and jandal got the better part.
And then you have the final HoH. Jandal screw it by not taking a deal which would have made him win the HoH automatically, and at the end he took a bad deal that surprisingly led him to win the HoH as both me and Selwink decided to not take our deals, and lost everything. Basically a chain of mis-fortunes that led to his win in that HoH.
Other than that, I was never in danger of being evicted, and the only time that I was in the block, i didn’t have to win that Veto (as you can see in the result of that Veto, me and jandal had all but one the same results, so jandal could win the veto, save me, and automatically evict wsf), so my Veto appearances were basically trying to stay out of jandal’s way (see in the Youtube challenge Veto, when I only sent around half of the letters to avoid the risk of beating him).
Ah, I forgot about the Teams things. Those who were in Team Vuelta knows perfectly that if it wasn’t by me, we would have lost every single challenge, maybe with the exception of the first one. (I expand this n the third question, i don’t want to repeat myself)
It’s up to you, the jury, to decide whether I have convinced you to vote me, or you are sticking with jandal
2. Which challenge do you consider your best effort?
I would say it’s the last Team Challenge. I had to do it all on my own, as nobody else cared or wasn’t available, and managed to win it, although some controversy and the “no-eviction” ruined it
3. What have you done best during this game?
I think that the best i’ve done was in the Team Vuelta part. If not by me, we would have lost all four Team Challenge (well, maybe not the first, as the other team was almost missing).
In the first challenge, all the job was done by matt and me. In the second one, the only who lost, I couldn’t do anything for most of the time. Thanks to Luigi who did all the job until I could start doing something. If I had a couple of hours more to use in that challenge, we would have also won it.
In the third one, work load was shared more or less equitative between Luigi, jandal and me, and the final challenge i did it all on my own.
Also, a really great decision was to ally with jandal, as this had led us to be in the final together
4. What have you done worst during this game?
I can only point out one low points in my game. First, not understanding at all the “Consistency Veto”. Not that it turned out to be bad for me, as jandal went onto win that Veto, and that way we didn’t have to unveil our alliance.
The rest of the game i played the best i could – or the best I decided to play, as i have already explained.
5. Given you're arguably the underdog, do you think you deserve to be in the final?
I really think i have deserved to be in the final. At least I think i’ve played well enough to be in the final To explain this, I will tell how the game went from my perspective.
First we started with the IWS challenge. Never been great at this, so being in the first half was a great start for me. When we sorted into teams, i was Team Vuelta, with jandal, matt, luigi and wsf. Jandal created a chatroom for us, and in there matt and me, and at a lesser extent jandal, were the only active guys. Luigi was there from time to time, being really useful when he was active, and wsf barely showed up, and did nothing in any of the challenges.
It was a shame for the team competition that matt didn’t have time to continue in the game, although he would have been an incredible tough rival later in the game, someone who might have destroyed our “dream” of being both jandal and me in the final together. At the start of the teams thing, matt was like the soul of our team, but when he had to quit/was evicted, i had to step-up and take responsabilty in our team
As I’m a rookie in the game, nobody considered me a big threat, so at some point i told jandal that it would be better that he won certain challenges so i could remain “anonymous” and the focus was on him. I guess you’ll agree with me that I was succesfull on this.
I don’t remember the exact moment, but still when we were on Team Vuelta, jandal and me agreed to join forces once we all were merged in the same house. My intention was also to talk with both wsf and Luigi to first eradicate Team Giro first, and then we would fight for the win between us, we talked about it, but at the end we never talked with neither of them.
I went onto winning the first HoH after the merge, which led to trek’s eviction. The next HoH was the Roulette one. Terrible bets from me, not that i’m good at it. I’ve played a few times in RL, but I decided it was better to not play if I wanted to have money. Given that wsf won that HoH, and looking at his decision of who to nominate and evict, we thought that he was allied with marco, so eliminating him became our highest priority.
At that point, jandal suggested that we should aproach Selwink, as he wasn’t in the hypothetical alliance between wsf and marco. We both voted for Selwink to stay in the game, so we could have the chance to talk with him about joining us but if it wasn’t by Luxemburger being evicted because of his inactivity, Selwink would have been evicted in that round, so we all were very lucky there.
Then Selwink won the “Friend or Foe” HoH, and although neither of us knew exactly if we were fully allied or it was just a truce – jandal was the one managing it, actually I never talked with Selwink during all game- we managed to evict marco. At the moment we were still thinking that it would a three-way final, like in the previous season, so it was ideal our alliance, as all three would reach the final, and then, may the best win. But then I asked jseadog about it, and he said that it would be a final of two players, so this changed our plans, and while sticking with Selwink, the plan was always that jandal and me were in the final
After the GeoGuesser HoH, which was won by jandal, we evicted Luigi instead of wsf, as we thought that wsf was not a threat, even if somehow he was able to reach the final, and Luigi could do some damage to us in the final challenges.
Selwink went onto winning the “Worlds Prediction” HoH. A shame for me, as i had picked 4 of the top5 riders, but only Sagan in the right place. This was the most critical moment in all the game for me. I was put in the block for the first ime, together with wsf
I don’t know if Selwink was so confident on himself to win the final HoH to secure his place in the final, but if I were him I’d tried my best to evict either jandal or me, so he had a greater chance to be in the final. I thought about this posibilty, so I got to the conclusion that our only solution was that jandal had to win that Veto and save me, so wsf was automatically evicted. So I had to do my Veto work and then jandal had to submit it as it was his work, but Selwink somehow found everything that we couldn’t and won the Veto.
At this point, I had already accepted that my time in the game was over, but Selwink decided to evict wsf, so it all came down to the final HoH
I have already explained how the HoH went in the first question, so i will only add that although it might look that, we never talked about our strategies in the final decision until we both had sent it, so it was a big mistake that was fixed by casuality, as we divided strategies without consulting with the other.
And this is pretty much what I have to say about what i have done in the game. I hope that after reading this you'll have understood how the game has gone, and that i'm a deserved finalist
6. Would you have changed anything you did in the game? why or why not?
The only thing that I would have changed about the game at all is my decision in the final HoH. If I had won the HoH, although I would still have faced jandal in the final, having a second HoH would have helped to be considered better by the jury
PCM.Daily NFL Fantasy Football Champion: 2012 PCM.Daily NHL Prediction Game Champion: 2013 PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
First off, there's no hard feelings here but I feel that there has been a bit of the regular underselling of work in Aquarius' post, and I'll try to correct him a bit and keep it fairly even. 1. Why should we vote for you over Aquarius?
To put it simply, I have been the stronger player. Maybe not at the start of the team challenges, but I think if you read Aquarius' post I am some kind of vessel for his work which is really untrue. Yes there was alliance help, particularly in the GeoGuessr one but it was a team effort, but him "finding" the first one was being like 20 seconds ahead of me in thinking to search "second cup bay road" and I found the exact place 20 seconds before him so it evened out. In the second, I found the carsharing logo, found out the three cities they operated in, then he did maybe 66% of the bus finding work overnight for me but I found the bus that it was (turns out it's the most used bus in Russia but I did it ). I suggested African flags including Ghana but we looked in Bolivia first. There was good coverage of their military bases (which we decided it was) but none matched, so taking Ghana, which had much less coverage, was a good decision by me and not a 50/50 chance I took. I had trawled past those Bolivian bases a lot and decided it was wrong, and if it was another African flag Ghana was close. Turns out it was in Jordan . The Friend or Foe one he gave me the foe so i could win but at that time I had to also do a lot more, and ended up second. The sports prices one I found 4/6 of the things we used before his extra work, so it was certainly not me submitting his work.
I'd like to defend my final HoH choice. That's all I have to say I'd like to but I can't. It was a brash decision which I regret. I wouldn't call my last deal a bad deal though, it was the better move for me given the higher odds of winning and you both made bad deals
I also bore the brunt of most tactical work earlier on but it was 50/50 near the end. I was the first to notice our hypothetical (can somebody confirm this is true or not? ) alliance between wsf and Marco, which I think stemmed from an earlier Giro alliance. I then did all the communicating with Selwink. From then on though it was 50/50 I guess.
2. Which challenge do you consider your best effort?
Historical kits one. Finding that database took longer than most people bar Matt took on the veto and then copy/pasting and filtering out kits that weren't my colour was mind numbing. I also was quite proud of the music one where I hit the max on most (damn X )
3. What have you done best during this game?
I think from a relative standpoint my efforts across the board except for a couple of early Le Tour challenges were pretty good due to lack of time, and maybe I contributed less than 20% on one or two Vuelta challenges right at the start, both of which were partly due to my apparent (seriously Marco and trek were right there ) threat for the win, judging by the IWS HoH. I also (and this is a low bar really) played the best tactical game, not being in any obvious alliance, initiating an alliance with another strong player this time without a reputation to be in a 2-man alliance with after intending to solo it, steering the game (especially once I had an inkling of the Giro alliances) where I needed it to go, towards a bit of an inactive player in wsf, a possible alliance to make the final three airtight, and me and Aquarius in the final. We were a team and both played the game very well in my opinion, I just did it better. That's what I've done best, trying to stay fairly quiet so no big effort HOH wins whilst saving myself at every turn so I could control the game and get to the final with Aquarius
4. What have you done worst during this game?
Probably one or two early Vuelta challenges, specifically user posts one where in my defence when I had time they'd won clearly and it would have taken hours to better it, and the first half of the cycling won after getting continents and going to sleep, though in the end I no lifed Bogota for a while then once I'd done that for ages me and Aquarius did a city each for 20 minutes at the death and put in a huge effort which didn't stop us losing. Then as he said the rest was Luigi, him and me doing about 33% each.
5. Why shouldn't we vote for you?
Um, Aquarius did play this version of big brother the best, do your best but stay hidden, come out of the teams with an alliance. He thrived in the teams but this didn't let him get seen by anyone outside of Vuelta as a strong contender (and pretty much a perfect one for me to take with me). He also stayed hidden in the late game but didn't do as much as he said he did for me.
6. How did you make it this far in the game again?
Okay, here's my "story of the game" bit, but I will answer your question.
I have made it this far in the game by not making basic mistakes tactically or in the game. I didn't try to join a cross-team orgy alliance again, I didn't take the obvious route and go with trek I did have a vision of a duo with somebody strong and did, admittedly, try to go with Matt because I thought it would be cool and also really funny if we could do it (which we could have but yeah ). I then reached out to bbl who lasted about 5 seconds and so I had resigned myself to trying to go solo. Then I noticed that Aquarius was kinda strong, even if he was backed up by Matt a lot, and me to a lesser extent at first but probably equally by the time Matt got eliminated. I also noticed then that we worked well together on the cycling one late on and asked him for an alliance once we left. With that route to the final in the back of my mind I just endeavoured to leave the teams with us two safe and some of the threats (trek Marco and Selwink) out. Unfortunately they co-erced Jakstar to die for them, or something and got a free pass the second time, so we were all there. But more importantly we were safe, and I was the "top threat" (you guys voted me, not me ). Aquarius was also given a pass as unlike Survivor teams we didn't go blabbing on about who did all the work
The High Risk challenged I played fairly well but credit where credit is due, Aquarius was better. This helped a lot as I didn't have much time to play the race and rider match one, so sent the obvious Valverde 2008 Vuelta from my phone in between exams so I didn't get a penalty, though did consider doing it well after . I then suggested bringing Selwink on board, which Aquarius liked. This became very awkward when before I asked I was nominated beside him for eviction This HOH was roulette and I went for medium risk but failed a lot, then put it all on 0 for the final round I had my wsf - Marco suspicions all but confirmed (again very embarrasing if our whole late game strategy was perfect but based on a false assumption ). I then won the youtube veto in what, if I was really cocky, I'd call a routine veto win
I then saw Marco and wsf vote out Selwink, but he was saved and I popped the question He said yes and promptly nominated me, apologised for his forgetting. I was about to not believe him when I did the maths and realised he couldn't be part of the Marco-wsf alliance because me and Aquarius both voted SSJ2 out so we could ally with Selwink, meaning marco and wsf voted out Selwink. I then won the card game veto to save myself and we finally got rid of Marco, leaving our pathway to the three man final we thought was coming clear and having the numbers advantage. I then won the GeoGuessr HOH (and deserved it ) and evicted Luigi as I knew he was a threat and we agreed that wsf was a good third man in the final who we wouldn't lose to if we had to let Selwink go. But at this time my intentions with Selwink were pure and we weren't using him, but in the end we were as Aquarius found the different final format for this year.
Fans of the Grand High Wizard contest will now I haven't exactly been on fire (but just won Lombardia #getin) lately and that's my excuse for losing the Worlds HOH so badly. I should have won that veto for maximum security on us three getting through but Selwink was amazing and outdid my and Aquarius' work. We thought that he might send one of us home for advantage in voting but in the end he sent wsf packing. The final HoH gave me a blessing and a curse with a stacked board, I played it well for a while, terribly for one round, then finished as strongly as you can with a massive disadvantage and feeling like an idiot to win the thing, bring Aquarius into the final and here we are.
So I managed to get here because I had the best alliance, two fairly equals who worked well together, was strong enough to win almost all the vetos I had to, and controlled the game, the first one which helped get me to the final as a player, and the latter two which nullified whatever I did last year disadvantaging me.
Finally I'd like to say thanks to everyone for a great game and good luck to Aquarius, was a pleasure playing this game with you and you do deserve to be here
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Re the hypothetical wsf - Marco alliance, sorry to bust your egos but there was none. I never had any contact with him during the game. But I don't think I would've voted for him in an eviction.
The only alliance I was part of was with Jakstar and trekbmc in the very beginning, but that was quickly disarmed when the former asked to be evicted (to which we both complied without actually discussing it)
Marcovdw wrote:
Re the hypothetical wsf - Marco alliance, sorry to bust your egos but there was none. I never had any contact with him during the game. But I don't think I would've voted for him in an eviction.
The only alliance I was part of was with Jakstar and trekbmc in the very beginning, but that was quickly disarmed when the former asked to be evicted (to which we both complied without actually discussing it)
Oh dammit Doesn't make a difference, our theory still got us to the final
Yeah knew about that and thought it might be a remnant of that alliance.
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
trekbmc wrote:
Wow there wasn't much time to submit questions!
Can answer them manually if you want
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Nothing else to add to what Jandal has said. You can see that our points of view are quite similar, not that we have agreed in answering that, but because the game was exactly like that.
Also, in the last Veto, i might have explain myself a little bad (not first idiom problems ) . Yes, we both worked together on it, but obviously i had to do a bigger effort, as it's was me the one in danger. And neither I've said you didn't deserved the GeoGuesser HoH, i said that it was a shared job, leaving it in a 1,5 HoH wins for each other
And last, thanks to all players, and especially to jseadog, for having had the chance to play this incredible game. You make a big effort for the game and we might not recognise it enough
And for jandal, it's been a pleasure for me to play with you this game. I would say that i don't care who wins now, but i would be lying really bad
Make it into the final is a big plus. I've had incredible fun with it and i'm already waiting for the next edition to play it again.
PCM.Daily NFL Fantasy Football Champion: 2012 PCM.Daily NHL Prediction Game Champion: 2013 PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
Users have now been asked to vote for a winner. The Big Brother Season 4 winner will be revealed tomorrow, Tuesday October 10, 2017! Good luck to both finalists.
PCM.Daily NFL Fantasy Football Champion: 2012 PCM.Daily NHL Prediction Game Champion: 2013 PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
Marcovdw wrote:
Re the hypothetical wsf - Marco alliance, sorry to bust your egos but there was none. I never had any contact with him during the game. But I don't think I would've voted for him in an eviction.
The only alliance I was part of was with Jakstar and trekbmc in the very beginning, but that was quickly disarmed when the former asked to be evicted (to which we both complied without actually discussing it)
That was a weird situation, our alliance just kinda died, but at least it saved me from eviction once.
I can also confirm there was no alliance between Marco and I. I considered it, but reasoned I’d be so bad that it was best to take the ‘Ivan route’ - bumbling along, taking my chances and trying to keep my head above water and under the radar.
Judging by what we’ve already established about how bad I was, I’d say the ‘tactic’ worked quite well in the end.
Disclaimer- Most of my posts are me thinking aloud. And most of what I think is rubbish.
Winner of a FIFA Prediction Fair Play Award (a phrase becoming increasingly ironic) "... Because he (me) has a sound tactical mind in general..." jandal7, at 9:30 am GMT on 12th May 2016
PCM.Daily NFL Fantasy Football Champion: 2012 PCM.Daily NHL Prediction Game Champion: 2013 PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
Despite finding the choice really hard between jandal and Aquarius I voted for the former because of the continued and consistent efforts in the 3 last editions of the game that saw him continously being among the best players - if not the best.
Can't do anything but congratulate jandal on a very deserved win. We worked really well together and in the several times he was put through his paces he proved to be the strongest whether he had my help or not.
Big thanks to jseadog for organizing this awesome game, and only have to say that i'll be back in S5 to try to win it, although it won't be any easy as i can't play the "underdog" tactic again
Aquarius97 wrote:
Can't do anything but congratulate jandal on a very deserved win. We worked really well together and in the several times he was put through his paces he proved to be the strongest whether he had my help or not.
Big thanks to jseadog for organizing this awesome game, and only have to say that i'll be back in S5 to try to win it, although it won't be any easy as i can't play the "underdog" tactic again
jandal7 managed to do it so I am sure that you could also
PCM.Daily NFL Fantasy Football Champion: 2012 PCM.Daily NHL Prediction Game Champion: 2013 PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
Thanks to everyone for the votes and for a good game! Special thanks to Aquarius for a great game together there, you played really well and deserved to be in the top two. Will be watching out for you in season 5 And of course a huge thanks to jseadog for another enjoyable season, I really appreciate the effort you put into this every year to make it so fun and smooth-running
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
I would like to thank all of the players that participated in this season, as well as those that followed along with how things were going (Ian, knockout). It sadly seems like less and less interest is happening every year with this but it only takes 10 interested people to make the game work and it did again. We will surely go at it again next year.
As far as the game itself I face challenges every year finding things that can be easy to complete yet not easy to cheat on. I am ALWAYS open to suggestions and I would love some PM's on ideas of challenges or veto's for next year. Another challenge I face is trying to make people not take part in the exact same alliances year after year. The struggle here is that not enough newbies sign up to play.
I am surprised the house kept jandal7 in the game so long yet got rid of baseballlover at the beginning again. Its amazing to me that the game goes the way it does. jandal7 deserved to win and had Selwink won the last HoH I think that he might have been able to steal a win.
the game was much shorter than in recent years but then again we also had less people than we usually do. Luxemburger was the only player that was not active throughout the whole game which is something else that was important to me (Hope is is okay). Big thanks to everyone that played again and i hope to see some of you again next year.
I'll leave the the thread open now to a reunion show or any kind of discussion we want to have about the game. This is also where I will post next year when the time is coming to start a new season!
PCM.Daily NFL Fantasy Football Champion: 2012 PCM.Daily NHL Prediction Game Champion: 2013 PCM.Daily NFL Prediction Game Champion: 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021
). I suggested African flags including Ghana but we looked in Bolivia first. There was good coverage of their military bases (which we decided it was) but none matched, so taking Ghana, which had much less coverage, was a good decision by me and not a 50/50 chance I took. I had trawled past those Bolivian bases a lot and decided it was wrong, and if it was another African flag Ghana was close. Turns out it was in Jordan 
. The Friend or Foe one he gave me the foe so i could win but at that time I had to also do a lot more, and ended up second. The sports prices one I found 4/6 of the things we used before his extra work, so it was certainly not me submitting his work. 
)
