Board Thread:Season 57 - Laguna Colorada/@comment-33060993-20200216005226/@comment-31555005-20200216181120

Hi Zeeb! I know you said "Don't say things we've criticised you on unless you genuinely think it would have improved your game" - this isn't me sugarcoating things or pandering to you or anyone else on the jury, but I honestly do agree with the social game-related criticism that you and others have pointed out. I had been aware that I didn't particularly excel here (though, as said elsewhere, I wasn't aware of the full extent of it), and I do think that if I'd time travel backwards, I'd change stuff in THIS area of my game - strategically I don't think I've made major mistakes throughout the season, and I never place too much importance on the physical/challenge aspect of the game.

If I had went back in time, one thing I would most certainly divert a lot more attention to is non-game conversations and personally connecting with people. I would put a lot more energy and focus into this because although my unintentionally gamebottish approach did ultimately work in taking me to the end, there were certain points in the game where I think I unnecessarily made things harder for myself. As someone who (ironically) is typically considered a more social and less strategic player, the importance of having great social connections isn't lost on me - for starters, I'm pretty sure that it would have only served to increase people's trust in me and to tighten my grip on information.

Another thing I would change is my damage control, I put way too little emphasis on that and it did bite me back. Too many times throughout the season I stopped talking much with people who I either wanted gone soon or with whom I had stopped strategically working (for example, after blindsides), and if I had to underline my biggest regret this season, this would definitely be it. Things could have worked out far worse than they did, and far too many times in games I've seen people crash and burn for not doing much damage control - indeed, if TC and Timi would have made a mistake by not committing to rocks then I would be another victim of that, as poor damage control with Abi and Micah following the Toby vote is one of the aspects I blame in regards to my name getting thrown out at F6, and also in regards to how neither of them flipped on the revote.

I think by incorporating better social game and better damage control into my game, I would have ultimately finetuned my path to the end. I still made it here and made the moves I wanted to make, but I did so in a much messier/chunkier way.