My Closing Statement To The Jury

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,

Thank you once again for this enjoyable game experience. A great cast almost always ensures a great game. This was a fantastic game. I hope you have all gathered ample information from the responses and feel confident that you can make an informed decision with your vote.

I would like to take this one last opportunity to explain my game. If you think I played the best game of the three finalists, well that will be music to my ears. If you respect Iggy's or Elsa's accomplishments more, well who can argue with that? They are worthy competitors. I will include my final opinion on both of them in this closing.

I am going to summarize as best I can, many of the things I accomplished in this game which got me to this position and that I am proud of. I will also address Iggy's comments about luck along the way. Hopefully this final summary will give you your last impression of my game.

At the very onset of the game, I bonded quickly and immediately with Christopher and Larry. Christopher became inactive, while Larry ended up on my tribe. We were each others' F2 and closest allies. We both agreed to form an alliance with Sabrina and Charlie. It happened naturally and fell in to place right away and propelled all of us to merge, got three of us to F6, two of us to F4, and got me to the Final Tribal Council. I have a lot of gratitude for my alliance since they are the biggest reason why I have had success. I hope I was as enjoyable to work with as they were for me. I respect them all a lot and I hope they are happy to see me in this place.

Larry can confirm that we did a lot of talking about our alliances dynamics. We both agreed that Charlie seemed to take the initial place as leader; was paired up with Sabrina, claimed to have Dang's vote, and was quick to make her voting decisions known. I think Larry and I both made a conscious effort to keep an eye on her in case she ever turned on us as well as remain UTR so that she would always be the biggest target in our group. I suppose I won't speak for Larry, but I definitely did this. It is a common strategy in Survivor to have a bit of a security blanket or shield, especially when you are up against another group like the majority group we merged with later.

Aside from this main alliance of 4, I also had good relationships along the way with Reso, Diana, and Dang. The proof of this is represented in the idols that were played on me in the post-merge portion of the game. This is what I would like to talk about next.

For some reason, Iggy would like you to believe that the idols played on me were 100% sheer luck. How can this be when they were played by other people with the intentional purpose of showing me support? If you ask the people that played them on me, I'm sure they would tell you they thought I was a likeable guy and teammate and they wanted to give me support. This is the very definition of social game on my part. If people that I had a hand in voting out still wanted me to do well, then I must be doing something right. And if they didn't want to play idols on anyone but me (even playing 2 at once!), which seemed to be the case, then that is the opposite of luck my friends, that is the rewards from my work in the game. I guarantee that if any other finalist had idols played on them, he/she would be proud of that accomplishment and using that as evidence of their strong social game. So don't be fooled by this claim that I am a lucky fool who didn't know what I was doing. I always know what I am doing. Sure, it was lucky that Jeremy voted incorrectly at F5 and that Jack went inactive at a bad time for his alliance, but those events helped more players than me, and if I was able to capitalize on them, that is good adaptation and strategic awareness.

My opinion for why Iggy is focusing so heavily on labeling me as lucky and trying to downplay my game is that she only had one element to her game and wants people to forget that. I will admit again that winning challenges is impressive, but sometimes all it really means is that you have a fast computer. Does that necessarily mean you deserve the most respect because you won the most challenges? Not in my view. Like Elsa said, and I agree, Iggy was never vulnerable for the entire merge game until F3 when I won immunity under pressure, when I needed it most, and voted her out. If she had been vulnerable one or two times before that, whose to say she wouldn't have been out earlier? So maybe luck is involved for you that there were many speed challenges for you to capitalize on. The other parts of your game show glaring weaknesses. It would have been impressive if you stuck with your original allies and made it to the end, but you flipped and flopped and were voted out and the won the redemption. I don't care what anyone says, it is more impressive to me that Elsa and I were never voted out and didn't have to win every challenge to make the end, we focused on the main idea behind survivor, the social element.

Iggy's social game was something to bring up too. It is easy to make moves when you are always immune, but how did you manage the jury? Well you angered your alliance by backstabbing them. Then you angered my alliance by using us for one vote and then saying literally "well I helped you guys get past Lisbeth and move up one spot, so you should be happy with that and not hold it against me when I vote you out next." Really? That is how you want people to remember you? I'm not sure if you said that to Charlie or Larry, but you sure said it to me. You know what else you said to me? "Louis, you would kill me in finals so I have to vote you out before Charlie." And "Louis, I never really say you as the follower on your tribe, I see you as the leader and the biggest threat." Are you going to claim now that those were lies? Because that certainly is a different picture that you are painting about me now. Why did you continually vote me instead of Charlie if I was the weaker of the two? I think you were the most afraid of me then, and you are the most afraid of me now, because you know how savvy I was in the game, but you are trying to lie now and say that I gave up! How insulting. I have never quit a game in my entire time on this board. Fact. Everything I do in games is calculated and logical. Fact. You can try to spin it however you want, but maybe you are a bit jealous of all my supporters showering me in idols. Maybe they will all continue to support me with their votes now, but maybe not. We will see. But you should try focusing on facts from now on instead of assumptions and lies.

There were challenges I didn't participate in. Fact. There were real life reasons for this. Fact. Even if there weren't real life reason, which was the absolute main reason, who cares? Sandra has won Survivor twice and never won a challenge because she doesn't need to. Now maybe I didn't know that idols would be played for me at points, but they were. And when I acted vulnerable it was certainly intentional and not giving up. This is another common Survivor tactic, and you will start to notice that I have a lot of cards in my play deck. You will see in my confessionals that I explained what I was doing at all times. And I already explained how it was a success because I got great info from all of you and was able to outlast the majority alliance. I never give up and I never back down. Playing Survivor requires you to interpret and react to each new scenario that arises, and I know I did that with great success. I also believe Elsa did that very well and will be rewarded with support from the people that appreciate her loyalty and social game.

Of course I can't tell the jury what to do, but I can express how I feel. I hope that Elsa or I wins the game because I believe getting voted out is a huge deal no matter what twists there are. Me getting idols played on me is absolutely not the same thing as you returning, because the idols were the result of social game and your redemption path was the result of a LACK of social game and a sloppy strategic one.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen. Those are the facts of the case.As you deliberate, please consider all the evidence which has been presented to you and come back with a vote that makes you feel happy and proud. No matter what happens, I have had a blast playing this game with you all and hope we can talk more about if after identity reveals. Peace and love to all my Labyrinth brothers and sisters.

I'm Louis Litt, and that's it for me.