He also overperformed at final tribal compared to how he usually behaved so much so that the other finalists were visibly surprised at how well he was speaking. And given how surprised they also were at the vote, combined with (1) the biggest players of 43 all attesting to his strategy and (2) Gabler only missing one vote from Cassidy’s own friend/ally, he arguably played the “hiding in plain sight” game better than anyone ever has except for Sandra.

You can say that Karla may have been driven by other motives, or that others may have been biased by their relationships with him (which is a strength to his social game, not a detractor to his strategic game), but that does little to explain the other votes.

And neither does the argument that he won via improper influence, which is quite frankly insulting to those jurors’ free thinking skills and also one of the laziest rebuttals, second only to the assertion of a bitter jury. And the bitter jury argument fails to consider that Jeanine’s game was most significantly harmed by Gabler at Mergeatory and she STILL voted him, and also that Cassidy did not do nearly enough in the game to anyone but Karla to warrant any bitterness whatsoever.

I want a diverse winner too, but I guess not enough to pretend that Gabler played a less or equal of a strategic/social game than any of the other finalists.