LAST EDITED ON 03-04-11 AT 05:51 PM (EST)

Russell is nearly sociopathic in his inability to empathize with people. He is very intuitive at guessing people's strategy, but he is clueless on their feelings. Rob is not like that. Even when he torched people in All Stars, he knew what he was doing. He had a very hard time handling the backlash at FTC, which is part of the reason why he lost and Amber won. Rob knew Andrea would resent him, and he tried to address that with her. Russell would not have bothered. It is beneath him in his own mind.

Russell undoubtably chooses alliance mates who are vulnerable. People are understandably most vulnerable right when the game starts because they haven't yet formed the alliances to protect themselves. As such, Russell always moves right away. He spots who hasn't already made an alliance and swoops in. He projects confidence, which is attractive to anyone lacking it. Woman are typically more vulnerable at the beginning of the game than men because men think they will be kept around to help win challenges.

Obviously, he also wants someone who isn't going to argue with him, preferably. I think those factors and Natalie's demure nature is what led him to start his alliance with her and Ashley in Samoa.

Danielle was an outsider on the Villians tribe and shares some of the same traits as Natalie, though she proved to be more fiery by the end. Parvati was not Russell's ideal alliance mate, but she was also a vulnerable outsider due to the fact that everyone else was targeting her.

As for Krista and Stephanie, we have the rare situation where the older players actually outnumber the younger ones. Obviously, Sarita and Julie are separated from them by age, and surprisingly, there really aren't any fawning young men for them to latch onto either. As such, they really were on the outs from the beginning and made an easy target for Russell. Ironically, I actually think Stephanie would have been a first boot for Russell, like Marisa was, if it wasn't for the fact that she knows who he is and is in awe of his game. Otherwise, she is not the kind of girl to just take orders.

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