I should have used the space bar because F6 was the answer to how far Tom would have gone if he hadn't made the right alliances. That was the reason he won. His IC wins at F9 and F8 meant absolutely nothing because he had Gregg convinced to stick to the alliance. Tom wasn't in danger at that point.BTW, if you ever want to convince people that Tom is the best winner ever, you'd be better served to drop the argument that winning immunity was the primary reason he won. Most fans see that as a proof that he wasn' a good winner, that he needed those wins instead of strategizing. As you can see, I am in the camp that he did use strategy. Not as much as a few others but enough to win his season.
For Thailand, I was talking about the decision to boot Ted at F5, opening the door to Brian's run. Helen and Ted were both convinced they'd be in the F2 with Brian so they never thought of working together to get rid of Brian's perfect goat. Had they realize the depth of Brian's alliances they would have booted Clay to remove that possibility. Without Clay in the F2, Brian probably doesn't win. Helen, for sure, beats him.
As for the Manono dynamics, they were much more complex than what we saw. For one, Troyzan, Bill and Jonas had an alliance very early on so Troyzan wasn't rejected by all the young dudes. The only solid link in the "rooster" alliance was between Mike and Matt. A proof that the "Frat Pack" was more an editors' fabrication to explain Matt's demise than a real alliance is found in Mike's vote for Bill at their 1st TC.