Michael S

Michael S is a contestant from.

A fierce strategic player. Michael had complete control of his Bitoku tribe from the start of the game, up until merge, however a mistake at Final 9 cost him trust which meant at Final 7, he was blindsided due to being viewed as the biggest threat left in the game. This amazing gameplay, earned him the award of Player of the Season.

Nonary Game
Joining the Bitoku tribe on Day 1 Michael quickly made social connections among the tribe relying on relationships to help him make it in the game. Michael and Jason immediately made a strong connection based on living in New York and both being teachers. Then adding in Justin, Calum and John to make a strong core for the tribe. Michael also set up a chat to work with Seb and Kynzee to keep a pulse on the whole tribe. These strong relationships would help keep Michael in the game and give him a working knowledge of how Bitoku was, which helped him when Seb tried to secretly form a plan to blindside Michael, which was quickly exposed due to Michaels strong connections with Jason, this resulted in Seb’s elimination. Bitoku went on a long losing streak in challenges during the prexmerge, winning only one challenge throughout that phase of the game.

In the tribe swap Michael was lucky enough to be sorted back on to Bitoku staying with Jason, John and Calum along with Mark, Wes and Tyler from the original Jirenma tribe which once again gave him the majority, but still being able to have relationships with Tyler from Jirenma which continued to show his dominance on Bitoku. After a lot of struggling and figuring out, Michael and Jason finally were able to complete the Nonary Bracelet twist to obtained the Bitoku Idol which was given to Jason. The new Bitoku tribe however still continued it’s losing streak. Michael continued working with the original Bitoku members to stay Bitoku Strong, they sent the original Jirenma members, Wesley, Mark & Tyler home, which helped them make it to the merge.

Feeling like the tribe was cursed, Michael was working hard to keep Bitoku together and try and get them to the end. At every turn Michael working closely with Jason helped direct the tribe to keep people together. During the whole game Michael was only able to win one individual immunity challenge during the pre-merge, so he relied heavily on social skills to ensure one more round. At the merge Michael hoped that Justin would work with his original Bitoku members. At the first merge vote Justin shared that OG Jirenma would be voting for Michael. With this the tribe settled on Marvyn for the vote and Jason agreed to use the Idol on Michael to save him and negated 6 votes off of him, sending Marvyn home instead.

At the next vote Michael worked with Brandon and Carson along with Jason and Calum to vote out Zac. For this vote Justin and John were left out of the loop, which would come back to haunt in later the game. By taking out Zac the original Jirenma was down to 3 and after voting off Brandan at Final 8, it looked like Bitoku would have a run at a strong Final 5. However, at Final 7 Justin and John were upset about being left out the Zac vote and feeling like they were at the bottom of Bitoku strong, they decided to worked with the last remaining Jirenma to take out Michael for 7th place, voting him out and sending him to the jury. At Final Tribal Council, Michael voted for JJ to win the game, feeling like his underdog story, plus his smart strategic plays, earned him the title.

Trivia

 * Michael is the oldest player to win Player of the Season