How Chris Won 'Survivor'

So it's over. Chris Daugherty will cash his check and walk into the sunset a winner. He was one of the unlikeliest winners in the show's history, but also one of the most deserving.

How did he do it? Here's a step-by-step look at the various decisions he made and bounces he received.

The separation of tribes by gender greatly benefited him.

During interviews Sunday night, Chris explained that he originally intended to adopt a strategy similar to that of Colby's, from season two. His plan before the game began was to find a middle-aged woman and develop a trust with her that would take both of them far in the game. Obviously, that couldn't happen after he found himself in a tribe of nine males.

However, the organization of tribes actually played to Chris' strengths. Developing a trust with a member of the opposite sex takes a lot longer than building camaraderie with someone of the same sex. This instant-camaraderie allowed him to survive the first tribal council, despite his awful first immunity challenge performance. It took only three days to bond with Rory, Travis, Lea and Chad. Developing a similar alliance with Scout and Twila took nearly 30 days.

Plus, this particular breakdown of tribes also effectively neutralized the potential strengths of younger players like Brook and John K. They couldn't flirt or impress someone physically to make the case to survive. This made it a decidedly mental game in the early going, which tends to benefit players with significant life experience and depth of character like Chris.

For whatever reason, Lopevi was a very old tribe, with only two players under 20. A tribe dominated by younger people might have been more prone to rash decisions, like getting rid of the guy who screwed up the first challenge. Instead, the older players wisely looked at the big picture to see who was more reliable down the line, and there's nothing more reliable than lasting until day 39.

He handled the first immunity loss like a true champion and ended up becoming one.

Chris clearly lost the first immunity challenge for his team. He simply couldn't maintain his balance on the beams and cost his team an early lead.

Yet, Chris didn't panic, make excuses or accept his fate. Those three things are a rarity among early immunity scapegoats. He succeeded beyond all expectations when it came to keeping a level head.

Chris knew he was in trouble. However, he never even considered the possibility that he would be going home. He simply identified an alternative target and pursued him with unwavering confidence. If he had fallen all over himself to apologize, Lea or the other older males might have seen Chris as weak and moved in for the kill. Instead, they respected him for the way he bounced back.

He helped maintain a tight, somewhat secretive alliance that never broke.
Despite their extended run of dominance late in the game, the women of Yasur were an absolute mess early on.

Eliza betrayed her initial alliance to vote out Dolly. Then Lisa betrayed her alliance to vote out Mia. This back and forth caused needless acrimony between tribe-mates and foreshadowed the ultimate breakdown of the six member female alliance. Yasur also made the mistake of letting John K. trick them into revealing the different factions when he visited their tribe briefly and forced them into separating into voting blocs.

Lopevi, on the other hand, was a very stable entity that never made a move that wasn't carefully debated and considered among its members. Chris played a large role in that. On several occasions, Lea was tempted to go after Rory instead of one of the younger members. But time and time again, Chris would reign Sarge in and maintain group harmony. Prematurely ending an alliance almost never works out well for those in power. Just ask Leann.

The flab five never even confirmed their existence until the game was well underway. Honestly is highly overrated, especially in 'Survivor.' By not disclosing its alliance to the younger men, Lopevi's power five never gave players like Brook time to adapt and find a new strategy.

Scout picked wildly uneven teams during the tribe mixups.

In this season's fifth episode, Scout was given an incredible amount of power over how the rest of the game would be played.

She was responsible for the creation of two new tribes with full gender integration. She elected to put Travis, Rory, Eliza, Ami and Leann on one team and John K., Chad, Chris, Julie and Twila on the other. Lea then had the power to pick which team he would join and lead.

Scout's decision-making process made Sarge's call an easy one. He quickly elected to join John K., Chad, Chris, Julie and Twila. This served to sever all ties with Rory and Travis and essentially leave them for dead.

Chris played no role in any of this, but would have seen his chances for victory greatly diminished if he ended up where Travis and Rory did. Sometimes, it comes down to luck in this game and this was Chris' first lucky bounce.

He was able to alter his strategy and gameplay quickly dependent on the situation.

After playing a relatively intelligent game for the first six episodes, the guys opened the door for Yasur domination by booting John K instead of Julie, which caused a gender gap that altered the game significantly.

Chris was now stuck in a failed alliance. His position was demoralizing, but he had experienced this type of blow to his self-concept earlier in the show due to his immunity challenge performance in the first episode. He survived that situation by not dwelling on it too long and persevered because of his resolve and interpersonal skills.

This previous experience gave him valuable perspective that Rory, Lea and Chad didn't have and led to one of this edition's most famous quotes.

During a tribal council, Chris surprisingly voted for Sarge and spoke to the camera as if it were his fallen leader. "This is for you. Not against you."

This is why Chris succeeded in this game where so many others in similar situations failed. Emotions and loyalty meant nothing to him after Julie's betrayal occurred. It became about immediate personal survival.

Some might mistake Chris' statement for blatant rationalization to justify his betrayal, but it wasn't. One more vote for Eliza or Julie wouldn't have saved Sarge, anyway. By voting for Sarge, Chris indicated to the women that he was willing to go along with their plan and accept his fate, which he had no real intention of doing.

This was exactly the right mindset. Chris realized the situation and didn't resort to endless whining and guilt-trips, nor did he continue to show loyalty to an alliance that didn't exist anymore. This is why he outlasted Chad, who never got over what Julie did. You could tell that Ami and the other women respected him for it. This respect was likely one of the reasons that Leann recklessly showed mercy and cost herself the game by abandoning a bulletproof plan.

Chris managed to outlast Rory, Lea and Chad based on a sheer willingness to survive just a little bit longer than they did. When you are in such a precarious situation, your singular goal should be to last one more day because that might be the day that things totally shift in your favor.

He caused the day that things totally shifted in his favor.

Leann's decision to target Eliza instead of Chris and thus cause the dominos to fall in his favor might seem, to the casual observer, like the irrational, spontaneous call of a woman with her guard down. And make no mistake, it was.

However, Chris helped create the environment that let Leann feel comfortable to make that decision.

First, Chris refused to be identified as an immunity threat. He let Sarge and Chad bare that unwanted stigma until they were both gone.

Second, Chris never targeted Leann or Leann's friends, once he realized the situation that he was in. Instead, he maneuvered against Eliza as part of his survive-three-more-days strategy. Since he wasn't actively going after her, Leann felt no real urgency to get rid of him. That lack of urgency gave her time to reconsider her feelings, much to his benefit.

Third, Chris shut up and didn't give them any extra ammunition to use to boot him off with. The more Chad kept complaining about Julie, the more eager the women became to get him out of camp. Chris wouldn't allow them any additional justification what it came to his ouster. If he was going to go, the women were going to have to admit to themselves that his sex was the only reason, and no one wants to be that obvious or shallow when it comes to voting.

Fourth, Chris, in a very passive way, made the argument that he deserved to remain longer than Eliza because he had played the game better. He never pushed too hard. If he had been too aggressive, he would have alienated himself from them and none of his tactics would have gained traction.

Finally, Chris' fiancée played a role in creating the environment that led to his survival. Her appearance in the game served to humanize Chris to the other women and remind them that he was playing for someone other than himself. Plus, none of them wanted to have that woman go through life thinking she cost her husband a million dollars by not helping him win a challenge.

It was a combination of these things that led to Leann targeting Eliza over Chris, which caused a massive chain reaction.

He wasn't willing to settle for sixth place.

Chris' ploy to outlast Eliza worked perfectly. However, he wasn't happy with surviving just three more days. He wanted to win the game, so he had to be more aggressive, even at the risk of Leann learning of his new tactics and revoking his second chance.

Despite being betrayed and disrespected, Chris never treated Julie poorly. She repaid this by keeping him informed of things going around camp, including the decision to target Eliza over him.

Gaining access to this information was just the first step. The second was figuring out how to use it. With seven players left in the game, he needed three others people to join him before making any type of long-term play. Twila and Scout essentially volunteered to sign up with him, provided that he could obtain Eliza's support.

It was his credibility and willingness to work as an intermediary that allowed Chris' pitch to succeed.

He finished third in a reward challenge, preventing Julie and Ami from getting time alone with Eliza.

Despite some great strategy moves, Eliza was also pretty gullible and easy to convince. I'll never forget when Ami said something, left the table and Eliza repeated the exact same thing Ami said without a hint of skepticism.

So when it came time for a reward challenge that rewarded the top three finishers with a trip away from camp, it became critical to stop Ami, Julie and Eliza from having significant alone time with each other. Chris did just that by barely beating Julie for third place.

If Julie had managed to finish third, this might have been a completely different game. A barrage of pressure and persuasion by Ami and Julie without any interference from the other alliance could have been very difficult for Eliza to ignore.

His head won over his heart in two very difficult situations.

It wasn't easy to vote out Julie and Eliza, but Chris's loyalty had to be to himself. One single deviation from the plan could have opened a whole new can of worms, the consequences of which would be highly unpredictable.

Plus, he probably knew that could win back the support of Julie and Eliza because of their incredible dislike of Twila.

He selected a final two partner with an incredible amount of baggage and then proceeded to outperform her in answering questions.

Chris had nothing to do with it, but Twila swearing on her son's life was an unnecessary gambit that went too far.

Even if people forgave her for it, Twila had to spend so much of the jury's time apologizing for the situation that she didn't leave herself any real time to make the case on why she deserved the million dollars.

Meanwhile, Chris made apologies that at the very least looked sincere. He also effectively neutralized the one last attempt at sisterhood by doing a good job of articulating how he overcame such tremendous odds.

Twila, on the other hand, was, well, Twila -- loud, outspoken, and unwilling to tell people what they wanted to hear. She didn't stand a chance against Chris, whose remarkable discipline overcame a horrendous episode one immunity challenge performance and a six-to-one women to men advantage.

In conclusion, Chris won because of the beneficial makeup of his tribes, his early alliance building, his ability to adapt and stay in the game until he caught a break upon which to capitalize, and the brash nature of his opponents.