Nope, you're forgetting stuff. Forming a secret alliance with 3 other people at the beginning of the game is a very smart move. Season 3's Danielle and Jason were the best players ever, consistently brilliant for 10 weeks, but undone only by bad luck at the last possible moment. Nick, Kail, Mike, and Zach were boringly levelheaded enough to keep an alliance secret (even if the Mike-Kail connection was outed early), and wreak havoc into the final four. It was a very good strategy, but it was undone by the biggest betrayal in BB history: Nick betrayed his alliance because he got a whiff of Daniel and because he decided the other three weren't cool enough for him. Nick had no good reason to do that game-wise, just personal prejudice, and he went down for stabbing his three compadres in the back just to keep in good with Daniel, who would never approve of such uncool people.
Left with the ruins of the Nick betrayal, Zach was ostracized like no one we've ever seen on BB, and made an object of everyone's loathing. He went on to play the hand dealt him as well as possible, playing the passive-vulnerable game into the final five. Passive-aggressive is just as viable a strategy as the aggressive Dick/Eric style. I mean, look at Jameka, who rolled pretty easily into the final four, playing deftly off the aggressive players. Of course, I think they're both idiots because Zach thinks he's the power player who lied in wait and "made his move" and Jameka thinks by self-sacrificing God favored her, but whatever. Dick and Dani are just as deluded to think their power game is somehow superior, morally or whatever. They also had luck majorly break their way since winning competitions can't be part of a strategy, but a chance element you have to strategize around. Passive game players have won in the past because they got far enough to where getting the luck break (winning the right competition) made them #1 instead of #3: Will season 2 and Lisa season 3. Passive game failures who went out #5 because luck didn't break their way at the right moment: Bunky and Chicken George.
It's funny how Will is so popular and considered brilliant when his gameplay in season 2 is so similar to Zach's: 1 out of a 4-person strong early alliance undone by public outing, gets universally targeted as dickheads who think themselves genetically superior to everyone else, and quickly destroyed. Completely deballed, Will sucked up to HOH's and went from dominator to houseboy so there was no reason to get rid of him. At the final three, Hardy f***ed up, Will outlasted Nicole, who couldn't win because houseboy Will had never been in a position to hurt anyone on the jury as power player Nicole had. When Will won, they called him puppetmaster, but he won by playing puppet once the puppetmaster thing went belly up in like week 3. If Zach lucks out and gets to make a speech to the jury, I think he can win by saying how he played the hand all the other haters dealt him after his early mistake of trusting Nick. He can't call out the Judas Nick because Nick's too popular, but if Zach tries to claim he out-Dicked Dick, the jury will continue to see him as a total jackass and he won't change their minds, whether he's up against Dick or Dani.
