For those that didn't want to watch the video, here is a rough transcript of my opening statement. I did write my opening statement first, but I decided to be more spontaneous and creative and hence the video was created.

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Hey guys! Wow, what a journey. First of all, I would like to thank the hosts for an awesome game! Thanks to Ben for taking me to the Final 2 and thank you to the jury for a very challenging game. This ride has been crazy and never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd make it here in the Final 2 after screwing up that challenge with Annette at the Final 11. Just like Ben, this game was a pleasant distraction from the insanity, in my case, my hospital clerkship. I've been playing these ORGs on and off for 12 years now since I was a sophomore in high school. Now that I'm actually "growing up" and trying to become professionally relevant in this world, ORGs have been my escape and there is no other way I would've liked to spend my free time than playing the game we all love and the most difficult and fascinating game in the world, Survivor. Before I talk about my game, I would want to apologize if I didn't connect to you as much as I wanted to on a personal level. As much as I would want to converse with you and get to know each and every one of you as a person as much as I can, it was often difficult to squeeze some time on my phone to check on AIM at the hospital or in between rounds. Nevertheless, I met some amazing people who turned out to be great friends in this game and even somehow patched up seemingly irreparable relationships with Gabe and Josh. I understand the game very well and what it takes to win the game of Survivor. I'm not discounting Ben's slithering path to get to the end as that is very impressive, but jury, I invite you to at least consider my journey on how I got to the end.

I think a big part of my game was my loyalty to my allies. I understand that it may not have been the most flashy of games, but that's how the cards fell. I made sure that these four people that I invested my trust in (Sagar, Josh, Ben and Tina) would not turn their backs on me. Part of it admittedly was strategy to keep numbers on my side, but I throughly enjoyed getting to know these individuals. Sagar and I had a strong bond at Flop City aka Lannister. Josh approached me for a Final 2 deal, then Tina, Josh and I then formed an alliance over at Regina, and Ben and I bonded over Thailand bliss and he had pretty much told me he wants to take me to the Final 2 post-merge. To all of this, I obliged. At some point in the game, I knew that I likely won't be working with Grant, Gabe and Brian as they were on the complete other side, so my best move was to cultivate these relationships with all the people I had on my side and made sure that I was their #1. More importantly, when shit went down post-merge, I gave each of them my 100% trust and was open to them about every aspect of my game. Josh and Sagar knew that I was working closely with Ben at the Final 8. I made Ben feel absolutely secure about where I stood with him and never showed any signs of distrust. He also knew I was with Josh and Sagar. I knew Ben was not going to flip on me at any point because he sacrificed his alliance with Luke to save me. That's when I knew he was for real. And when Ben flipped on Sagar, I could have easily campaigned to get him out, but instead I went back to him and showed him even more trust so that when he does flip the next time, he won't flip on me. I was the underdog the entire game. I was a meatshield and I was targetted many times by the other side of the house, but I was also an invaluable ally to the people I trusted and they all fought to keep me in the game especially in the Final 11 and in the Final 8.

There was a clear dichotomy in the way the Final 11 played this game. Although the obvious dichotomy was the two big alliances with Benny dancing in the middle, but I think more importantly, what allowed this to happen was the way certain players wanted to play the game. On one hand, we have Annette, Phil, Tina, Sagar, Brian, Gabe and myself, the ones who decided to stay true to their side of the house and never wavered. On the other side, we have the players who decided to shake things up a little bit or a lot of bit. It's interesting because the stark dichotomy of the houses stemmed from the loyalty of the former 7 while the latter 4 decided to change things up a little bit, in which some of them consequently got caught in the crossfire. It is a game, but as much as "big moves" are appreciated, showing your loyalty is very underrated and doesn't come easy in a crazy game like this. I was actually talking to Gabe and Brian at some point individually, and we agreed that it just didn't make sense for any of us to vote together because we're on polar opposites of the game and it would do nothing but alienate our allies. Sure, I could've made moves just for the heck of it, but my best bet was to stick with my people and it got me to the end of this game when I was supposed to go home in place of Annette.

Although I was a big target immediately when the merge hit, I made subtle but effective moves to diffuse the target off me and deflect it over to my opponent at that vote. What I did was I openly exposed people's games to the rest of the players to take the heat off me. It was nothing personal, but I had no choice. During the Annette vote, I knew Ben and Luke were on the fence. So with ammunition from Josh, I showed Ben and Luke snippets of conversation between Josh and Annette in which Annette revealed to Josh that Ben and Luke were targets. Much to Josh's chagrin I had exposed his game to the other side, but this benefited my game because it got Ben and Luke to flip and form The Yates Alliance. At the Final 8, when there was an inevitable tie between Luke and I, I took whatever snippets I had from Ben and Luke's altercation and showed it to Gabe, effectively placing a target on Luke. I called Luke out for "having alliances with everyone". Luke, I know that we got into quite a heated exchange over that one, but rest assured that it was purely strategy. I needed to expose your game to take the attention away from me and entice people to flip. I have nothing against you as a person and I really think you're a good guy, but I did what I had to do to ensure my survival. You were the biggest threat at that time and you would have won this game hands down. Moving forward, I had this little thing going on with Brian in which we tried to deflect votes away from each other as much as we can. In the Final 6, when Grant had turned on Brian right after the immunity challenge, I was the one who suggested to Benny to blindside Grant instead. Brian was better for my game than Grant because Grant was closer to Josh and Ben whereas I knew Brian had no ties with Josh and if the time came, having Brian in the game would benefit my game more than Josh's or Ben's.

At the end of the day, it was an uphill battle and a half to get to where I'm at right now. I probably had the hardest road to get to the end. I'm not saying that I did it alone because my allies definitely had a lot to do with me staying nor did I make extravagant moves. But I definitely came to play and did what I had to do to get to the end. I never gave up and stuck to my word. I won challenges when I had to and fought hard to get where I'm at. I may not be the most liked person, but I hope you can appreciate the way I played the game because being the underdog from the beginning of the merge, I had to do something right to make it to the end.

Thank you and I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys and answering all your questions.

Stan