Spoilers ahead for last night’s finale of Survivor 48.

For years now, Survivor fans have griped online about “Big Move–itis” — a term referring to players of the strategy game who make ground-shaking moves without thinking about questions like “Why would I do that?” or “Does this benefit my game?” or “Is this actually smart?” That haphazard way of playing is frustrating to watch, particularly when players who do nothing wrong get voted out. But it turns out the inverse style of play is just as frustrating, even if it’s better gameplay.

Season 48’s winner, Kyle Fraser, was crowned on May 21 after playing a near-flawless game of Survivor — and wow was it boring to watch. He and his secret-alliance member, Kamilla Karthigesu, spent most of the game biding their time, refusing to vote out challenge beast Joe Hunter or the advantage-laden Eva Erickson. “Why are you just sitting around?” Survivor viewers cried. “Joe is going to pummel both of you in the final vote.” But then a crazy thing happened: Kyle went to the end sitting next to both Joe and Eva, and he beat both of them. He didn’t do anything fancy, and he didn’t pull any big blindside against them — in fact, he, Joe, Eva, and Kamilla were all on the right side of every post-merge vote. Kyle didn’t make any moves against them because he correctly realized he didn’t need to. Good for him! But bad for us.

The secret to Kyle and Kamilla’s gameplay was refusing to be the center of attention. “I’ve kind of operated and played this game with little pushes,” Kyle said in the finale. “Everybody expects these big moves. But I think Survivor’s a game that’s won in the margins.” And he’s right. When he and Kamilla pulled off their two biggest moves of the season — booting David Kinne and Shauhin Davari — they did so with the approval and collaboration of both Joe and Eva, and the other players were not giving them credit (or blame). Instead, most people gave credit to Joe, the leader of the alliance. As viewers, we knew Kyle and Kamilla were lying to Joe about David and Shauhin, who had until then been loyal alliance members to Joe, making him believe he had to vote them out because they were turning on him and Eva. But the jury members and the players voted out didn’t know about the lies at all. Only Kyle and Kamilla, playing at the margins, did. The other players didn’t even know Kyle and Kamilla were working together!

Now, that spy-level deception sounds exciting, but it meant functionally that we watched Kyle and Kamilla refuse to make moves that could have blown up their spot, like getting out Joe and Eva. All their moves were incredibly covert, and they made the move to get out David (the most exciting episode of the season) only because he had a correct read that they were working together. Plus, all their moves had to center on kowtowing to Joe; whatever he wanted, they did. Their only play, every round, was to convince Joe that he wanted to do what they wanted to do. It got repetitive — boring, even — to watch.

But it turned out that was the correct way to play. Ultimately, Kyle knew he had fleeced Joe (and, by proxy, Eva) enough times that the jury couldn’t vote for him to win, including the big trick of not letting him know he had an alliance with Kamilla. And Kyle knew he could reveal how many times he had fleeced Joe at Final Tribal Council. When Kamilla was eliminated via fire-making at the Final Four, the story was all but told: At FTC, as a member of the jury, she advocated for Kyle like crazy, making sure everybody knew all he’d done. Joe and Eva, by comparison, looked like incompetent leaders rather than the Godfather-style players they thought they were. No move happened without their approval, which is very impressive, but Kyle and Kamilla won the game by making sure Joe and Eva’s approval was based on their information, which was real when they wanted it to be and fake when they didn’t.

So congratulations to Kyle on a deserved win. He and, by extension, Kamilla undeniably played the game well all season, even if it was a snooze to watch up until the very last moments of the finale. Let’s hope for the viewers’ sake that the next group of players gets out of the margins and into the scrum of the season.