How To Win The Traitors: A Data-Driven Cheat Code

Forget "gut feelings." If you want the prize pot, you need to navigate the demographic math.

People who study Game Theory have concluded that the perfect game for Faithfuls would be to all vote for the same player, chosen at random. Since they’re pretty much fully in the dark, a random vote is as likely to catch a Traitor than a thoughtful one.

This voting pattern would then make the misaligned incentives of Traitors and Faithful visible when a Traitor started deviating from the rule. But it would make terrible TV.

From a Psychology point of view, I find it endlessly interesting.

Players have to vote each other out trying to find the Traitors every night. They keep discussing “evidence”, but there’s barely any. Faithfuls have no information to go off and they need to make a high stakes decision under pressure.

This sets out primal fear responses and inhibits our rational thinking, which makes us more likely to reach for cognitive shortcuts and pre-existing biases. In an attempt to regain a sense of control and safety, we rationalise these biases and look for familiarity.

Of course, one of the first ways in which we classify someone is gender and ethnicity.

I love The Traitors. It’s excellent reality TV and an absolute delight for fans of game theory or psychology. It tickles all the right bits of my brain!

So after watching season 4, I wondered if the Faithful were losing these games to their own biases. And so I went on my data journey. Here’s how you win The Traitors based on data.

TL;DR: The cheat code

This is how you play to win based on your demographic.

• Women

  • Primary risk: Murdered for being "too smart".

  • Survival strategy: Mask your competence and play dumb.

• Men

  • Primary risk: Banished for being a "threat".

  • Survival strategy: Make friends and assimilate with the group.

• BIPOC players

  • Primary risk: Early banishment.

  • Survival strategy: Prioritize total invisibility in the first 5 episodes.

• Traitors

  • Primary risk: Presenting a unique voting pattern.

  • Survival strategy: Aim for 33% accuracy (1 in 3).

Phase 1: Prepare for the role

Consider your odds of being chosen as a Traitor to prepare your game early. 

If you are a woman of color, you are twice as likely to be chosen as a Traitor as your white peers, and three times as likely to be a traitor as a man of colour.

The first episode is the only one where players of colour have any odds of being traitors. All Traitor recruits after have been white, and men are twice as likely than women to be offered a job in the turret.

The Strategy

If you are a woman of colour, you are the most likely "original" Traitor. Make sure you make friends early and gain other player’s trust to avoid banishment.

After an original Traitor has been caught (which usually happens around episode 3), Faithfuls are more likely to catch a Traitor by voting for a white man at the round table, hoping to catch one of the recruits.  

Phase 2: Be invisible for a bit

The initial banishments are the ones where the group has the least information and are most driven by internal biases. 

Throughout the game, players have equal chances of banishment regardless of their background, except for episodes 4 and 5. At the end of episode 5, 32% of players of colour have left the game, as opposed to 20% of white players.

On average, a White player lasts 7.85 episodes, while a  PoC player averages only 6.88 episodes.

The Strategy

During the first 5 episodes, focus on being invisible, especially if you’re not white. After episode 5, your ethnic background doesn’t change your likelihood of banishment. 

Phase 3: Adjust based on your gender

Once you survive the start, your cause of "death" changes based on your gender. In The Traitors, men and women leave through different doors.

75% of men leave the castle by banishment. They are more likely to be perceived as a threat by the group of Faithful. 

Women are twice as likely to be murdered by the Traitors as men. Mostly through being perceived as “too smart” by the Traitors, who fear they will be uncovered. 

The strategy

Men must focus on social assimilation to avoid the Round Table's gaze. Don’t be too much of a leader, don’t be too much of a threat. Women need to play dumb to stay off the Traitors' hit list.

Phase 4: Be a good Faithful, just not a great one

Traitors fear women and they are not wrong. White women Faithful are the best hunters with a 38.37% accuracy rate.

Non-White women have the lowest accuracy at 21.57%. Overall, White Faithfuls are 35.99% accurate, while Non-White Faithfuls sit at 26.55%.

So if you’re going to be swept up in the group-think at the round table, as a Faithful, you want to follow the white women.

But does voting accuracy help you spot a Traitor? Absolutely not. Faithfuls and traitors have nearly identical accuracy voting rates, at 33.49% and 33.33% respectively.

The strategy

To survive as a Traitor, you have to perform confusion. Aim for the Faithful average of voting for a Traitor 1 out of every 3 times.

If you catch a Traitor every third round, you look useful but not like a threat. If you are high-accuracy, mask your competence. Never be the first to name a Traitor; let someone with lower accuracy take the credit.

Phase 5: Pace yourself

These games have a predictable rhythm to them that you can use to your advantage.

• The Safe Zone: Round Table 1, 3, and 8 have zero successful Traitor banishments. If you are a Traitor, these are "free pass" rounds. As a Faithful, this is your time to stay invisible. 

• The Kill Zone: The game gets dangerous for Traitors in round tables 9 and 11, where Faithfuls have a 75% record of catching a traitor. If you are a Traitor, pace your game to be off everyone’s board in these round tables. As a Faithful, save your social capital for these rounds. 

There is also a “meta” rhythm to these games. A learning curve for both traitors and Faithful. Season 1 faithfuls had a dismal 16.13% accuracy. By Season 3, they hit a "Golden Age" of 53.33% (maybe thanks to Alexander, the cutest player of all time).

There could be a number of reasons for this, but my theory is that once Faithfuls learn to catch Traitors, Traitors learn to hide better. After a low Faithful accuracy season, you should apply to play if you fit the Faithful demographic. If you’re in the Traitor demographic, you should apply to play after a high accuracy season. 

Methodology

Well, hello, you nerd! Welcome to the methodology section.

For this article I used The Traitors Wiki as my main source. I focused on player outcomes and voting patterns by faction, gender and ethnic background. If you want to run your own numbers, feel free to borrow my dataset. 

I pulled up the list of participants for each season of The Traitors UK and extracted their name, faction (Faithful, Traitor or Recruited Traitor) and outcome (Banished, Murdered, Winner, Eliminated).

I then used AI to pull up the genders and ethnic backgrounds of participants. This brought on a lot of hallucination. I have combed through manually. Unfortunately, I think there might still be errors in the data. 

For the voting accuracy I used Gemini to structure the voting history of each player at the round table and if they voted for a Faithful or Traitor. This also came with tons of errors and required a lot of manual work. I was copy-pasting a very untidy table and, in hindsight, I think Gemini would have done a much better job with a screenshot.

When calculating average voting accuracy by season or demographics, I focused only on Faithful players, since they are the group incentivised to be accurate.