[Imladris]

Wow, interesting posts. I think it would be a good idea to analize this.

Okay,there are several factors determining Gollum/Smeagol's descisions:

1. The Ring
2. Frodo
3. Sam
4. Sauron and his servants.
5. Memory

The Rings influences all of his evil qualities, such as his slinking and stinking as it were.

Frodo represents the love and understanding that he craved.

Sam was like a weight around Smeagol's neck: He could never change. He will always be evil. He will always hurt Master. He is Sauron's own.

Gollum feared Sauron with a great fear.

Then there was the memory of his former life when he wasn't so wickedly awful.

So the drawing of the Ring brought out all of Gollum's bad side, which Sam did understand, so he was right to distrust him (which did protect Frodo because Frodo wasn't watching Gollum). Frodo, who understood Gollum's predicament, loved him, in a sense. He accepted Gollum for who and what he was and tried to bring him back. Both hobbits knew that Smeagol had been tortured by Sauron, and thus knew that Gollum feared the Dark Lord and thus they knew that he would not bring the Ring to Him for two reasons: 1. Gollum would not willingly return to Sauron. 2. Gollum would not so easily give up the possession which he craved (though he didn't understand that if he took the Ring from Frodo it would only be a matter of time before Sauron regained it). In The Hobbit , it says that Gollum still retained a mind that was not dominated by the Ring and that Bilbo had, in a sense, re-awakened that small portion of his mind. Since the Ring had left after that, don't you think that that small portion would have grown slowly with time? Of course, it didn't help matters that Gollum was drawn to Mordor, so that was many steps backward. And then he still had the fear of Sauron and the effect of the Ring still on him when he joined Frodo and Sam. But then Frodo treated him with kindness and respect (which is a form of love), while Sam hated him with an unreasonable hatred. Sam was like a chisel slowly chipping away at that portion of the mind that was growing under Frodo's love.
Sauron was far away and didn't have that much of a hateful influence of Gollum, I believe. The memories of his former life helped Smeagol rather than tear him down, I think. The Ring's effect was not as strong as Frodo because love is stronger than hate. But Sam, with whom Gollum was in constant contact, was too much. The jibe that he flung at Smeagol on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, the place before Mordor where Sauron was strong and the Ring powerful, was the turning point...the shift of the balance between the battle between the good and the evil within Smeagol.

Also, Smeagol/Gollum was like a child. He was immature, incapable of thinking things through. He was easily swayed by emotions.

In the end then if it had not been for the added weight of Sam's hate, Gollum would have betrayed them by taking the Ring from Frodo, but he also would have shown his loyalty to Frodo by casting himself into Mount Doom thereby destroying the Ring and himself as well. Thus he would satisfy both sides.