King Morgoth, could you post your x-stat formula here again?

Wow my prediction for that Cloud match was just terrible.

I think people tend to overestimate the security of the leaders. Just look at creativename in sc2k5 (10 point lead at this point in the contest) or Bananaquest in spc2k4 (17 point lead with only 9 matches to go). Another way to look at it is if they gained the leads they have over 35 days, another 28 is plenty of time to lose them.

This is quite true, and usually the case. Less so here than in previous contests, due to lower volatility as you mentioned (mostly due to the lack of a penalty - in close matches that adds a huge luck factor, and the later you go in a normal 2-character contest the closer matches get. I'm not sure if the latter aspect will tend to be the case here but it might).

n00b's lead is very impressive - it almost matches the difference between 2nd and 16th! However I think anyone in the #2-#14 range is very much in contention, and the group of #15+ also have at least a slim chance. The odds of someone catching fire the rest of the way are pretty high. If this was a previous contest, I'd actually say the odds of that 8 point lead being lost are actually quite a bit higher than 50%, though in this format n00b's chances to win might be close to or just above 50%. Every other individual's are probably under 10%.

I think the team contest tends to have less shakeups, though our 'effective' lead for comparison purposes is about 5 points, less than n00b's. Clearly, we are far from locks. But due to the teams tending to have less shakeups, I'd consider it a bigger collapse if we didn't win than if n00b didn't :) n00b could do very well and yet get displaced by someone who just does great, whereas for teams both members of a team will probably need to do great if Ngamer and me can keep doing decent.
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