How big of an advantage is first seed

Had a discussion among friends (new and old) about how big difference there is in comming in third, second and first seed respectively compared to being fourth or fifth seed into the finals.

Is there some computer wizard out there with access to the Archon history who could crunch numbers looking at how big percentage of the tournament winners that are first, second et al seed when getting into the finals?

It would be a real intresting number to have imo and I at least would be extremely grateful if someone could present such a breakdown.

Thanks.

If someone can give me a date as to when we changed the finals to "everyone that doesn't win comes in 2nd place" then I probably have dozens of tournaments that I can give you data for.

KevinM wrote:

If someone can give me a date as to when we changed the finals to "everyone that doesn't win comes in 2nd place" then I probably have dozens of tournaments that I can give you data for.

The tournament rules where changed to that effect for the 2008 season (i.e from Jan 1st, 2008).
Changes from 2007 to 2008 VEKN tournament rules included:

• 3.7.5 — All non-winning finalists tie for 2nd place.
• 4.1 — Added three cards to the banned list: “Edge Explosion“, “Memories of Mortality“, and “Protect Thine Own“.
• 161 — Splitting prizes is prohibited.
• Ratings: Each tied-for-second finalist receives the same number of Ratings Points: 30. (The winner still receives 90).

Of course correlation does not imply causality. The first seed already fared better during the rounds, which should be correlated with a better deck or player. Even if the system is not biased, one should still observe that the first seed wins the tournament more often.

Ok, so taking into account all my tournaments from 2008-Present, there were 32 total tournaments, of which 12 (37.5%) were won by the top seed.

Interestingly, of these 12, 6 were won by the same player. It must be that he is pretty good!

John Bell?