An Odd Tournament Toughness Rating

[MWC]

I was curious about the 50%-in-the-first-hour phenomenon when I first noticed it, so I started tracking it in a fairly casual way but was astounded by the consistency (this was all non-rebuy Party MTTs).

My theory is that Expected time to 0.5*field remaining is determined almost entirely by level duration and buy-in (buy-in=rough surrogate for talent level), with level duration being far more important. (My notes suggested that the $6-11 tourneys were more likely to drop to 50% by 1 hour than the $55-109 tourneys, but not by much, and it never happens by the 1-hour mark in the $162-215 tourneys with longer levels.)

I actually think there's potential for relatively serious statistical scholarship here - before you laugh, remember that a couple guys from UNC-Chapel Hill analyzed a bunch of data from Finley Golf Course and published on the bias in the USGA handicap system.

Whoops, didn't mean to hijack the thread, but if anyone else wants to pursue this, I'd be interested in participating -- PM me and we'll see if we can get anywhere. The hard part would be convincing Party or Stars, etc. to share some data, even though the data they'd need to share wouldn't put any proprietary info at risk.