As 2018 comes to a close, I ran some numbers on leaders over the past calendar year. (I did this last year as well, if you want to go back and compare the two tables.) Here’s the 2018 numbers.

Seventy players met my qualification criteria of 80+ matches played and 2000+ average rating; the leader on average Elo was Brad Nelson, with an 2168 average. This is pretty crazy on two counts. First, only forty-two people reached 2168 at all last year, and that was Brad’s average. Second, Brad held this title last year too! His average last year was an even less reasonable 2221. Brad averaged 8th on the leaderboard across every weekend with an event and never was lower than 43rd.

To me, minimum Elo is the most impressive measure of consistency, since it really penalizes any stretch of performing below expectation. (And of course with a 2000+ rating, “expectation” involves leaving every GP with an 11-4 record or so.) Only six qualifying players managed a 2000+ floor, with the highest being Takuma Morofuji’s 2036. From a couple of perspectives, Takuma had the best year of the players who didn’t receive an invitation to the MPL: his 2131 average Elo is the highest among non-members, and his floor is the highest of anyone, MPL or not.

Last year, Brad and Huey had dominant stretches and held the #1 spot for much of the year — only three different players held the #1 ranking at all during 2017. There were seven players who could say they were #1 at some point this year; six of them will be in the MPL next year.

If you find the Elo discussion a little tiring, the other reasonable metric to use is win percentage. Depending on where you draw the line for qualification, the best is either Guillaume Wafo-Tapa (64-27, 70.33%) or Jeremy Dezani (120-55, 68.57%) who took the crown by a very narrow margin.