The World Championship starts later this week. Here’s links to the 24 people who will be competing for the trophy. The field has seven of the top eight (sorry Scott Lipp!) and half of the top thirty.

The right three columns were created by simulating the tournament one million times. They show the share of times that player wins the tournament or makes the top four, as well as his average number of wins in the Swiss portion of the tournament.

I can’t claim to be 100% sure that I got the pairings algorithm correct, but I did my best. I assumed that the draft pods would be between the people in positions 1-8, 9-16, and 17-24 respectively, that the drafts are seated randomly and that pairings in the drafts are based on seat, and that you can’t play someone in constructed that you’ve already played in constructed (disregarding format). The latter two things might not be totally accurate (I’m guessing that #1 and #2 are encouraged to play in the first round of the second draft?), but I think it’s probably close enough for the numbers to be in the ballpark. The outcome of each match is decided by flipping a weighted coin whose weight is determined by the Elo win expectency scheme. The ratings are updated after each round, so Lukas Blohon doesn’t necessarily enjoy a stacked deck throughout the simulation.

Mainly I was curious as to what Lukas’s 120-point lead on the field in Elo translated to on a whole-tournament scale instead of an individual-match scale. It’s rather sizeable. These numbers do highlight the limitations of Elo: I don’t think that it’s possible that Niels Noorlander’s odds are really like one in 520 as the table suggests. In FiveThirtyEight parlance, this is much more of a now-cast than polls-plus. But if you want some food for thought while you fill out a fantasy draft, here you go.

Good luck to everyone participating!