Northloop, you are so confused. There is natural talent and strategy. Moneymaker, Ivey and every above average player agree on basic strategy. Ivey just has a lot more talent at reading players and individual hands.
Applied to this contest, talent is knowing who will win individual games. Strategy is allocating points and knowing when to take risks. BigO, Skipper and others have more talent than me at picking individual games. But we all use the same aggressive strategy(except BigO one time). When we are “behind” we make aggressive picks.
You picked like 2 underdogs. That’s not aggressive enough. You will almost never win that way. I can’t tell you what underdogs to pick, but you need to pick some underdogs. Especially since you can adjust mid contest. When you are behind. There is no debating that is the best strategy.
BTW, Ivey and others pay people that you have never heard of thousands of dollars for technical advice. A lot of those advisors barely play poker but are math and strategy experts. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t great players, they are great at determining the optimal poker tournament strategies.