I like to point out that the fact Eucliwood can even come close to winning the Amethyst necklace is due to the schedule format. There are 2 noticeable consequences of MAXIMIZING the Variance (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance ) of SDO. 1 is that Top 3 candidates are very likely to have SDO that is very close from each other. This is slightly counter intuitive , but that is how the math work out. The answer to my quiz about maximum variance case of 7 numbers between 0 and 126 is 0, 0, 0, 63, 126, 126, 126, thus you can see that top 3 has exactly same number. (2) the second consequences is that at usually 2 or more candidates with at least 1 loss AND from Tier 2 or lower will be among the top 7 in SDO score. You can verify this for all 3 necklace period so far. This will truly give Tier 2 and even Tier 3 chance for necklace, a chance that is not possible with last year's schedule.