To follow up on my post about ratings, I thought it'd be interesting to see how much home field might be worth. So with the ratings in hand from the previous post, I schlopped together all 6 matchup possibilities given 6 ratings. Here is what I found, in terms of expected wins based on the formula expected wins=1/(10^(diff/400)):

Suskie vs OD
1.812 = maximum (Suskie vs Venter, True vs Belisarios, ASchultz vs Overdrive)
1.713 = minimum (Suskie vs Belisarios, True vs Venter, ASchultz vs Overdrive)

Boo vs EmP
1.713 = maximum (Boo vs EmP, Woodhouse vs DoI, Espiga vs DE)
1.657 = minimum (Boo vs DE, Woodhouse vs EmP, Espiga vs DoI)

So home field advantage vs "on the road" offers a potential .06 to .10 shift in expected votes. Home field advantage is half that (neutral would be in the middle,) or .03 to .05. That makes 1% to 1.7%.

Compare this to college basketball, where home field is worth about 3.5 points, and teams average 70 points a game, roughly. Home field offers a shift of 3.5/140=2.5%.

Or compare it to college football, where I'd guess teams totaled 45 points per game, with HFA being 3 points. That is 3/45 or a whopping 7%.

Given that it's hard to quantify how good some writing is, or how to appeal to a certain judge(who may rightfully get tired of seeing too much of style X and say so,) or how ratings are still bobbling up and down, home field advantage would seem statistically insignificant. Especially since any one person can sit down and write something brilliant, or draw a blank, in any given week.

But that's a reason home field advantage can be wildly significant and decisive, as the home team may have a secret weapon review to spring on the Other Guys.

So it appears home field is nice, but it's absolutely no substitute for writing well. Which we knew. But I guess it's quantified a bit now.