Monday Night Madness after six weeks — the Top 8 are winning the battles that get played

Six Monday Night Madness events are now complete, and one statistic has dominated the early conversation: the number of wins awarded when an opponent did not submit a team.

That deserves attention. Across the first six events, 291 of the 491 decisive matchup results were wins by flee.

But it does not tell the whole story of the leaderboard.

When we isolate the battles where both players submitted teams, the current Top 8 have not simply collected points from absent opponents. They have played a large number of contested battles — and they have won them at a much higher rate than the rest of the field.

📊 The headline result

The current Top 8 have combined for:

• 156 player-level contested battles
• 103 contested wins
• 66.0% contested win rate
• 116 wins by flee
• 219 total wins
• 230 series points

Players outside the current Top 8 have combined for 97 wins from 244 contested battles, a contested win rate of 39.8%.

That is a difference of 26.3 percentage points.

The Top 8 account for 39.0% of all player-level contested battle entries, but they have earned 51.5% of all contested wins recorded during the first six weeks.

🏆 Current Top 8 contested records

Every player in the current Top 8 has contested at least 14 battles. Seven of the eight have won more than half of those battles, while canada804 sits exactly at 50%.

The most striking record belongs to anaiak. The current leader has won 19 of 21 contested battles, a 90.5% win rate, alongside 18 wins by flee. That 53-point total is therefore not built on free results alone; it is backed by the strongest contested record in the series.

keeegs has faced the highest contested volume in the Top 8, playing 27 contested battles and winning 18. ghostlybg and ourfadedglory have also converted their contested opportunities efficiently, winning 70.6% and 63.2% respectively.

⚔️ Flees matter — but they are not the whole leaderboard

The flee rate remains important. A scheduled matchup cannot become a competitive battle unless both players submit a team, and every missed submission changes the experience for the opponent and the shape of the standings.

The current Top 8 have received 116 wins by flee, so it would be wrong to pretend those results have had no effect.

It would be equally wrong to conclude that the leading players are only there because of flees.

The Top 8 have won 103 contested battles. Those wins represent 47.0% of their 219 total victories. When opponents have turned up and submitted teams, the leaderboard leaders have still won two out of every three battles.

This is the clearest evidence in the data so far: availability has influenced the tournament environment, but successful play is still separating the strongest season records.

🧠 What the statistics tell us

Three points stand out after six weeks.

1. The Top 8 have sustained real battle volume.
They average 19.5 contested battles per player. This is not a leaderboard built from one or two isolated competitive results.

2. They are converting that volume into wins.
The Top 8 contested win rate is 66.0%, compared with 39.8% for the rest of the field.

3. Flee wins and contested skill can exist together.
A player can benefit from an opponent failing to submit and still demonstrate strong performance when both teams enter the arena. The current leaders have done both.

There is an important statistical caution: the Top 8 are defined by leaderboard performance, so we should expect them to have stronger results than the players below them. This comparison does not prove that contested wins alone caused their positions.

What it does prove is that the current Top 8 have accumulated a substantial body of contested results, and their records in those battles are strong enough that the standings cannot reasonably be dismissed as a product of flees alone.

🔥 The leaderboard race continues

The season-end payout is decided by the leaderboard. There is no separate finale, so every weekly result continues to matter.

For the players chasing the Top 8, the target is becoming clearer: register, submit every team you can, and win the battles that are actually contested.

For the current leaders, the challenge is consistency. Their contested records have helped put them above the line, but more weekly events mean more opportunities for the table to change.

Follow the current standings:

https://splintermetrics.github.io/phoenix-reborn-series-hq/

Find Monday Night Madness events:

https://splinterlands.com/tournaments

Watch Phoenix Reborn TV:

Weekly events. Accumulate points. Stand tall on the leaderboard.

---