Hi all

This week is complete and as usual, I have 10 Steem in prizes to give away. Stuff that it's Christmas, lets give some SBDs away as well :)

Starting this week I'll be running two leagues in the same post, lets see how that goes!

Enter this weeks' leagues for a chance to win some crypto by showing your interest in the comments section below.

On your marks, get set, curate!

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Introduction

My general opinion on maximizing curation rewards is:

• Voting in the first minute will earn you a curation reward of almost 0.000

• Voting between 1 and 29 minutes will earn an increasing % of the curation rewards split, this value peaking at 30 minutes and remaining the same from this point onwards

• The goal is to get in prior to the big hitters, but not too early!

• It is commonly suggested that 20-25 minutes is the 'best' time to vote (especially on known power-authors posts because they are likely to have more auto-votes coming in at these times - and you want to be ahead of these votes)

• A vote of equal weight and equal Steem Power at 30 minutes will give more reward than a vote at, for example 1 hour - first come first served, but don't arrive to early :)

• Voting on good dtube content and utopian-io approved contributions (prior to vote by @dtube / @utopian-io can earn some very good curation reards

As you can see, a combination of many variables such as Steem Power, voting strength, voting weight, and time of vote, (and more) all play a part in the amount of rewards received.

My general opinion on maximizing engagement is:

• Spread your vote, write lots of long comments

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The data for league 1

The raw data has been collected from SteemSQL - @arcange's MS SQL Server copy of the Steem Blockchain.

The key formula used for 'quality of financial curation skill' is:

Curation Rewards DIVIDED BY Steem Power MULTIPLIED BY 1000

This will return the amount of Curation rewards gained per 1000 Steem Power held

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Before I present the table (which has entrants from the previous Blogs and those who wished to be added by making themselves known in last week's comments), this is the criteria needed to be fulfilled to have a chance of appearing in this League:

• Must have voted at least once on a piece of content in the past 7 days

• Must not have leased or delegated Steem Power in the last 15 days

• Must not have Started a Power Down (Withdrawl of Steem Power) in the last 15 days

The 2nd and 3rd points above are required to reduce distortion of the figures. And, as curation rewards for the past week are actually taken from votes made up to 14 days ago, we need a 15 day window as mentioned in these points.

Curating for maximizing returns - League 1

User	C Rewards	Steem Power	Votes Cast	Reward per 1000 SP
miniature-tiger	10.775501	1486.784476	266	7.24752
biophil	16.091	2674.568307	84	6.016298
buggedout	8.539597	1956.394538	192	4.364966
jznsamuel	14.124843	4243.543798	275	3.328549
curie	319.694717	122372.3806	2181	2.612474
sneakyninja	1.783087	699.073153	109	2.550644
kaysar07	0.068965	29.803085	165	2.314028
carlgnash	12.172489	6117.074545	1065	1.98992
coolguy123	10.142053	5251.286911	2221	1.931346
cervantes	317.855285	176314.131	560	1.802778
edje	1.848005	1067.379623	114	1.731348
paulag	59.290409	43505.27998	186	1.362832
steemtrail	15.599844	11538.40632	254	1.351993
osm0sis	1.681099	1285.439628	103	1.307801
htliao	23.770251	18708.2903	632	1.270573
beanz	65.31163	53504.53337	463	1.220675
aburmeseabroad	1.620157	1358.973339	351	1.192192
xervantes	5.886019	5001.301011	265	1.176898
dandesign86	2.204851	1887.342418	564	1.168231
r-bot	6.653442	5712.419947	60	1.164733
steemitri	2.949499	2539.554832	298	1.161424
rok-sivante	105.40245	96712.64652	210	1.089852
maintain4real-eu	0.160921	149.612102	93	1.075588
cryptoctopus	367.54315	342926.9923	347	1.071783
ewuoso	0.813617	761.650022	2473	1.06823
costanza	5.343164	5095.206771	289	1.048665
instructor2121	6.048806	5821.2697	235	1.039087
anomadsoul	257.748326	260336.8732	1023	0.990057
smasssh	4.611563	4743.210619	222	0.972245
rosemarynoble	0.013995	15.003302	6	0.932765
themarkymark	3.98488	4457.98807	113	0.893874
littlejoeward	0.327837	374.690612	45	0.874953
thinknzombie	4.757564	5683.607749	2707	0.837068
limabeing	4.245772	5307.263563	107	0.799993
josediccus	0.316826	400.647525	44	0.790784
steemit.lover2	0.027986	36.697565	40	0.76261
deaconlee	1.238349	1664.620246	451	0.743923
mammasitta	10.983468	14800.88045	575	0.742082
karensuestudios	5.794871	8299.607993	119	0.69821
dontstopmenow	1.719224	2923.702235	91	0.58803
clio	2.947566	5512.17851	144	0.534737
retiredinsamar	0.280845	607.970735	86	0.461938
blazing	0.191894	418.622278	1170	0.458394
jaeydallah	0.008994	23.43903	196	0.383721
djmalith	0.068958	329.441285	42	0.209319
joe.nobel	0.057971	303.948689	29	0.190725
gniksivart	0.111947	1454.332875	74	0.076975

The end column is what I think is a genuine indicator of how well you are financially working the curation game with the tools,including vested Steem Power, that you have at your disposal.

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Chart and Analysis

Amount of SP earned per 1000 Steem Power owned

_{Might need to zoom in this week - sorry!}

This weeks' results:

• @miniature-tiger has done it again! Awesome stuff, 2.5 Steem for you this week!

• @biophil a close 2nd and @buggedout in 3rd will be receiving 1.25 Steem - great efforts too!

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• The average curation reward/Steem Power this week is 1.438, slightly down on last week which was 1.456 SP.

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Community Curation Excellence - League 2

This new league is not based around rewards and relates to engagement.

Everyone currently on my master list has a chance here - delegation dealings or not.

I've used some metrics (made up some numbers) that are related to:

• Comments (number and amount of text)
• Up-votes to others
• Up-votes to unique others
• Self-votes (a minus score for this one!)

The top 20

Name	Ashers engagement/excellence rating
@fitinfun	580614480
@mawit07	418680126
@mariannewest	404356969
@blazing	367519920
@abh12345	319114811
@cranium	300183659
@themarkymark	285333048
@techslut	244003525
@dandesign86	215941924
@carlgnash	192214267
@tarazkp	185546059
@gniksivart	184992623
@choogirl	166278892
@mammasitta	156218028
@pariza	137273288
@josephsavage	132709358
@kaysar07	125969453
@clio	115142966
@deaconlee	110693128
@coolguy123	110646057

Well done to @fitinfun, the first ever winner of Ashers league of engagement and excellence! 2.5 SBDs coming to you!

Also very well done to @mawit07 and @mariannewest who have finished 2nd and 3rd - 1.25 SBDs coming your way :)

Want to win this league next week? You'll have to pass these guys (including myself) first!

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Prizes sent

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Finally

A few points:

• If you have spotted any glaring errors in my post, please let me know so I can fix them

• If you would like to be added or removed from my personal curation league (next weeks post) let me know

• If you have any other comments, please enter them into the box below

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_{I am part of a Steemit Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #bisteemit. If you have analysis you would like to be carried out on Steemit data, please do contact me or any of the #bisteemit team and we will do our best to help you.}

_{I am contactable on many discord channels under the same username.}

_{Data was collected on the 30th December 2017 at 6:00 pm CET}

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Thanks for reading today and a Happy New Year to all!

Asher @abh12345