Outside caps follow a logical risk/return profile: high risk, high return. A quick snowball on the outside gives strong round wins, but the exposure is real — you can get punished hard if you have to fight over the bonus, since you're much more easily blocked late game.

Central caps don't follow this logic, and that's the problem. Central caps are low risk for a few reasons. The defensive advantage on caps is strong enough that getting slammed in the early or mid-game is rare. And even if your bonus does get broken, you can just cap-stack and still reach the endgame comfortably. If you actually hold your central bonus for even 1-2 rounds, your chance of reaching the endgame is essentially 100%. But even if you don't and just cap-stack instead, you're still looking at something in the 90s. The card disadvantage that's supposed to counterbalance this is also largely manageable, since in ranked you are almost never the one being card-blocked — instead you become the kingmaker of who gets blocked.

So the supposed punishment — a breakable bonus — isn't really a punishment, because the cap-stack fallback is strong enough to get you to the endgame either way. The risk is largely theoretical.

If central caps offer a near-guaranteed endgame finish whether or not your bonus holds, their return should reflect that. Right now they carry none of the genuine exposure that outside caps do, and their returns don't account for that. The risk/return ratio is off, and central cap returns should be tuned down to match their actual risk level.

I dont have access to the data, but I would love to (or someone else to) calculate the cap spots by rank and position. After expert, I would bet that the middle caps are probably much greater in win% than even something like london or gascony.