I think it's because of the different field. The young players are hungry and probably want to have fighting games, while the veterans probably don't want to study a lot of theory and aren't too concerned with maximising their results by going for drawish positions with Black, where one has to suffer a bit without any winning chances.
Awesome work, as always Julian!
Cool and unique analysis!
Any ideas on why the opening selection was so different? Were the challengers more incentivized to go for wins as black?
I think it's because of the different field. The young players are hungry and probably want to have fighting games, while the veterans probably don't want to study a lot of theory and aren't too concerned with maximising their results by going for drawish positions with Black, where one has to suffer a bit without any winning chances.