By the way, this is literally every game that I played today that I remembered to write down scores. So this isn't cherry picked data. (It is anecdotal, though. I don't really have a statistically sound data set).

In every game that I wrote it down, 5th did worse than 7th. And usually worse than 6th.

7s tend to not get hit as badly given that they go out earlier before dom becomes a major factor in score. often 5th has stuck around long enough that s/he's put a chunk of ante in the pot with no chance of getting a good sized portion of it back.

in the no min and 10 mon tables......3rd or 4th is the new 7th.......

The data is potentially skewed if you were playing in all of those games. Here's some checks of my own (I didn't keep track of which games I played in myself, sorry):

-8, -6, -10, -6, +3, -2, +29
-6, -11, -10, +6, +1, +2, +18
-8, -11, -4*, +1*, -3, +7, +18
-7, -8, -10?, -8?, -5, +4*, +34
-9, -7*, -7, +1, +8, +0, +14

Here, just to elucidate, I put * by a score to indicate someone who flagged before paying ante and ? if it wasn't clear. Frex, if you eliminate someone in the middle of your turn, do you pay ante immediately? When your turn starts, do you pay ante at the very start or when you take your first action? (My advice: it should be the latter, since if teal flags on his turn red should have an opportunity to avoid paying ante.)

I don't know about places now being the biggest loser. I think that the biggest loser used to be the person with two large territories in the corner who turtled his way to -15, and now the biggest loser is the person with three small territories in the middle who doesn't leave immediately after someone else. It's probably a step in the right direction.

Its nearly always 7th -6 for place -x for dom
6th -7 for place -x for dom