If theory told me not to open Sea Hag because it would accentuate first player advantage and thus decrease the accuracy of the tournament in predicting who will do best in nationals, but said, "but if you do it, I won't disqualify you for it, even if I know you did it." then I totally agree with his sentiment. But I'm going to open Sea Hag because I'm trying to win, even though I know I'm damaging the accuracy of the competition itself. Because that's what a player does by definition, he takes any legal action available that increases his probability of winning. If Sea Hag happened to somehow do little or nothing at all to my probability of winning - unlikely, for my example, but maybe if it was Young Witch with a good bane, eh - then I would indulge theory and not take the opening. The only value in theory's statement is that that might be the case. If Personman did not gain much benefit from the extension and was not very good at utilizing it, he might have just turned it off. But since he actually is very good at utilizing it, he shouldn't be expected to turn it off any more than he should be expected to open copper/copper because he's trying to win.
As an example of an actual case where something could increase the accuracy of a competition in producing proper finalists, but have little impact on one's chance of winning, I offer this - In one of the Isodoms, against opponents whose relative skills I didn't know much about, I offered to ban Familiar by mutual agreement. According to councilroom I'm sorta somewhat maybe good with the card, but the loss of advantage is very small, while the increased chance of an appropriate finalist for isodom which probably will be decided by skill more so than 2p seemed worth it to me.
Against Young Nick, who I had an 0-2 record against on councilroom, I didn't ban Familiar. I purposely subverted the accuracy of the tournament in order to win. As a player that's what I should be expected to do.