A pre-emptive strike

I've decided to get in early on the topic of 'Zonal' titles. By the end of the week I am sure another round of name calling and denigration will be in full swing on the various Australian chess bulletin boards, although it probably depends on who earns the IM title. I'll avoid that debate, both now and when it really kicks off.
Doing some back of the envelope calculations I believe their will be between 12 and 20 players who will score 6/9 or more. This figure is higher than normal, but is simply because there are 72 players in this years Oceania Zonal, clearly a record field. So while in previous years there were only 1 or 2 players who reached the target score of 6, this year 6 or 6.5 may not be enough to secure the title. While this seem to make the title harder to achieve the larger field may result in some easier games in the first couple of rounds.
So my predictions for the zonal are: 8 to win outright, 7.5 on tie-break between 3 players. IM Title to the first non IM/GM player to reach 7. As for who I think will win the event, I'll play it safe and tip Zong-Yuan Zhao (unless he loses to Smerdon during the event, when I'll shift my tip to David).