A part of me feels like claimants will find a way of gaming this and making their approval a series of endlessly nudged goalposts...given the way IP holders are already taking advantage of the tools already at their disposal.

No, two rounds max; both parties lose (suspect's video deleted and claimant gets a strike) it is not resolved in two rounds.

So the claimant still, invariably get what they want, which is a pulled/not published video? That doesn’t sound like both parties losing to me.

You seem to have forgot the 3 strike rule.

No I really didn’t-could do without the implication, why don’t we and leave the personal jabs about what I forgot or didn’t out of this and stick to the issue.

I don’t believe as designed that even three strikes does well at (pardon the pun) striking a balance between content creators and content ID claimants. YouTube’s own behavior, leading up to where we sit now, and the behavior of claimants gives me no reason to give either party the benefit of the doubt or faith in how they purport to be handling content claims.

I forgot nothing, friend.