That's a reasonable criticism and I edited the post to address it, thanks. Your claim that STAR encounters the center squeeze whenever IRV does if voters vote 5>1>0 is incorrect since the 1s still contribute to candidates' scores in the first round, unlike second-choice votes in IRV. (Had the 2022 Alaska special election of US House used STAR and every who expressed a preference under IRV voted 5>1>0, Begich would have won; see https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.00108.) But yes, there are center squeeze scenarios in which STAR doesn't elect the Condorcet winner, and the fact that such scenarios yield solid arguments for why the Condorcet winner shouldn't always be elected is mostly immaterial to the accuracy of my earlier claim. Thanks for catching it.