I've a question about doing the 330-day advance reservations, since I've only once booked an award ticket more than a month in advance. Some people have said if they find an outbound seat, they'll reserve any seat available for a return, and wait for their preferred seat to open.

How exactly does this work? If you book your outbound on the 330-day mark, you can't book the return at all since the first available return date would still be 332 days out. Right?

Do you initially book it SYD-LAX-SYD (so you can book a round-trip), then flop it to LAX-SYD-LAX when a seat opens you like, not book the return at all, or something different?