individual stats and Georgia tournaments

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coldstonesteveaustin
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individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by coldstonesteveaustin »

Split from the 2014 Walton tournament thread --Mgmt.

Aside from your perennial inability to use SQBS (no individual stats, no separation of bouncebacks from regular bonus points), I'm surprised that no one has called you out on using a single elimination playoff bracket and only guaranteeing 5 games to each team. Modern quizbowl standards dictate that separating the field into several preliminary pools and then reshuffling the pools for the playoffs is the best way to guarantee as many games as possible to all teams, and so that no team is knocked out by a single bad performance.

Also, please learn how to use the edit button to update the field so that the thread isn't clogged up with field update posts.

User was warned for telling people how to post. --the mgmt
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Re: 25th Annual Walton Academic Challenge - 10/18/14

Post by ndikkala »

I'd like to say that the lack of individual stats was not a failure to use SQBS, but rather due to the fact that the score sheets did not account for individual performances. As for the bounceback separation, those were a part of the score sheets handed out but I'm not sure what the statistics people were doing with that information. It might actually surprise you that the field was split into several preliminary pools, but it was single-elimination playoffs. Single elimination is what BISB uses, but last year there were no stats uploaded or posted anywhere, so I'm not sure if anyone has voiced criticism of the format being used there. I thought the tournament was reasonably well-managed, and I don't think there were any major snafus like the wrong packet being read, which believe it or not, has happened at a recent tournament that will remain unnamed.
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Re: 25th Annual Walton Academic Challenge - 10/18/14

Post by coldstonesteveaustin »

1) This was an NAQT set, why the :capybara: did Walton not just download the official NAQT scoresheet or any of the other widely available scoresheets online that account for individual statistics, bouncebacks, the whole shebang?

2) I'm aware that WAC used preliminary pools, I was mainly pointing out that WAC used a single elimination playoff bracket instead of reorganized playoff pools.

3) It does appear that BISB uses the same format (5 guaranteed rounds, single elim, never posts stats, doesn't separate bouncebacks). Sure, a tournament with such a format could run efficiently, but the main problem is that if I were a coach in the Georgia area, I would consider paying $65 for only 5 guaranteed rounds as a total ripoff, and I would most likely boycott that tournament. Therefore, I'd like to call out Coaches Edelstein and Payne, and all the other Georgia quizbowl officials who see no problem with such inanity, and I would urge you to reform your ways, lest the scorn of the national quizbowl community fall upon you. If you need help devising a format that could handle such a large format, there are many resources available for that, just ask around.

4) In particular, BISB is a really good set, and it saddens me that its namesake is a tournament that does not uphold modern quizbowl standards.

5) One more note about the money: WAC this year made at least $1300 in revenue through registration fees, while BISB makes a whopping $5000 every year. What are you doing with that money? Ok, I guess Walton and Brookwood each go to at most 10 tournaments a year, which is like $600, and then the rest could go towards nationals, if they qualify. Anyway, my point is, Georgia tournament directors should give more bang for the buck.

6) I just noticed that GATA Varsity State Champs didn't keep individual stats either. What the :capybara:, GATA?
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Re: 25th Annual Walton Academic Challenge - 10/18/14

Post by Lefty734 »

Almost nobody in Georgia keeps stats for individuals.... Only person I know is Mr. Richards and that is only at some tournaments. Why don't you stop meddling in Georgia Quizbowl and telling us how to run things.

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Re: 25th Annual Walton Academic Challenge - 10/18/14

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

Lefty734 wrote:Almost nobody in Georgia keeps stats for individuals.... Only person I know is Mr. Richards and that is only at some tournaments. Why don't you stop meddling in Georgia Quizbowl and telling us how to run things.
Oh hello, the "you don't live in my state, stop telling us how to run tournaments poorly" argument. I haven't seen you in a while.

In a non-sarcastic note: If any coach on this board needs help with SQBS, there are several people willing to help answer any questions you may have (I certainly am). Jon Pinyan also developed a scoresheet for regular season tournaments that incorporates bouncebacks (it can be found here: http://justpredictions.webs.com/quizbowl/), so if the scoresheets are an issue, there's the problem solved.

EDIT: I'll also note that the board is very accommodating if you ask for help with making an appropriate schedule for non-single elimination playoffs.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by Maury Island incident »

Most modern quizbowl tournaments rebracket the field for a round-robin playoff. This is the fairest format, and also gives teams the most bang for their buck. They also keep individual stats, and separate bouncebacks. From a quick search, I can see that some tournaments in Georgia do follow these conventions (Georgia Tech, ATTACK, Collins Hill, and this year's Cedar Shoals). However, the vast majority don't. There are plenty of tournaments in Georgia and the area. Teams could play a reasonably full schedule attending only tournaments that use good quizbowl practices. There's a reason this format is nearly ubiquitous. This problem doesn't just apply to Georgia, either. Several other states, especially in the south still use archaic formats. These states have active circuits, and because of this haven't seen the outreach work of bad quizbowl states because they run tournaments on good questions. However, just because the questions at a tournament are good, doesn't mean that there aren't problems with the rest of the tournament. Like Jacob said, most people on this board would be happy to help give advice on running a high-quality tournament, including stats.
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Re: 25th Annual Walton Academic Challenge - 10/18/14

Post by Citizen Snips »

Hidehiro Anto wrote:1) This was an NAQT set, why the :capybara: did Walton not just download the official NAQT scoresheet or any of the other widely available scoresheets online that account for individual statistics, bouncebacks, the whole shebang?

2) I'm aware that WAC used preliminary pools, I was mainly pointing out that WAC used a single elimination playoff bracket instead of reorganized playoff pools.

3) It does appear that BISB uses the same format (5 guaranteed rounds, single elim, never posts stats, doesn't separate bouncebacks). Sure, a tournament with such a format could run efficiently, but the main problem is that if I were a coach in the Georgia area, I would consider paying $65 for only 5 guaranteed rounds as a total ripoff, and I would most likely boycott that tournament. Therefore, I'd like to call out Coaches Edelstein and Payne, and all the other Georgia quizbowl officials who see no problem with such inanity, and I would urge you to reform your ways, lest the scorn of the national quizbowl community fall upon you. If you need help devising a format that could handle such a large format, there are many resources available for that, just ask around.

4) In particular, BISB is a really good set, and it saddens me that its namesake is a tournament that does not uphold modern quizbowl standards.

5) One more note about the money: WAC this year made at least $1300 in revenue through registration fees, while BISB makes a whopping $5000 every year. What are you doing with that money? Ok, I guess Walton and Brookwood each go to at most 10 tournaments a year, which is like $600, and then the rest could go towards nationals, if they qualify. Anyway, my point is, Georgia tournament directors should give more bang for the buck.

6) I just noticed that GATA Varsity State Champs didn't keep individual stats either. What the :capybara:, GATA?


All of this happens in Tennessee as well. It's terrible.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by niravilango »

Citizen Snips wrote:
Hidehiro Anto wrote: lest the scorn of the national quizbowl community fall upon you.
Oh no! The scorn!
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by pajaro bobo »

I don't disagree with the initial post, but how would you fairly rebracket 42 teams? Or in BISB's case, 70+ teams?
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by coldstonesteveaustin »

42 team case is here. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... DM3WjRhbUE
As for the 70 team case, I'd probably try to split the field into a competitive and a regular division. Assuming that neither division goes above 48 teams, I'd still use the format outlined in the spreadsheet above.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by pajaro bobo »

13-14 game schedules sound nice and all but when there aren't too many good readers/moderators around (in Georgia there aren't, they're probably easier to get in states with bigger scenes though), that's a disaster waiting to happen. I had trouble finding 9 when I ran a BHSAT mirror back in the spring and the tournament ran late and it sucked and people were unhappy. I can't imagine where 21 competent readers would come from, much less 35+, and even when you train people to read/scorekeep lots of them just don't get it and screw up, and when the fields are bigger the screwups become bigger.

I should note that I hate single-elim brackets and wish they would go die in a fire, and that I love stats and wished more tournaments had individual stats so I could look them over/know what I need to improve on/stroke my own ego/etc. I've been vocal about how I think single-elim is the devil and better statkeeping is the best thing ever and how more teams need to care about that sort of thing. I love that more tournaments here have been doing stuff like that. But in some cases I can't really see how doing all that would work out without turning the tournament into a mess (albeit a mess with playoff rebrackets and in-depth stats). Maybe I'm just garbage at TDing but whatever.

Now that I've actually bothered reading through this thread, I should note that SQBS WAS used this year. For the first time, yeah, but still. Also I don't really get what the point of throwing suspicion at what TDs do with the cash they make was, but that's not a big deal because it seems you figured it out yourself.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by ryanrosenberg »

This is where splitting large fields can really come in handy--42 is an unwieldy number, but 18 and 24 are a lot better.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by pajaro bobo »

Workers would still be an issue but that's a much better suggestion.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by Rountree »

Hidehiro Anto wrote:Modern quizbowl standards dictate that separating the field into several preliminary pools and then reshuffling the pools for the playoffs is the best way to guarantee as many games as possible to all teams, and so that no team is knocked out by a single bad performance.
If this were actually true everywhere, quizbowl would be MUCH further along in its development than it is. There are many, many states where the concept you described would be completely foreign. I'm not arguing this is a good thing, but your argument collapses of its own weight since "modern quizbowl standards" is a relative term. At least in Georgia we have heard of SQBS, indie stats, and rebrackets; in fact, many competitions in our state use some or all of them. We still have a ways to go to reach all the "modern quizbowl standards" you desire, but we are much further along in our development than some of our immediate neighbors (and several states across the US).

As for tournament logistics, in a perfect world Walton would be able to run a Varsity tournament capped at 24-36 teams on one Saturday and a JV/Novice tournament capped at 24-36 teams on another Saturday. 24-36 teams is not only good for bracketing/rebracketing but also for workers: 12-18 people isn't too many to keep around all day. Having said that, many teams cannot get/afford room space at their schools for two Saturdays, nor can they get 12-18 readers to commit for two full Saturdays of quizbowl. Thus, many tournaments in Georgia (and elsewhere) have a history of running large tournaments with SEPO in order to generate as much profit as possible in one day while also balancing their worker needs.

Let's be honest, Brookwood isn't going to run rebrackets for an 80+ team tournament, which is the typical size of their field. That is just WAY too many teams. One compromise that we used at CATT the last couple years (and for which we received a lot of positive feedback) was running a SEPO for 60+ teams until we got down to the final four, which then played a round robin for 1st-4th places. Every team was guaranteed 6 games and the best teams got to play 11-12 games (against the best competition). Plus, we didn't need most of our "less enthusiastic" readers after 1:30pm, and we could guarantee that our best readers were available in the quarterfinals and final round robin. This seemed to us to be a nice blend between SEPO and rebracketing for fields of such size. I'm not saying it is perfect, but it is worthy of consideration.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by Maury Island incident »

Going all NHBB and requiring teams bring a reader would make that easier. It's not optimal but it could work.
Also, Georgia is definitely not the worst example. Many southern states do not follow good quizbowl conventions.
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Re: individual stats and Georgia tournaments

Post by Joshua Rutsky »

Things I can think of that individual stats are really useful for:

1) self-motivation
2) comparison of your performance in event A to event B
3) winning an individual stat title at an event


Personally, I like to keep individual stats at events because I know a lot of people like to check their individual stats, and because as a TD in a relatively new area to good quizbowl, it is a plus to give out lots of awards whenever I can, as it encourages teams when they have a taste of success. That said, I think that the players on my team will gladly trade an individual scoring title for a tourney championship any day of the week, and I seem to recall a lot of coaches of talented teams in the upper echelons of QB that discourage players thinking about their stats beyond the team's totals. Indie stats are a nice extra if you have the time and you have scorekeepers who are capable of keeping things straight, especially with mass subbing teams, but they aren't a necessity, and if a TD doesn't want to offer them, I don't really have a problem with that.

As far as the question of single-elimination playoffs, I don't love them, but again, as a TD, I understand them, especially in my region. For the HIT on Nov. 1, we are going to offer rebrackets after 7 prelim games. I will bet anyone on this board ten dollars right now that when we do that rebracketing for the field of 32, at least 10 teams will decide that they are done for the day and will elect not to play rounds 8-10 since they aren't in contention for a championship. 11 games is a VERY long day for high school teams that aren't used to the high-intensity, high-competition fields in some regions. For some of these teams, an extra 3 games means they don't get home until 7PM, and they still go 2-8 on the day. I'm still going to OFFER the games this year, but it is making me very, very nervous trying to keep this many rooms up to our standards with good moderators and scorekeepers, and I am never going to allow our tourney to get this large again. That said, if everything goes smoothly, we will make just about enough money to pay to send six players and a coach to HSNCT this year. One of the unbreakable rules I've always had for my team is that our program is open to any player regardless of finances, and we ALWAYS pay for travel costs for our varsity squad. No one gets left behind if they earn a spot. To do that, we have to raise a lot of money. That takes either 1)lots of tournaments, which isn't practical when our building is in use every single weekend, or 2)two or three big events, which is our method.
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