2016 PACE NSC: June 4-5, Chicago

[marianna]

The Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence is pleased to announce that the 2016 National Scholastic Championship will take place at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare on June 4-5, 2016. The Hyatt Regency O'Hare has been the site of numerous quizbowl national championships, including the 2014 HSNCT and every ICT from 2010-2014. PACE looks forward to partnering with an experienced site and staff to bring teams a high-quality tournament in the NSC tradition.

The tournament will be directed by Michael Sorice, and the set will be head edited by Jordan Brownstein.

The field cap for the 2016 NSC will be 96 teams. Further information on the 2016 NSC will be announced closer to autumn.

[marianna]

Qualification guidelines for the 2016 NSC have been posted.

One important change from last year is that registration will open for all qualified teams on November 2, 2015, regardless of the qualification level of the tournament at which teams qualified.

If you have any questions regarding team or tournament qualification, feel free to contact PACE President Mike Bentley at <president@pace-nsc.org>.

[Mike Bentley]

Qualification e-mails will go out later this week.

[Mike Bentley]

Just wanted to remind tournament hosts to post their tournaments to the Tournament DB. We look there to grab the list of tournaments to send qualification mails to.

That being said, if you haven't received an e-mail from me about qualification, please e-mail me directly at president@pace-nsc.org with a link to your tournament announcement and I'll get it added manually.

[marianna]

Registration is now open for all qualified teams.

The tournament field has historically filled up to the cap of 96 teams, so we encourage teams to start the registration process as early as possible.

Registration for qualified teams consists of two steps:
1. Filling out the NSC registration form. Please note that solely filling out this form does not guarantee a spot in the NSC field.
2. Making a $100 down payment, or alternatively, full payment of their registration costs. Teams are only guaranteed a spot in the NSC field once this down or full payment is received. Unlike registration for last year's NSC, spots in the field will be reserved based on payment receipt date, and in the event of the tie, on payment postmark date.

Payments can be made securely online via Paypal, or in the form of a check made out to "Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence" sent to:
PACE
PO Box 57
125 Shelter Road
Lincolnshire, IL 60069

If you have any questions regarding the registration process, you can contact me, Marianna Zhang, at communications@pace-nsc.org.

[dhumphreys17]

I am glad to announce that Fr. Don Henkes (retired religion teacher from Sacred Heart Academy) will say Mass for the quiz bowl community after competition on Saturday, June 4. Logistics will be finalized closer to the actual event.

[marianna]

The wildcard application process is now open for teams who have not qualified through performance at a qualifying event.

Wildcard applications can be sent to wildcard coordinator Jason Loy at wildcard@pace-nsc.org. Applications should contain the team's name, contact information, and a summary of the team's accomplishments this school year. Applicants will be notified of the wildcard decision within seven days of application receipt.

PACE will automatically approve wildcard bids from teams that finished highly enough at events that meet PACE's standards for qualifier status, even if the events are not officially listed as a qualifier event. While this has been implicitly true for wild card bids over the past few years, this is now official PACE policy.

[Deviant Insider]

We offer an early payment discount to teams who pay at least their deposit by March 1. We have already received payment from 38 teams. Also, we already have a total of 79 teams who have filled out the entry form for a tournament that will have 96 teams. If your team wants to compete in the PACE NSC, now is the time to enter.

[Mike Bentley]

We offer an early payment discount to teams who pay at least their deposit by March 1. We have already received payment from 38 teams. Also, we already have a total of 79 teams who have filled out the entry form for a tournament that will have 96 teams. If your team wants to compete in the PACE NSC, now is the time to enter.

To add to David's post, just wanted to remind teams that they're not officially registered until they get their deposit in. Thus, if you're one of those 79 teams who have signed up on the sheet, please get this payment in soon to guarantee your spot in the tournament!

[Deviant Insider]

We now have 97 teams that have filled out the form and 53 teams that have paid at least the deposit. Because of what Mike said, the paid number is the important one. However, consider yourself warned that this tournament is picking up teams quickly.

[marianna]

There are 87 teams currently registered out of a 96 team field cap, leaving 9 open spots. As a reminder, teams are not registered and in the field until a deposit is received.

[marianna]

The field has just reached its cap of 96 teams!

A waitlist has been started here, with teams in the order that their deposit was received. To register for the waitlist, follow the same steps as for registration (submit form + submit deposit).

[marianna]

We're about a month away from NSC!

If you're interested in staffing NSC, and have not registered already as a staffer for an attending team, contact our staff coordinator Nick Clusserath at staffing@pace-nsc.org. Nick will be able to provide more details about our staffing policy and what roles might be available.

[marianna]

The ruleset for this year's NSC (gameplay and eligibility rules) has been published.
You can read about our philosophy in drafting this ruleset and a summary of major changes from previous years' rulesets in this announcement.

[marianna]

A team logistics email has just been sent out. The schedule (including prelim brackets) for this weekend is now available online, as is the team handbook.

See you all this weekend!

[PACE stats]

Remember, find stats here!

[Geriatric trauma]

The 2016 NSC is underway! I'll be tweeting out scores as they come in under the hashtag #pacensc.

[quiz4life]

Will you or someone else be posting them here on this forum? Are there any live feeds?

Thanks,

[marianna]

Live stats will be posted on the database: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/3766/

For any stat corrections, please contact Ben Zhang at ben.zhng1 AT gmail DOT com.

A directory of which teams are in which prelim bracket may be found on the tournament schedule.

Tweets can be found under #pacensc on Twitter.

[Geriatric trauma]

Playoff seeds

[etchdulac]

Will the final two rounds from Stables and Birds be posted? Only five games were updated there.

Also, what was the missing playoff result between TJ A and Westview?

[etchdulac]

Cool - all there now. Thanks!

[marianna]

Sunday super-playoff and placement seeds are now available.

Best of luck to everyone tomorrow!

[jonpin]

For those who want a quick guide as to when teams are playing each other in the top bracket, here's the top tier schedule with teams filled in. Good luck to everyone!

[jonpin]

I know TJ B had some deep runs in the old days, but I feel like this must be a first at a national championship: The last undefeated team is DCC *B*.

(edit to add: and in this round, DCC A sees if they have something to say about that)

[marianna]

Congratulations to Southside (SC), the top small school at 2016 PACE NSC! Orchard Farm (MO) took the second place small school title.

[vengefulsweatermensch]

Is the final being streamed?

[Mike Bentley]

Congrats LASA A for beating Stevenson in an advantaged finals. Full stats soon.

[marianna]

Is the final being streamed?

The final was live blogged at @PACENSC on Twitter, and a video recording will be uploaded shortly. Apologies for the late reply!

[Mike Bentley]

Thanks again to all of the players, coaches, parents and staff! We appreciate any feedback you have, whether it be in this thread, the soon to be posted set discussion thread, or by e-mailing me directly at president@pace-nsc.org.

[Large Adult Song]

Something seems to be wrong on the Superplayoffs data for bonuses/bouncebacks heard, leading to errors for P/B and P/BB.

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

Sorry for the long post...
So I am going to start this by saying that in a broad sense I had a very good time at this tournament, playing good questions and hanging out with people all across the country and the world. However, once again my team won their tier and got to look up at the teams in the tier above and say "I think we could have beaten them if we had the chance. This is my main beef with this tournament. The format is highly dependent on seeding because from any given prelim bracket only two teams can possibly make top bracket no matter how well they play. This can be highly frustrating to the third place team in this case my team. I am not criticizing the people who seeded the teams because from my examination they did the best they could do with the information available but I am criticizing the format itself for not allowing proper ranking of teams even with only minor errors in seeding not major ones. In my prelim bracket we had four teams in the top 28. This is annoying. We did not have a ten game winning streak like we did last year to end at 49th but we did win all our playoff games and lose by ten in one of the placement games mostly because I confused hydration and hydrogenation for some reason. That aside it frustrates me that we went 6-1 in prelims and did not make top bracket. We beat the eventual third place winner in an admittedly flukey game but this could not have happened if we were not at least fairly close in skill. If you swap the teams from 25th-28th with 21st-24th the stats make more sense ppb wise. These teams do not seem to have been eliminated from the top bracket because of upsets by a team that didn't deserve it but by the predetermination of the preliminary bracket. This only a valid criticism if you hold the belief of the importance of this tournament not just in holding a national championship but fairly ranking teams and giving them good fun hard competition. For this tournament to matter to teams not winning it the bracketing should be made more fair. I'd say that at a minimum 80 of these teams came here not competing for the national championship but with a number in their head: 40th, 20th, or 16th. This tournament can be made better for them by giving them a better chance to achieve their goals and not denying them with an extremely tough prelim bracket making their remaining 8 games not nearly as meaningful as they could be. I say this completely understanding how hard seeding is especially when results aren't recent or are not with a full team and am not criticizing the hard work people did to make this happen instead I am saying that the format itself is very annoying to teams that study binge before finals, struggle to play a full team during the year or otherwise won't produce results before nationals that accurately represent themselves. There is one upshot though, seeing as if we continue the trend of winning our tier next year we might just win. In conclusion I would like to thank all the people who helped make this tournament happen, and congratulate LASA on another national championship, a result that I think this tournament fairly and accurately determined.

[the return of AHAN]

If at all possible, BHS should consider playing a national tournament that has a card system that helps sort out the teams in the manner you seem to desire for seeding, and double-elimination playoffs on Sunday. I mean in addition to PACE NSC, of course. The top teams do it, and your team has the talent to compete at the highest level.

You're frustrated. I get it. But focus on trying to build on what you've already built up this year.

[Urech hydantoin synthesis]

Something seems to be wrong on the Superplayoffs data for bonuses/bouncebacks heard, leading to errors for P/B and P/BB.

Yeah, I forgot to click through the games in that file. It should be corrected now. If anyone has any stats corrections, let me know, but I will only make changes in the "All Games" file.

[John Ketzkorn]

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this tournament and the questions/distro is fantastic.

I would like to echo sentiments about the way the tournament is run. It seems that the pool system knocks out good teams early as opposed to the 10 round power match system and bracket that HSNCT uses. I will say that both systems have their merits and flaws. One of the merits being to the current PACE system is that teams usually get to hear more packets than they would at HSNCT. However, one of the major flaws with the PACE tiered round robin-pool system is that seeding becomes super important because if a team gets a difficult pool, they're basically out of contention for top 24. This didn't affect IMSA because we were missing a player, but I know plenty of teams who felt that felt that their one or two losses shouldn't have cost them top 24.

I was also wondering if anyone could elaborate on what happened yesterday with the seeding of the tier 1 playoff pools.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

Just wanted to quickly thank PACE for a great tournament experience. I really enjoyed the question set and think it did an incredible job of balancing the high and low ends. As the coach of a team that finished one part shy of 10 PPB for the weekend, I never felt like a bonus refused to offer an easy part to us; when we 0'd, the kids knew which part they should have had and why they missed it, either failure-to-pull or disfavor of the category; never confusion over what was being asked. Meanwhile, when we 30'd, it always felt like the hard part was a pocket of deep knowledge that we had, never the fate of a poorly calibrated bonus. In the bottom placement pool, the six Sunday games averaged just under 17 converted tossups per game, with a minimum of 15; in every packet, there were enough "nats-level" answer lines to make sure top teams couldn't successfully play with "they only ever ask about X in regular difficulty, so I'll guess X" strategy, while not torpedoing conversion rates for the bottom teams.

The successful execution of difficulty targets is one thing, but the creativity of the set deserves praise as well. A few months ago, I held up this year's Masonic Sectionals set as an example of "how to write for a broad audience, including experienced and completely new teams;" to go with that, writers should study 2016 PACE NSC to see how creative tossups can be done for the enjoyment of all. (This isn't a discussion thread yet, so I'll hold off on examples until that + the set is posted + I have some free time.)

Major congratulations to the writing and editing team; it was a pleasure to listen to and to coach, and my team really enjoyed playing it. Congratulations to LASA, Stevenson, and everyone who came out!

[Cody]

These accusations of unfairness in a round-robin to a flight cut format (eliminate teams from certain spots of contention) seem very much overstated. Is seeding important? Yes. Does PACE place a lot of emphasis on getting the seeding right? Yes. What's the problem there?

More to the point, however, why are you holding up HSNCT's system as some sort of golden standard of being able to upset teams and place higher? (note: I'm of the opinion that the HSNCT format is good and that there's no real point in comparing it to NSC). Each format has its own unique pluses and minuses.

If you want to get technical, you've got a better chance of punching above your weight at NSC because one key upset can change your minimum place by 24 spots -- you don't need to win a series of games. No one criticizes the NSC format for this because it doesn't square with the empirical results of the format as used at numerous tournaments every year and a significant number of NSCs in particular.

Plus, let's take a look at the HSNCT stats. If every team took the above attitude, fully half or more of the 53rd and 77th place finishers must be livid that worse teams* such as Homestead B and Stevenson B had the gall to finish above them. AMSA and High Tech and St. John's must feel cheated that a number of 13th place teams above them are worse*. Hinsdale Central must feel really cheated because all of the 5th place finishers are clearly worse*. Why, LASA must feel the most cheated of all: their field-leading 452.3 PP20TUH outclasses TJ by 87.1, their field-leading 23.54 PPB leads TJ by 0.82 (a quite significant margin at that level of PPB), and they even beat TJ by 300 earlier in the playoffs -- NAQT should've just replaced TJ* with LASA in the final! (fun side note: I almost guarantee that you can crown a 200th+ place finisher the champion of HSNCT by following a simple transitive chain of Hunter lost to A who lost to B who lost to C who lost to... Z. Is this team the true HSNCT champion?)

*purely by looking at stats of course! I'm not saying your team is actually worse -- I'm simply using the same method of analysis as above.

[Geriatric trauma]

Singapore American A's 16th-place finish was the highest finish ever for a non-American team at NSC or HSNCT.

Congratulations to them on a truly impressive performance!

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

I understand that PACE places a lot of importance on getting seeding right but I would like to say It's basically impossible especially with international teams. How did 4 teams in the top 28 end up in the same prelim bracket? If sorted by ppb that 28 becomes 18. This seems like a significant error.

[Cody]

I understand that PACE places a lot of importance on getting seeding right but I would like to say It's basically impossible especially with international teams. How did 4 teams in the top 28 end up in the same prelim bracket? If sorted by ppb that 28 becomes 18. This seems like a significant error.

Why is it basically impossible with international teams? I was not personally involved with the PACE seeding, but when I pulled up HSQBRank to see if there was any data on Singapore American, Fred had both Singapore American A and Singapore American B in the top 200 (A at 31 - just above Barrington, and B at 191). Based on their final ranking at NSC, it would seem like there is sufficient data to seed this international team.

I don't understand the relevance of your second question: quizbowl award trophies for wins, not seeding or PPB. The top 3 teams in Hydra, including yourself, beat Southside (t-27) and only lost to each other. But finishing fourth in your bracket doesn't mean you have to finish between 37th and 48th: much like at HSNCT, if you win your games, you place higher—and Southside did! While I am not privy to the seeds of any of the teams at NSC, I believe I can safely assume that TJ A was the #1 seed in your bracket—and you beat them! I'd bet the following two statements are factually correct: (1) that was a tremendous effort on Barrington's part! (2) that upset came out of the blue to a number of people, perhaps including your team! Seeding helps ensure that all teams get a fair shot at advancing, but it doesn't bind you to a finish or prevent you from beating higher seeded teams. Nor does an "upset", or whatever you'd like to call it, necessarily indicate a problem in the seeding.

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

Both those results are from the fall and on the notion that trophies are awarded for wins we went 6-1 in the prelims. We beat TJ A. This was a surprise to all of us and maybe not inherently replicable but over the year we had beaten many Illinois teams in the top tier like Auburn and Stevenson. Your statement that Southside did not have to finish 37th-48th is true but they had to finish 25th-48th no matter how good or bad they were. I don't know how many trophies were awarded but this system likely affected the outcomes. If three teams from a prelim bracket deserve to be in the top bracket that should be able to happen. I am not going to name names but there are teams in the top bracket that I feel confident in saying I think we, Ithaca, Davis, and Southside could beat.

[Cody]

Both those results are from the fall

Why does this matter? Again—I was not involved in the seeding, but might that not be something a seeding committee would look at / think to look at? You seem set on assuming the worst about the seeding committee! Are results from the fall completely useless as a predictive tool?

I am not going to name names but there are teams in the top bracket that I feel confident in saying I think we, Ithaca, Davis, and Southside could beat.

I'd bet if you played every single team in the top flight, you'd rack up a number of wins, including at least one against a top 8 team. But the NSC is not a 96 team round robin and thus there has to be a cut-off.

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

I am not assuming the worst about the seeding committee. I simply think their job is impossible in the current system to differentiate the teams near the cut offs at 24, 48, and 72. I'd say 4 on each side so thats 24 teams or about a quarter of the field that either unfairly benefitted or was unfairly hurt by seeding. This is bad.

[Cody]

I am not assuming the worst about the seeding committee. I simply think their job is impossible in the current system to differentiate the teams near the cut offs at 24, 48, and 72. I'd say 4 on each side so thats 24 teams or about a quarter of the field that either unfairly benefitted or was unfairly hurt by seeding. This is bad.

But that's the entire point of snake seeding:

Code: Select all

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[Monstruos de Bolsillo]

I don't really know much about how PACE works in general, but what would happen in there was power-matching prelims, like HSNCT, then after that it went to group round-robins based on the prelims? For example, say everyone plays 10 games (just a number, I have no idea what would be best) and then teams with like records are then seeded based on prelim performance. All of the teams in contention (let's say 6-4, again, I have no idea) would be in with the other winning-record teams. The seeding would be like the morning, with a breakdown of top teams, middle teams, and the just eked into the playoffs. This would not penalize the top teams by forcing them into a bunch of elite vs. elite super early, and would still give the not quite as good teams a fighting chance. Then, most of the top teams would advance, with the potential for upsets, which could then transition into placement rounds and championship bracket.

The other option would be to cut down on the number of games everyone plays, or do more prelims, and skip the seeding into mixed playoff groups and instead have groups with all similar teams duke it out, so you essentially create and championship right then and there.

Obviously, I have no idea if anything I just said has any merit whatsoever, but it's just a thought.

[AKKOLADE]

If sorted by ppb that 28 becomes 18. This seems like a significant error.

Cody talked about this, but I want to talk about this specific point as the guy who's spent the past five years championing the use of PPB as a way to compare teams.

PPB is a really useful tool because it allows for comparison between teams that play the same set at different sites. Power rates and PPG aren't as good at this because they are directly influenced by the level of competition they face. Head-to-head record leads to circular comparisons and heavily emphasizes individual match-ups that might not translate to other teams. This is why I rely on aPPB for the rankings - it's pretty good at making inter-tournament comparisons.

However, for intra-tournament comparisons, the purpose of that tournament is to determine a champion, and you do that by actually having winners and losers. For any single tournament, winning is the most important data point. If you can't outscore your opposing team in a certain match, then you lose. That's the whole point of the game.

Obviously, I have no idea if anything I just said has any merit whatsoever, but it's just a thought.

Hey man: any idea with thought and reasoning behind it is worth looking at it. As long as you're making a good faith effort to contribute positively to a discussion, never apologize.

[John Ketzkorn]

If you want to get technical, you've got a better chance of punching above your weight at NSC because one key upset can change your minimum place by 24 spots -- you don't need to win a series of games. No one criticizes the NSC format for this because it doesn't square with the empirical results of the format as used at numerous tournaments every year and a significant number of NSCs in particular.

The fact that at PACE catching one packet can place you above a bunch of other teams that are *possibly* better than you is a bit of a problem. We should be trying to find the best quiz bowl team in the field with the most knowledge and are converting the most points. Isn't that the point of nationals? I know it ultimately comes down to winning your games, but I think reviewing the system to find a way to improve it wouldn't be a bad idea. Seeding teams who have never played against each other, especially some having minimum data, is bound to have some mistakes. I think having a power-matching prelim and then seeding into new pools would be something to look at.

[Cody]

If you want to get technical, you've got a better chance of punching above your weight at NSC because one key upset can change your minimum place by 24 spots -- you don't need to win a series of games. No one criticizes the NSC format for this because it doesn't square with the empirical results of the format as used at numerous tournaments every year and a significant number of NSCs in particular.

The fact that at PACE catching one packet can place you above a bunch of other teams that are *possibly* better than you is a bit of a problem. We should be trying to find the best quiz bowl team in the field with the most knowledge and are converting the most points. Isn't that the point of nationals? I know it ultimately comes down to winning your games, but I think reviewing the system to find a way to improve it wouldn't be a bad idea. Seeding teams who have never played against each other, especially some having minimum data, is bound to have some mistakes. I think having a power-matching prelim and then seeding into new pools would be something to look at.

Is it? Or does this criticism not square with the empirical results of the format as used at numerous tournaments every year and a significant number of NSCs in particular?

The fundamentals of the format NSC uses is the exact same format as hundreds of regular season tournaments. I am a firm believer (having run many tournaments, designed many schedules, and thought a lot about different formats) that the fundamental design of the format is fair. It is neither better nor worse than power-matching to whatever—just different (and suitable for a different context, typically). You're going to need to present some hard evidence if you want to claim that pretty much every quizbowl tournament ever run wasn't fair enough because it didn't feature power-matching for seeding. (I can't believe we're having THIS argument again—I wasn't even in quizbowl when this was last a thing!)

The fact that at PACE catching one packet can place you above a bunch of other teams that are *possibly* better than you is a bit of a problem.

I'll also quote this again to note that this is an unavoidable feature of all quizbowl tournaments—answer me this: why do all these posts claim that a positive trait of HSNCT is that you can play your way up (possibly by catching one packet and placing you above a bunch of other teams better than you, cf. t-77 to t-53) while at the same time claiming it is a negative trait of NSC that one team might beat another team that's seeded higher in the prelims? Might it be the case that you can't have every team play every other team and that you have to settle for certain inefficiences (which are not inherently unfair)? Or that teams beating teams is not unfair in either format, even if it is a lower seed over a higher seed?

[tabstop]

I was also wondering if anyone could elaborate on what happened yesterday with the seeding of the tier 1 playoff pools.

For the afternoon seeding, we start the seeding based solely on the stats, then adjust those base seeds to eliminate repeat matchups. After making those switches, but before printing, the file got reverted to the original version (we've got theories, up to and including Google is conspiring against us, but not a firm reason), and I did not notice that the changes had disappeared before sending the file off to be printed (which I probably should have). We'll definitely have to adjust to prevent that from reoccurring.

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

It was 100% fair in determining the top team and probably the top 16 but most teams don't come to the tournament thinking they are in that group this also affects things like small school and JV placement. If it were these are the top 10 teams and these are the rest then no issue would exist. I guess the real question is can the system be improved. In regards to other tournaments coming 25th vs 19th seems more significant than 7th vs 4th at a local tournament. Also seeding is probably better due to familiarity with local teams and a smaller tournament. I guess I am saying a national tournament might be expected to be held to a higher a standard. I guess I agree that two losses could eliminate you from championship contention but two losses on one and a half packets to the same team eliminating you from getting even 20th seems annoying. Maybe allowing at large teams in the top tier or some other device to add flexibility would be nice.