The Quizbowl Resource Center

So, I am really happy with the way this poll turned out, and I hope that this can be a tradition that continues in the future. In the interest of full disclosure, I received 32 non-spam, eligible ballots. I did not use the results from 2 of them because of either obvious bias or an obvious lack of research. In one case, I reached out the the email provided and the respondent agreed the ballot should be thrown out and in the other case the respondent did not provide an email and thus I made the executive decision to throw out the ballot. In addition, I have uploaded the raw response data here. The only edits I have made to that data are the removal of respondents' names, the correction of spelling errors in names, and the removal of nicknames, e.g. "Jas" became "Jaskaran."

The results from the 30 used ballots are as follows, each player received 40 points for being ranked 1st, 39 for being ranked 2nd, etc. and received no points if they did not appear on the ballot. Along with the total number of points, I have also reported each player's average ranking (in the ballots that ranked that player), the percentage of ballots that the player appeared on, the highest and lowest ranking each player received (again only considering ballots on which they were ranked), and the number of first place votes they received.

1. Clark Smith (Dublin Scioto), 1190 Points, Ranked in 100.0% of ballots, Average ranking 1.33, Median ranking 1, High: 1-Low: 6 (26 first place votes)
2. William Golden (Taylor), 1138, 100.0%, 3.07, 2, 2-7
3. Hari Parameswaran (Beavercreek), 1046, 96.7%, 4.93, 4, 1-19 (1)
4. Jeffrey Qiu (Canyon Crest), 1040, 100.0%, 6.33, 6, 2-15
5. Alex Schmidt (Lehigh Valley), 1026, 96.7%, 5.62, 5, 1-14 (1)
6. Fred Zhang (Thomas Jefferson A), 1024, 96.7%, 5.69, 6, 1-11 (2)
7. Justin French (Crystal Springs Uplands), 1000, 96.7%, 6.52, 6, 2-24
8. Vishwa Shanmugam (Downingtown STEM), 908, 93.3%, 8.57, 9, 5-14
9. Jack Lewis (Battle Ground), 842, 96.7%, 11.97, 10, 4-29
10. Jaskaran Singh (Plano West), 819, 93.3%, 11.75, 11, 4-20
11. Geoffrey Chen (Wayzata), 787, 86.7%, 10.73, 9, 3-32
12. Jakob Boeye (Centennial), 735, 90.0%, 13.78, 13, 4-22
13. Robert Crawford (DCC), 687, 80.0%, 12.38, 11, 3-37
14. Daniel Ma (Hunter), 657, 80.0%, 13.62, 12, 8-32
15. Govind Prabhakar (Stevenson), 576, 80.0%, 17.0, 17, 6-29
16. Tora Husar (Wayzata), 556, 76.7%, 16.83, 15, 5-28
17. Grant Li (Thomas Jefferson A), 552, 73.3%, 15.91, 16.5, 3-27
18. Chloe Levine (Hunter), 537, 83.3%, 19.52, 19, 6-36
19. Ethan Strombeck (Rockford Auburn), 519, 73.3%, 17.41, 15, 12-34
20. Alex Hu (Richard Montgomery), 516, 73.3%, 17.55, 17.5, 6-26
21. Rohan Hegde (Thomas Jefferson A), 441, 63.3%, 17.79, 19, 4-35
22. Chinmay Murthy (LASA), 407, 66.7%, 20.65, 21, 14-31
23. Anson Berns (Montgomery Blair), 379, 63.3%, 21.05, 21, 11-38
24. Douglas Simons (High Tech), 369, 70.0%, 23.43, 24, 17-33
25. Daniel Wang (Canyon Crest), 356, 60.0%, 21.22, 20, 12-33
26. Max Shatan (Bard), 301, 60.0%, 24.28, 25, 14-38
27. Ben Miller (Montgomery Blair), 265, 53.3%, 24.44, 24, 12-36
28. Olivia Lamberti (Stevenson), 205, 56.7%, 28.94, 28, 15-40
29. Akshay Govindan (Ladue), 163, 43.3%, 28.46, 29, 23-36
30. Adam Howlett (Richard Montgomery), 151, 33.3%, 25.9, 26, 11-35
31. Boopala Arul (Canyon Crest), 132, 30.0%, 26.33, 28, 20-31
32. Thomas Gioia (Plano West), 127, 36.7%, 29.45, 32, 17-36
33. Shomik Ghose (St. John's), 117, 33.3%, 29.3, 30.5, 18-38
34. James Kuang (Thomas Jefferson B), 116, 40.0%, 31.33, 31.5, 23-38
35. Nick Rommel (Lexington), 115, 40.0%, 31.42, 31, 17-40
36. Raj Paul (Ladue), 108, 36.7%, 31.18, 32, 24-37
37. Ethan Skinner (Davis), 103, 36.7%, 31.64, 34, 23-38
38. Tejas Santanam (Early College at Guilford), 101, 33.3%, 30.9, 30.5, 17-40
39. Jacob Augelli (Robinson), 93, 23.3%, 27.71, 25, 18-39
40. Kevin Huang (Chatttahoochee), 79, 20.0%, 27.83, 30.5, 9-37
Also receiving votes: Sharath Narayan (77 Points), Eshaan Vakil (72 Points), Hanson Hao (70 Points), Sam Brochin (67 Points), Gram Brinson (52 Points), Avi Ackermann (47 Points), John John Groger (46 Points), Justin Young (43 Points), Graham Stockton (42 Points), Naveen Raman (39 Points), Joe Kammann (37 Points), Andrew Hoagland (35 Points), Anthony Duan (34 Points), Alistair Gray (26 Points), Benjamin Xu (23 Points), William Gentry (23 Points), Akaash Para (18 Points), Sam Oguntoyinbo (18 Points), Swapnil Garg (17 Points), Catherine Qian (15 Points), Julia Tong (14 Points), Kevin Yu (12 Points), Ashwath Seetharaman (12 Points), Kevin Wang (9 Points), Deepak Moparthi (9 Points), John Luke Broussard (7 Points), Rishi Banerjee (7 Points), Olivia Chen (4 Points), Matthew Siff (2 Points), Kevin Kodama (2 Points), Sohum Shenoy (1 Point), Vikshar Athreya (1 Point)

The above is computer output. I tried to check it as thoroughly as I could, but there is still the chance of an error. If you think I made a mistake, please PM me. Thank you to everyone who participated and congratulations to the Player Poll's Player of the Year Clark Smith as well as to everyone else that made it onto the rankings. I intend to either run this again next year or assist someone else in doing so, so if you have any feedback about how it was run either post it here or PM me.

Since the rankings were initially posted the following changes have been made:
Because of Find-and-Replace, Tejas Santanam was incorrectly referred to as Tejaskaran
One ballot incorrectly referred to Ethan Skinner as Ethan Davis
One ballot incorrectly listed Geoffrey Chen twice
School affiliations added
Median added
High-Low made more readable

ansonberns wrote:Tejas Santanam was incorrectly referred to as Tejaskaran

And they said Infinity War is the most ambitious crossover event in history.

In all seriousness, thank you for organizing this!

Is there a list of people who voted?

High Dependency Unit wrote:Is there a list of people who voted?

Because I promised that this poll would be anonymous, I am not going to release this list.

If we do this player poll next year, I feel like there should be some sort of warning when a person leaves a currently top-ten ranked player off their ballot. The spots at the top were very close, and even one person forgetting about a top player can change the rankings. At 4-5-6, Alex and Fred's average ranking and median ranking were both better than Jeffrey's, but because Jeffrey received that one more vote he got the number 4 spot.

Thank you for running this and organizing the data! I'm sure it must have been a decent amount of work.

So something to consider for next time is excluding the highest and lowest ranking of each player. I'd be interested in seeing how that would effect the rankings, as there is no reason Hari/Justin/Alex should not have been in everyone's top 10 let alone not be in the rankings at all.

EDIT: I can read

Illinois Admin wrote:So something to consider for next time is excluding the highest and lowest ranking of each player. I'd be interested in seeing how that would effect the rankings, as there is no reason Hari/Justin/Alex should not have been in everyone's top 10 let alone not be in the rankings at all.

EDIT: I can read

I actually did do that just to see what would happen, and the results are pretty uninteresting. Even if you remove each player's top and bottom ballot, the rankings are essentially unchanged. The first difference between all rankings and top and bottom thrown out occurs at position #33. The full rankings with top and bottom removed are as follows:

1. Clark Smith
2. William Golden
3. Hari Parameswaran
4. Jeffrey Qiu
5. Alex Schmidt
6. Fred Zhang
7. Justin French
8. Vishwa Shanmugam
9. Jack Lewis
10. Jaskaran Singh
11. Geoffrey Chen
12. Jakob Boeye
13. Robert Crawford
14. Daniel Ma
15. Govind Prabhakar
16. Tora Husar
17. Grant Li
18. Chloe Levine
19. Ethan Strombeck
20. Alex Hu
21. Rohan Hegde
22. Chinmay Murthy
23. Anson Berns
24. Douglas Simons
25. Daniel Wang
26. Max Shatan
27. Ben Miller
28. Olivia Lamberti
29. Akshay Govindan
30. Adam Howlett
31. Boopala Arul
32. Thomas Gioia
33. James Kuang
34. Shomik Ghose
35. Nick Rommel
36. Raj Paul
37. Ethan Skinner
38. Tejas Santanam
39. Jacob Augelli
40. Hanson Hao

EDIT: Actually I just realized that what this actually does is throw out the top and bottom ballot where the player is ranked. Throwing out unranked ballots does not actually affect point totals and thus doing it that way would only affect players who are ranked in every ballot (Clark, William, and Jeffrey). While that would make a few changes in the top because of how tight the margin is, I initially decided against doing it that way because it wouldn't affect point totals much for everyone but those three players. The other thing is that people need to remember that it was actually only mandatory for each respondent to rank 10 players. That means that not ranking a player could be equivalent to ranking them 11+ and not necessarily 41+.

In retrospect, Ethan was pretty underrated here.

Kevin and Mitch were also very underrated

There's no good, easy way to rank the best quiz bowl players across the country. A player's stats can be influenced by how good their team is, how good their opposition is, and the types of questions they hear. That's why I don't think the individual leaderboards at tournaments mean anything.

One way to potentially solve the problems of players dominating weak circuits and differences in packet difficulty is by looking at tournaments that almost all these players attended (like HSNCT). A player (Alex Schmidt, for example) could play as a team by themself and be the top scorer at those tournaments. However, this would be largely skewed because other strong players have good supporting casts around them, causing them to not score as high.

Another problem of player polls is geography. I don't think that regional bias is a big problem in quiz bowl, but some players simply aren't as familiar with others who live across the country (through no fault of their own). An example of this is with Shripad Badithe of Irvine. At many tournaments, Shripad outscored Jeffrey Qiu, Daniel Wang, and Boopala Arul, both in head-to-head games and overall. In this particular poll, Jeffrey was ranked by every voter, Daniel by 60%, and Boopala by 30%. However, Shripad did not even receive one vote. Understandably, his high stats are skewed because Irvine is significantly weaker than CCA A. However, with his numbers, had I voted, I definitely would've included him in my top 40. Definitely not as high as Jeffrey and maybe Daniel, but in there.

It isn't anybody's fault that Shripad (and the many others in similar situations) aren't getting the attention they deserve. These players don't play for teams that finish in the top 50 of nationals year in and year out. This just goes to show that there isn't a good method of determining top players.

However, I think these player-poll rankings are definitely better than what is on hsqbrank.com. I admit I'm not the most familiar with the top quiz bowl players across the country, but from what I do know, what Morlan has on there doesn't seem right (Hari Parameswaran being ranked player of the year???).

joshxu wrote: Another problem of player polls is geography. I don't think that regional bias is a big problem in quiz bowl, but some players simply aren't as familiar with others who live across the country (through no fault of their own). An example of this is with Shripad Badithe of Irvine. At many tournaments, Shripad outscored Jeffrey Qiu, Daniel Wang, and Boopala Arul, both in head-to-head games and overall. In this particular poll, Jeffrey was ranked by every voter, Daniel by 60%, and Boopala by 30%. However, Shripad did not even receive one vote. Understandably, his high stats are skewed because Irvine is significantly weaker than CCA A. However, with his numbers, had I voted, I definitely would've included him in my top 40. Definitely not as high as Jeffrey and maybe Daniel, but in there.

It isn't anybody's fault that Shripad (and the many others in similar situations) aren't getting the attention they deserve. These players don't play for teams that finish in the top 50 of nationals year in and year out.

I personally don't think geography is a big issue. You can easily find stats on Neg5, NAQT, TQBA, and the hsqb database for any tournament held anywhere in the country (or in other nations).

Furthermore, I'm not sure you fully took into account the fact that both Daniel and Boopala played together, and also with Jeffrey Qiu, one of the best players from this season. It's significantly more difficult to record 10 powers while playing next to a teammate with 20 powers, as opposed to being the lead scorer on a team and getting 10 powers by yourself. Recording the individual stats that the three CCA guys did while playing together is very impressive. This is not to say that Shripad isn't a great player, but I think in the context of the poll results, it makes sense why Daniel and Boopala got more attention.

If I were to plug anyone who didn't make the list or get any votes, it would definitely have to be Alex Donovan of MICDS, who for reasons unknown to me did not attend either nationals. But it seems like he did attend WUHSAC, which was run on BHSAT.

The geography problem is that people don't always know which stats to look at. I don't expect everybody to dig up stats from a random school across the country that has a terrific player but didn't attend every tournament and consistently puts up mediocre showings at national tournaments. Again, this isn't anybody's fault.

I think the only accurate way to rank quiz bowl players is by having an individual tournament, such as IPNCT.

joshxu wrote:The geography problem is that people don't always know which stats to look at. I don't expect everybody to dig up stats from a random school across the country that has a terrific player but didn't attend every tournament and consistently puts up mediocre showings at national tournaments. Again, this isn't anybody's fault.

I think the only accurate way to rank quiz bowl players is by having an individual tournament, such as IPNCT.

The issue with IPNCT is that not everyone goes and that generalists are disadvantaged in the prelims and advantaged in the playoffs (vice versa for specialists). Also that tournament is run on (a slightly changed) Division II ICT, which is very much not a high school nationals set (and if you're going to rank players, rank them based on the 1-2 tournaments they're preparing the most for).

And Josh, the fact is that if you are one of the top 40 players in the country, your team should not have mediocre showings at national tournaments (with exceptions, like if you are one of the top 15 individual scorers). Like I'm not sure what rationale you use to judge players, but my thought process would be "If I want to win a national championship, which of these players would I want the most?" and those players are either on contending teams or putting up boatloads of points. There are really good players who didn't attend national championships (Thomas Freedman of Torrey Pines is really good based on the SoCal results I just looked at) but ultimately the burden of recognition falls on the player, who should be attending major tournaments.

I agree that at present, IPNCT isn't a great tournament.

However, you can't necessarily expect a top 40 player to carry their team individually (outside of the top 15-20 or so), as is the case with many unranked players in this poll who don't play for top-tier teams.

There really isn't a way to get your name out there when you're on a slightly above average team (such as Irvine) in a circuit dominated by the same two/three teams every year.

If only there was a way to rank teams nationally.

I just thought I'd give my input on this.

joshxu wrote:There's no good, easy way to rank the best quiz bowl players across the country. A player's stats can be influenced by how good their team is, how good their opposition is, and the types of questions they hear. That's why I don't think the individual leaderboards at tournaments mean anything.

Context is important. If I was to ever a ranking list of the best players (provided I knew enough about them), I'd consider context too.

I feel that the leaderboards serve some purpose. To show how good your average points per game is compared to everyone else in the field.

If you're the lead scorer on a team and dominate your team's scoring (to provide an example, this would be like scoring 100+ PPG and everyone else on your team is scoring somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 to 15 PPG, or something), naturally you're going to be on the top of the leaderboard, or at least near the top of it.

But if you're on an incredibly balanced team where everyone's putting up similar enough numbers that all your PPG averages are within a 10 to 15 point range of each other, you're all going to be really close to each other on the leaderboard, and where on the leaderboard depends on the rest of the field.

I'd consider something like that, PPG in relation to the rest of your team and in relation to the rest of the field.

And consistency, too. At one tournament, someone on your team might have a really good day and get 100+ PPG, and at the next tournament, that same person might have a really bad day and get 20 PPG. I know this is pretty extreme and there's a big gap between 20 and 100 PPG. High PPG is important because it shows you know a lot, but I like consistency, too, because while you might have the high PPG you might freeze up one round due to nerves and not maintain your numbers. Consistency shows you can buzz when your team needs it, compensate for a nervous high scorer, etc.

joshxu wrote: There really isn't a way to get your name out there when you're on a slightly above average team (such as Irvine) in a circuit dominated by the same two/three teams every year.

This is basically why I feel context is important

joshxu wrote:There really isn't a way to get your name out there when you're on a slightly above average team (such as Irvine) in a circuit dominated by the same two/three teams every year.

Yes, there is. Max Shatan of Bard (and, by the way, I would like to make clear that to call both Irvine and Bard "slightly above average teams" is to sell both teams short) was ultimately ranked #26 on the player poll despite ostensibly falling into the same category as Shripad: they both score a disproportionately high amount of their teams' points, they both did not finish in the top 20 at any nationals they attended (discounting IPNCT, for obvious reasons), and they both compete in extremely competitive circuits. The difference is that Max was statistically better than Shripad in every aspect at HSNCT; whereas Shripad's teammates reaped a combined PP20TUH slightly lower than that of Shripad's PP20TUH, Max's PP20TUH was higher than double the combined PP20TUH of his teammates (as well as considerably higher than Shripad's) while leading his team to both a higher finish and PPB. Additionally, Max was a PACE All-Star and notably got 10 tossups in their game against Katy Taylor, and while I do think Shripad is undoubtedly an insanely talented player, I think most people can agree that Shripad would not have been able to feasibly accomplish either of those feats had Irvine attended PACE.

Ultimately, Shripad was not ranked for the same reason that players like Wilder Seitz of Barrington weren't ranked – there's no denying their insane talent, but the fact that they were unable to lead their teams to sufficiently high finishes (like the CCA folks) or have seriously stellar nationals performances (like Max) did not justify their inclusion on this poll (one of my own teammates falls into this same category as well, and as a result, I did not rank him either).

In a player poll like this, we wouldn't expect players such as Shripad or any of the other players we mentioned to crack the top 40. However, each of these players probably deserved to receive at least a couple votes. These players had better overall numbers than some of those in the "others receiving votes" section.

I believe that Jeffrey, Max, and many of the other ranked players we've mentioned deserved to be ranked above Shripad. However, we should remember that Shripad outscored Jeffrey, Daniel, and Boopala in most of the head-to-head matchups between Irvine and CCA. This is skewed though because CCA won all of those games.

joshxu wrote:In a player poll like this, we wouldn't expect players such as Shripad or any of the other players we mentioned to crack the top 40. However, each of these players probably deserved to receive at least a couple votes. These players had better overall numbers than some of those in the "others receiving votes" section.

I believe that Jeffrey, Max, and many of the other ranked players we've mentioned deserved to be ranked above Shripad. However, we should remember that Shripad outscored Jeffrey, Daniel, and Boopala in most of the head-to-head matchups between Irvine and CCA. This is skewed though because CCA won all of those games.

In order to receive votes in this poll, the voter had to rank them in their top 40. Therefore, if no one would expect players such as Shripad to be cracking the top 40 (as you said), they shouldn't be receiving votes (which is what happened).

Shripad also may have outscored Jeffrey, Daniel, and Boopala in Irvine vs. CCA matchups, but keep in mind that Shripad is barely shadowed by his teammates, whereas the CCA trio all shadow each other. Therefore, it is not productive for the purposes of this discussion to ruminate on the fact that Shripad outscored the individual CCA players. It's still very impressive, to be sure, but that wasn't enough justification for the voters to rank him in their top 40, which is why he didn't receive any votes.

Thiccasso's Guernthicca wrote:

joshxu wrote:In a player poll like this, we wouldn't expect players such as Shripad or any of the other players we mentioned to crack the top 40. However, each of these players probably deserved to receive at least a couple votes. These players had better overall numbers than some of those in the "others receiving votes" section.

I believe that Jeffrey, Max, and many of the other ranked players we've mentioned deserved to be ranked above Shripad. However, we should remember that Shripad outscored Jeffrey, Daniel, and Boopala in most of the head-to-head matchups between Irvine and CCA. This is skewed though because CCA won all of those games.

In order to receive votes in this poll, the voter had to rank them in their top 40. Therefore, if no one would expect players such as Shripad to be cracking the top 40 (as you said), they shouldn't be receiving votes (which is what happened).

I meant cracking the top 40 overall.

Remember that we are ranking the top 40 players from across the country. The entire CCA trio deserved to be in there or at worst just outside it. However, that does not mean Shripad or the similar players that we've mentioned shouldn't also have been in the conversation. Some players who did receive votes probably shouldn't have, too.

joshxu wrote:

Thiccasso's Guernthicca wrote:

joshxu wrote:In a player poll like this, we wouldn't expect players such as Shripad or any of the other players we mentioned to crack the top 40. However, each of these players probably deserved to receive at least a couple votes. These players had better overall numbers than some of those in the "others receiving votes" section.

I believe that Jeffrey, Max, and many of the other ranked players we've mentioned deserved to be ranked above Shripad. However, we should remember that Shripad outscored Jeffrey, Daniel, and Boopala in most of the head-to-head matchups between Irvine and CCA. This is skewed though because CCA won all of those games.

In order to receive votes in this poll, the voter had to rank them in their top 40. Therefore, if no one would expect players such as Shripad to be cracking the top 40 (as you said), they shouldn't be receiving votes (which is what happened).

I meant cracking the top 40 overall.

Remember that we are ranking the top 40 players from across the country. The entire CCA trio deserved to be in there or at worst just outside it. However, that does not mean Shripad or the similar players that we've mentioned shouldn't also have been in the conversation. Some players who did receive votes probably shouldn't have, too.

Winning more games solves all problems and respect from your peers for your ability is more important than a poll number. Of course, the latter is a reflection of the former, but the biases identified above (favoring leaders who can put up big number over team players who could totally do that on their own) are inevitably going to creep in. And of course, some people also have different criteria for ranking players. Which brings us back to my first sentence.