Aggressiveness

[jeremylu]

When should a team go aggressive?

For example, if its a very important game and you're down by a lot, should you buzz when you are not completely sure of the answer, but fairly sure? If you have a big lead should you go aggressive or play it conservative? And last, what other situations should you buzz when you are 50-75% sure but not completetely?

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

You should not overlook the importance of your opponent. In general, you want to be aggressive against a better team. If they know more stuff than you do, then over a large sample of clues you should expect them to get more buzzes. If you minimize the number of clues heard in the match, it's a better chance that the game will be played on an unrepresentative sample of clues, one that you might randomly have an advantage on.

The downside to being aggressive against a superior team is also smaller. If you neg, odds are they would have beat you to it anyway even if you hadn't buzzed there, so you only really lose 5 points a lot of the time and not 5 points plus the rest of the swing.

[theMoMA]

I think it's very important to look beyond powers and negs when you're calculating how aggressive to play. In formats with powers and/or negs, I'd guess something like one in a hundred matches is decided by points accrued from powering or negging questions. So my advice is simply to ignore "getting power" as a good thing, and to ignore "negging" as a bad thing, and instead focus on simply balancing the risk of zeroing out your team against the reward of a possible tossup and bonus. In short, divorce your aggressiveness from stats, likes powers and negs, that don't actually contribute much to how likely your team is to win the game.

[Al Hirt]

When should a team go aggressive?

For example, if its a very important game and you're down by a lot, should you buzz when you are not completely sure of the answer, but fairly sure? If you have a big lead should you go aggressive or play it conservative? And last, what other situations should you buzz when you are 50-75% sure but not completetely?

If you're down by a lot don't neg yourself out of the game but make sure to play smart. That means treat each question as its own independent event. You may have negged the last question but you may know the next one immediately. A lot of it is mental conditioning, but you get that from experience.

[jeremylu]

Well, our team lives off of 2 things:
1. Bonus Conversion
2. Powers and Negs.

We had this epic >100 point comeback in like 4 tossups because of our ability to power. However we also get lots of negs (which is mostly me). For example I buzzed when i heard "john paul jones" and I had to guess between REvolutionary war or 1812. So against a better team, buzzing earlier would be generally better. IF we have a lead that is 50+ should we ease off a little and play a little conservative?

[Cheynem]

I would probably try learning that John Paul Jones didn't fight in the War of 1812, first.

[AKKOLADE]

Well, our team lives off of 2 things:
1. Bonus Conversion
2. Powers and Negs.

As do most quiz bowl teams.