Chicago Open predictions

[magin]

Instead of doing a long writeup of each team that just confirms common knowledge (e.g. "this player knows a lot about X, and this player knows a lot about Y,") I thought I'd rank the CO teams into tiers, taking into account the difficulty of the tournament.

Tier 1:
The Gorilla Wrestles with the Superman (Matt Weiner, Dallas Simons, Richard Mason, Kevin Koai)
This Civilising Love of Death (Brendan Byrne, Charles Meigs, Mike Sorice, Ray Luo)
The Solid Scholars (Jonathan Magin, Seth Teitler, Selene Koo, Bruce Arthur)
This Octopus Exploits Women (Trevor Davis, Rob Carson, Eric Mukherjee, John Lawrence)

I wouldn't be surprised if any of these teams won the tournament.

Tier 2:
An Orderly Universe of Discoverable Laws (Matt Lafer, Ryan Westbrook, Ike Jose, Andrew Hart)
A Blue Sky Out of the Oresteia (Chris Ray, Chris White, Michael Arnold, Andrew Ullsperger)
The Inexorable Sadness of Pencils (Evan Adams, Matt Bollinger, Auroni Gupta, Will Butler)

I don't think these teams will win CO, but they have the ability to beat any team in the field.

Tier 3:
The First Citizens of Contingency (Ahmad Ragab, Gautam Kandlikar, Aaron Rosenberg, Mike Bentley)
Speculative Hipsters (Libo Zeng, Phil Guan, Kurtis Droge, Mike Cheyne)
The Way a Ghost Dissolves (Henry Gorman, Thomas Littrell, Benji Nguyen, Chris Romero)

These teams look solid to me; I don't think they'll upset any of the tier 1 teams, but they could beat the tier 2 teams on a good packet.

Tier 4:
The Great Slime Kings (Michael Hausinger, Andy Kravis, Scot Putzig, Surya Sabhapathy)
Great Unaffected Vampires (Eric Kwartler, Evan Nagler, Ian Eppler, Trygve Meade)
A Tall Man Executes a Jig (Carsten Gehring, Stephen Liu, David Seal, Charlie Rosenthal)
Autobiography of a Lungworm (Dan Passner, Joe Hansen, Jacob Durst, Kirun)

I don't think these teams will upset the tier 1 or tier 2 teams, but they could upset the tier 3 teams.

Tier 5:
Academicus Anaemicus (Charles Hang, Mark Schneider, Gabrielle Lachtrup)

I don't know who two of these people are, so I put them in this tier. If they beat a bunch of tier 4 teams, I'm willing to admit I ranked them too low.

[Charbroil]

Tier 5:
Academicus Anaemicus (Charles Hang, Mark Schneider, Gabrielle Lachtrup)

I don't know who two of these people are, so I put them in this tier. If they beat a bunch of tier 4 teams, I'm willing to admit I ranked them too low.

Not that your predictions are inaccurate, but this isn't our current lineup. At the moment, it's just me and Charles Martin.

[theMoMA]

Is picking out the top quarter of teams and claiming that one of them will likely win really a "prediction"?

[magin]

Is picking out the top quarter of teams and claiming that one of them will likely win really a "prediction"?

I'm not much of a fan of predicting the exact standings, since I think the teams in each tier are reasonably evenly matched, and I can't really predict who will play to the upper range of their potential at CO. If you'd prefer an individual ranking of teams, you're free to create one.

[grapesmoker]

I predict that this will all end in tears.

[Auks Ran Ova]

In keeping with the theme of non-prediction predictions, here's some fun statistics. If you think of something potentially interesting that I didn't include, I can add it (probably).

Teams containing previous CO champions: 6 (TGWwtS, TCLoD, TSS, TOEW, AOUoDL, ABSOotO)
Teams containing multiple previous CO champions: 4 (TCLoD (Byrne/Sorice), TSS (Magin/Teitler), TOEW (Mukherjee/Carson), AOUoDL (Lafer/Hart))
Teams containing previous winners of multiple COs: 3 (TGWwtS (Weiner (4)), TCLoD (Sorice (2)), ABSOotO (Ullsperger (2)))
Winners of multiple COs not appearing in 2010: 6 (Yaphe (3), Hillemann (3*), Berdichevsky/Hentzel/Pike/Waters (2 each))
Previous editors of CO playing: 6 (Romero (2006), Teitler (2007), Westbrook (2008), Kwartler/Davis/Meade (2009))
Undergraduates** playing: 35
Undergraduate percentage of field: 35/57 = 61.403%
High schoolers*** playing: 4
High school percentage of field: 4/57 = 7.018%
Tears predicted: 1.0 endingsworth

*includes Virginia Open
**includes all graduating (and nongraduating) fourth-years and high schoolers
***includes graduating seniors

Code: Select all

LIST OF PREVIOUS VO/CO WINNERS

ALPHANUMERICAL | NUMERALPHABETIC
---------------------------------
angel          | weiner
berdichevsky   | weiner
berdichevsky	| weiner
borglum        | weiner
byrne          | yaphe
carson         | yaphe
dhuwalia       | yaphe
hamilton       | hillemann
hart           | hillemann
hentzel        | hillemann
hentzel        | berdichevsky
hillemann      | berdichevsky
hillemann      | hentzel
hillemann      | hentzel
hoppes         | pike
kendall	     | pike
lafer          | sorice
litvak         | sorice
magin          | ullsperger
mckenzie	    | ullsperger
mukherjee	   | waters
pike           | waters
pike           | angel
potru          | borglum
rappaport      | byrne
sorice         | carson
sorice         | dhuwalia
teitler        | hamilton
turner         | hart
ullsperger     | hoppes
ullsperger     | kendall
vinokurov      | lafer
waters         | litvak
waters         | magin
weiner         | mckenzie
weiner         | mukherjee
weiner         | potru
weiner         | rappaport
whited         | teitler
yaphe          | turner
yaphe          | vinokurov
yaphe          | whited

[grapesmoker]

what is wrong with you rob carson

[Auks Ran Ova]

what is wrong with you rob carson

when I grow up I want to be dwight wynne*

*rumor unconfirmed

[theMoMA]

Is picking out the top quarter of teams and claiming that one of them will likely win really a "prediction"?

I'm not much of a fan of predicting the exact standings, since I think the teams in each tier are reasonably evenly matched, and I can't really predict who will play to the upper range of their potential at CO. If you'd prefer an individual ranking of teams, you're free to create one.

Right, I'm just saying that if those are the top four teams, one of them is 74th percentile and one of them is 100th percentile. It's the same as saying that "one of these eight likely top-bracket teams will win ICT" in a given year. Not really a discussion-starter, if you ask me.

[grapesmoker]

You fools bet against Ahmad at your own peril.

[DumbJaques]

Like Jerry, I encourage people to keep in mind that Ahmad averaged like 75 ppg on the Emergency editor packets.

[Terrible Shorts Depot]

ahmad ragab once saved baby seals from being clubbed. and then he cured cancer.

[Mechanical Beasts]

I figure I might take a break from editing to pitch in here.

Tier 1:
The Gorilla Wrestles with the Superman (Matt Weiner, Dallas Simons, Richard Mason, Kevin Koai)
This Civilising Love of Death (Brendan Byrne, Charles Meigs, Mike Sorice, Ray Luo)
The Solid Scholars (Jonathan Magin, Seth Teitler, Selene Koo, Bruce Arthur)
This Octopus Exploits Women (Trevor Davis, Rob Carson, Eric Mukherjee, John Lawrence)

I question placing TGWwtS here. The three other Tier One teams have the three best science players in the field; TGWwtS has a general knowledge of science--Dallas is getting good at physics, and Matt's heard a lot of questions--but can't reliably compete with the others. That's a two to three tossup differential right there--and you're going to have to prove to me that that team has a two to three tossup advantage in the humanities. Each of those teams has an excellent history player and an excellent literature player; some have two! You heard it here not first: if TGWwtS beats any of the three teams in this tier, it's going to happen on a packet with a lot of unusual results--maybe one with disproportionately hard science, at the very least.

Among the other three, I'd put TCLoD and TSS a bit above TOEW.

Tier 2:
An Orderly Universe of Discoverable Laws (Matt Lafer, Ryan Westbrook, Ike Jose, Andrew Hart)
A Blue Sky Out of the Oresteia (Chris Ray, Chris White, Michael Arnold, Andrew Ullsperger)
The Inexorable Sadness of Pencils (Evan Adams, Matt Bollinger, Auroni Gupta, Will Butler)

Bold prediction: one or two of these teams will upset TGWwtS. As for the games between these three teams and the other three Tier 1 teams, there will be at most one or two upsets. I'd put The First Citizens of Contingency here, by the way--while I don't think they'll beat a Tier 1 team, they're drawing even with the Tier 2s.

Tier 3:
The First Citizens of Contingency (Ahmad Ragab, Gautam Kandlikar, Aaron Rosenberg, Mike Bentley)

No time for anything else.