The Quizbowl Resource Center

UC Irvine will be hosting the West Regional Site for ACF Fall on November 6, 2011.

LOCATION: We have secured rooms in the Student Center (see http://uci.edu/campusmaps.php). We will likely be squatting in various areas in and around the Student Center should we get more than 14 teams signed up.

PARKING: The Parking and Transportation Office, in its infinite wisdom, has raised the parking price to $10/day for all events. There appears to be something called Permit Reciprocity if you have a faculty/staff permit at another UC school, but I don't understand it enough to tell you about it. You should plan to park in the Student Center Parking Structure. You can also park in the University Town Center across the street if you're willing to risk being ticketed.

FOOD: Lunch options include a variety of restaurants in the Student Center and University Town Center. We have yet to figure out breakfast plans.

ELIGIBILITY: This tournament uses the gentleman's agreement eligibility rules, in which each participant is asked to judge for him/herself whether playing in this tournament is appropriate given the question difficulty and likely field strength. Non-students are ineligible to participate.

PRICING STRUCTURE:
We will be using a modified ACF fee structure:

BASE FEE: $120/team
BASE FEE, one-person team funded entirely by self, writing an acceptable packet (if required) by October 9: $40
BASE FEE, two-person team funded entirely by selves, writing an acceptable packet (if required) by October 9: $60
Buzzer system: -$5/buzzer. Your buzzer must actually work to receive the discount.
Staffer: -$10/staffer. Moderating experience preferred.
Laptop: -$5. Maximum 1 per team. Must be able to read packets in whatever format we get the packets in (likely .docx). We expect to have computers available in all game rooms and would thus use your laptop only as a contingency plan.
Combo discount: teams that bring a buzzer, moderator, and laptop will receive an extra $20 discount on top of the regular $20. Up to two discounts per school.
Travel: -$10 for every 200 miles traveled one-way, as calculated by reputable online sources.
International: -$20/team for schools physically located outside the United States.
New ACF teams: -$25/team. Your team qualifies if you have not attended an ACF Fall, Regionals, or Nationals since September 2008.
New quizbowl teams: -$75/team. Your team qualifies if neither anyone on your team, nor anyone representing your school, has attended a regular collegiate academic tournament since September 2008.

In addition, all teams containing a member that participated in a regular, collegiate, academic tournament before September 1, 2010 must submit a packet of 24 tossups and 24 bonuses to play. Other teams are not required to submit a packet, but are encouraged to do so to receive feedback and take advantage of additional discounts.

Packet in by September 11: -$50 (UCI House, UCSD A, Stanford A, Claremont A, and Rancho Bernardo HS qualified for this discount).
Packet in by September 25: -$25 (-$50 for teams not required to submit a packet)
Packet in by October 9: -$0 (-$25 for teams not required to submit a packet)
Packet in by October 16: +$25
Packet in by October 23: +$50
Packet not in by October 23: +a lot, if the head editor and tournament director even allow you to play
Packet contains plagiarism: +$200, and you will be shamed publicly at the opening meeting

Packets and questions about packets should be sent to ACF Fall Head Editor Carsten Gehring at octagonjoe (at) gmail (dot) com. Packet guidelines (including distribution) can be found at http://acf-quizbowl.com/documents/packetsub.php.

Minimum fee: $0

Please note that the ACF Membership voted to eliminate the high school discount, even though the website may not yet be updated to reflect that change.

PAYING US: Checks should be made out to "College Bowl Club at UCI" and brought with you the day of the tournament. If you have no checks, bring cash, but be aware that we probably won't get the full rundown of packet discounts/penalties from the editors until the night before the tournament, so you may be paying less or more than you think. If neither of those options is possible, please let us know. It is ACF policy that no team shall be turned away for an inability to pay on the date of the tournament, as long as it is trusted that the team will eventually pay.

FREELANCE MODERATORS: We cannot overemphasize how important it is to have moderators at this tournament, especially because we are trying to actually play a house team this year. Moderators will be compensated financially in some way (either through team-related discounts or by some small cash payout) and, if they choose to eat lunch with us, will have their lunch paid for by our club.

FIELD CAP: We anticipate being able to support up to 24 teams given our expected room reservations; however, our field cap will be directly determined by the number of buzzers and moderators we are able to secure.

REGISTRATION: The TD for this tournament is Dwight Wynne (dpwynne (at) gmail (dot) com). If you are planning to attend the tournament, I need to know:
1. The number of teams you plan to take to this tournament
2. The status of each team (Regular, Undergrad, Division 2, High School)
3. Any discounts you wish to claim
4. When your packet is going to be sent to Carsten, if required

Registration will close no earlier than October 24.

Additional details will be sent out as they become known. Please let me know if you have any questions.

UCSD is coming with two teams. We're working on a second packet that will be sent out by this weekend.

UCI continues to make a push for "worst room reservations this side of Maryland:" our club found out today that although it is free to reserve rooms in Humanities Hall, Facilities Management will charge us $100/room for actually using them. Obviously this is a totally infeasible situation for hosting a tournament. We are attempting to reserve much-less-expensive rooms in the Student Center. Should that fall through, we will be exploring various alternative site options including trying to host at local high schools and squatting in various buildings our club members may have keys to.

This post will be updated once we have figured out what is going on.

Expect 2-3 teams from ASU

Expect at least one team from Caltech.

I just wanted to make sure everyone saw our date change to SUNDAY November 6th.

We expect to be able to send two teams.

Could we get an explanation for why this has been changed to Sunday? This makes it so that we get back around midnight at best.

Capricious wrote:Could we get an explanation for why this has been changed to Sunday? This makes it so that we get back around midnight at best.

As I've repeatedly posted in other threads and on the QB-WC mailing list (is someone from your school on that?), we're being charged $100/room to reserve the rooms that we want to reserve on Saturday. We did find some rooms that were available for, well, not $100/room, but we could only secure them for Sunday.

Our options were (a) lose a ridiculous amount of money on hosting the tournament, (b) figure out what rooms the keys our graduate students have open and squat in rooms, (c) move the tournament to Sunday, or (d) frantically scramble to find a different site. We regret the inconvenience to teams driving in from other areas, but we chose what we thought would be the least difficult option for our club.

Teams that have officially told me they are coming:
Rancho Bernardo
UCSD A
UCSD B
ASU A
North Hollywood A
North Hollywood B
Claremont A
Claremont B
Claremont C
UCI House (pending staffers and field size)

Teams that have sent in packets and have not officially told me they are coming:
Stanford
Caltech

Teams with various hangups about their registration status:
ASU B
La Jolla

We have seven rooms confirmed from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM. What this means is that we will be starting gameplay at 9:00 AM or whenever all the teams get there, whichever is first. This means that I may be telling moderators to start the first game without you. We will endeavor to have everything done including finals by 5 PM, though this may not be entirely feasible.

We would ideally like a field of either 11 or 14 teams. We cannot run a tournament of more than 15 teams without figuring out if and where we can squat in the Student Center. We regret this inconvenience.

The following teams have registered for ACF Fall:
Rancho Bernardo HS (D2; 1 buzzer, 0 staffers, 0 laptops)
UCSD x2 (Divisions unknown; 1 buzzer, assuming Claremont brings it, ? staffers, ? laptops)
Claremont x3 (1 D1 undergrad, 2 D2; 1 buzzer of their own, 0 staffers, 3 laptops)
North Hollywood HS x2 (2 D2; 1 buzzer, 0 staffers, 0 laptops, New to ACF discount)
ASU (presumably D2; ? buzzers, ? staffers, ? laptops)
UCI House (D1 undergrad; 1 buzzer, 4+? staffers, some number of laptops)

The following teams should confirm with me as soon as possible whether or not they're actually coming:
La Jolla HS
Caltech

I am under the impression that no other teams are coming. If this is the wrong impression, I need to know no later than 24 hours from now (say, 6:00 PM tomorrow) so that I can make the necessary arrangements.

We appear to have 5 buzzers, which is fine if we have 10 or 11 teams but we'd really like a sixth buzzer if at all possible. We would really like to not cannibalize our house team for staff, so if you have people more likely to staff than play (looking at you, UCSD), please let me know whether any of them will be staffing. If you have any question marks in your registration status, please update me.

I would like to have a cell phone number for at least one person from every registered school, in case you are late and I start stressing out about where you are.

CRITICAL INFORMATION FOR REGISTERED TEAMS
You should be parking in the Student Center Parking Structure off the corner of West Peltason and Pereira. There should be someone there to sell you a parking permit, which costs $10 for a full day. If you are feeling cheap, you can try to park for free in the In-N-Out/Taco Bell lot on the corner of Campus Drive and Bridge/West Peltason and walk one block south on West Peltason, i.e., parallel to the very parking structure you chose not to park in. There is a small chance of you getting towed if you park in the public lot; do not blame me if this actually happens. Either way, the Student Center is the big building on the other side of Pereira. I am confident that even those of you with the worst sense of direction cannot possibly screw up walking from your car to the building.

We will be meeting at 8:30 AM in Moss Cove B. This is on the first floor. If you go up any stairs you are doing it wrong. Our game rooms are Woods Cove A, Woods Cove B, Woods Cove C, Lido Isle A, and Lido Isle B. These are also on the first floor. If we end up with 12 teams we will use Moss Cove B as well. A map of the building is available at http://www.studentcenter.uci.edu/files/ ... letter.pdf. If wacky things happen and we end up with 14 teams, we will use Newport Beach A, which is on the fourth floor. Obviously I do not want 14 teams.

If you are bringing a laptop, please be aware that I don't have the faintest idea how to register guest computers for internet access at UCI. The packets will be thus tranferred via flash drive rather than e-mail. If you have a laptop, please show up around 8:30 so that we can get the packets on everyone's computer with a minimum of fuss. Similarly, if you have a buzzer system, please show up no later than 8:45 so that we can get it set up in a timely fashion.

Gameplay will start at 9:00 AM. We will almost certainly be playing an 11-round full round robin. We will have ACF-style finals for, at minimum, the overall and D2 titles. If we actually end up with 4 D1 Undergrad teams, we will contest that title as well. We reserve the right to not contest one of these finals if there is good reason not to; e.g., if a single D2 team is in the overall finals, it would be the D2 champion.

Caltech seems to have secured transportation, so our attendance is now "highly probable."

cvdwightw wrote:CRITICAL INFORMATION FOR REGISTERED TEAMS
You should be parking in the Student Center Parking Structure off the corner of West Peltason and Pereira. There should be someone there to sell you a parking permit, which costs $10 for a full day. If you are feeling cheap, you can try to park for free in the In-N-Out/Taco Bell lot on the corner of Campus Drive and Bridge/West Peltason and walk one block south on West Peltason, i.e., parallel to the very parking structure you chose not to park in. There is a small chance of you getting towed if you park in the public lot; do not blame me if this actually happens. Either way, the Student Center is the big building on the other side of Pereira. I am confident that even those of you with the worst sense of direction cannot possibly screw up walking from your car to the building.

Attendees should have gotten this email already, but sometimes people like to check things here instead, so I'm posting this here too. The above instructions are now wrong. Apparently there is something else on campus that is causing the closure of the Student Center Parking Structure and will therefore exacerbate the parking issues in the shopping center across the street.

Your best bet is to park in the Mesa Parking Structure. You can do this by taking the University Drive exit from either the 405 North or 73 South (you can also take it from the 405 South, but the 73 South will save you somewhere around 10 minutes). Turn left on University (yes, from either direction). If you're coming from the 405 North, Mesa is something like the seventh light (the first past Campus), make a left. If you're coming from the 73 South, I think it's the second light, make a right. The parking structure is on the right. A campus-wide e-mail tells me that "Traffic directors will be on hand to facilitate traffic flow," so I'm assuming that these people can direct you to the Student Center, but basically, once you exit the parking structure on foot, you want to cross the street and then keep going the way you were going (away from University), making a left on West Peltason. The Student Center is about a block away, across the street on your right.

LucasBrown wrote:Caltech seems to have secured transportation, so our attendance is now "highly probable."

Can you respond to my e-mail from this morning asking whether "highly probable" has changed to "we're definitely coming, barring extreme and extenuating circumstances" since this post? Does anyone else from Caltech read these boards and know whether you are coming? I would really like to know which of my contingency schedules and staff assignments is necessary, especially since it looks like we may be a buzzer or two short.

UCSD A, ASU "B", and Claremont A finished in a three-way circle of death at 9-1. Because we were getting kicked out of the rooms while the last round was finishing, we were unable to play a finals series and UCSD A was declared the winner based on PPG. UCSD B was the Division II winner.

STATS