Tiers of players?

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Peter13
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Tiers of players?

Post by Peter13 »

With the Chicago Open coming up, I was wondering about the quality of depth of players. One thing that has weighed on my mind is the thought of tiers of players. I always thought that players are a continuum, and that there are a vast amount of subjects that players know, so it would be hard comparing an Eric Mukherjee to a Matt Jackson. But looking at the recent player polls, people have discussed to death differences between the two and who is better. But I am wondering are there tiers? And if there are, how do we classify players of differing ability?
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

I personally think that Eric Mukherjee is OP and should be nerfed in the next patch.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by AKKOLADE »

Seth Teitler got all his wins just because of cheap combos that should have been banned from competition tournaments.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by merv1618 »

Ukonvasara wrote:I personally think that Eric Mukherjee is OP and should be nerfed in the next patch.
His final smash wasn't all that great though.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

merv1618 wrote:
Ukonvasara wrote:I personally think that Eric Mukherjee is OP and should be nerfed in the next patch.
His final smash wasn't all that great though.
Chicago Open 2014: FOX ONLY FINAL DESTINATION NO ITEMS
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Peter13 wrote:I always thought that players are a continuum, and that there are a vast amount of subjects that players know, so it would be hard comparing an Eric Mukherjee to a Matt Jackson.
Even if we have no choice, is there still a continuum? Are the players well-ordered? What is the cardinality of the set containing quizbowl players?
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The video game references are pretty funny, but I'll offer a little shot at some serious effort towards this sort of speculation/theory/whatever:

To me, it makes the most sense to group people in tiers of knowledge in particular categories. A generalist can thus be defined as somebody who achieves some minimum tier of knowledge in the majority of categories of questions. These are difficulty-specific, though, and as the difficulty decreases the ability to have lockdown knowledge of any category also decreases due to buzzer races and the limited number of clues in questions.

Basically, the "tiers" of knowledge in a category are essentially arbitrary and depend on two things: How early you can get tossups in that category, and how often you actually get that category of questions against a median team (which is a function of the first thing, as well as miscellaneous things like playing strategy, aggressiveness, etc).

Even within large categories like "history" you still have differential abilities on different subcategories. For example, within history, Mike Cheyne is best at American history, Eric Mukherjee is best at modern and Asian history, and Marshall Steinbaum is best at modern US and European history. I wouldn't call any of these players Tier 1 at the subject - the only people who I think have deep knowledge across most times and places in history are Jeff Hoppes and Matt Bollinger (though Matt Jackson and Jarrett Greene deserve mentions as very well-balanced, and I don't know what Charles Tian really knows, though he knows a lot of things really well).

Quizbowl has so many subcategories and levels of knowledge that it's really hard to make a specific, definitive ranking or formula for valuing players. It's easy to make some general statements (i.e. "Tommy Casalaspi is really good at science, lit, and arts"), individual knowledge of individual question-specific content (i.e. "Ashvin buzzed in the second line of that Hanuman tossup - he must know a lot about that), and even one-vs-one comparisons of knowledge about some subject in the case where it's clear-cut (i.e. "Brian McPeak is better than Chris Manners at science"). It's hard to fit this into an overall hierarchy.
Last edited by naan/steak-holding toll on Thu Jul 17, 2014 12:58 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by Cheynem »

I'm more of a Pier 1 player.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by merv1618 »

Ukonvasara wrote: Chicago Open 2014: FOX ONLY FINAL DESTINATION NO ITEMS
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

merv1618 wrote:
Ukonvasara wrote:I personally think that Eric Mukherjee is OP and should be nerfed in the next patch.
His final smash wasn't all that great though.
That hurts.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by Ike »

Ukonvasara wrote:I personally think that Eric Mukherjee is OP and should be nerfed in the next patch.
Done. Eric's team now starts with -50 points every game. We dismissed Gautam and had Nick J. edit all of the bio, who convinced us that it is reasonable to have at least 8/8 questions on savaging. I've replaced all the organic chemistry with alchemy, and all questions on Star Wars, comics and whatever else he's good at have since been converted into questions on " hair products, seasonally-inappropriate clothing, and completing eponyms."

Where will the metagame go next?
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by powerplant »

Is Joe Flacco elite?
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by Peter13 »

All joking aside, I will try to give my answer to Will's remark about different categories. While I agree a hierarchy is hard to come by, I certainly see how overall ability, even if completely different specialties (or none in particular) can be compared. But is it arbitrary to just randomly pick a certain point to say when one set of players is better than another? I don't see how it could be for teams, but how about players?
Last edited by Peter13 on Sat Jul 19, 2014 1:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by Gautam »

Ike wrote:
Ukonvasara wrote:I personally think that Eric Mukherjee is OP and should be nerfed in the next patch.
Done. Eric's team now starts with -50 points every game. We dismissed Gautam and had Nick J. edit all of the bio, who convinced us that it is reasonable to have at least 8/8 questions on savaging. I've replaced all the organic chemistry with alchemy, and all questions on Star Wars, comics and whatever else he's good at have since been converted into questions on " hair products, seasonally-inappropriate clothing, and completing eponyms."

Where will the metagame go next?
Word on the street is that the Bio questions are being subcontracted to a 4th grader living along the Hoogly river whose parents want him to win the Bournvita Quiz Contest. Unless his name is also Nick J, in which case. It was not clear whether the "Bio" meant "Biology" or "Biography" so I'm pretty sure the kid is writing tossups in Bangla on the Life and Times of Auroni G.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by bradleykirksey »

powerplant wrote:Is Joe Flacco elite?
No. He's like Sam Bradford but with a slightly better final smash. For now I put him half a tier behind Ness or Roethlisberger.
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Re: Tiers of players?

Post by merv1618 »

bradleykirksey wrote: He's like Sam Bradford but with a slightly better final smash.
Hey now. We goin' all the way this year.
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