ANNOUNCEMENT: MAGNI, A Fall Tournament (Oct. 15-29, 2011)

[RyuAqua]

I’m pleased to officially announce MAGNI, a new collegiate tournament to be played in the fall of 2011. MAGNI is a collaboration between Chris Chiego and Auroni Gupta at UCSD, Matt Jackson, John Lawrence, and Kevin Koai at Yale, and Jerry Vinokurov, whose sterling editing credentials are well-known. Several newer writers from UCSD will also be contributing to the project.

Questions:
We expect to write the entirety of 14 packets between us; as such, teams may play this tournament without writing questions or submitting packets. Yay!

The packets will have the following distribution:
4/4 Literature (World Literature will be slightly under 1/1)
4/4 Science (1/1 bio, 1/1 chem, 1/1 physics, 1/1 other sci)
4/4 History
{3/3 Religion, Mythology, Philosophy (1/1 each)
3/3 Fine Arts (1/1 painting, 1/1 art music, 1/1 other arts, split evenly visual and auditory)
1/1 Social Sciences
1/1 Geography and Current Events}
1/1 Trash
1/0 Tiebreaker - Rotating Big Three

This adds up to 22/21 - each packet will have a 20/20 regular game, one extra bonus, and two tiebreaker tossups - one taken at random from the set of non-Big Three academic tossups in the {brackets}, and one from a Big Three subject.


Difficulty and Length:
MAGNI aims to invest the concept of “regular difficulty set” with a new or rediscovered meaning: We intend to write a set that we can earnestly encourage all collegiate teams to play and get points on. On one end, we are working hard to ensure that new / improving teams and former high school players still get plenty of points in some competitive games; on the other, prospective national championship teams and grizzled veterans will still be able to make a statement about how good they are by playing this set against one another. To this end, answer selection will be rooted deeply in real-world importance and across-the-board answerability. Tossups should feature enough early and middle clues to distinguish between the best full-strength teams while still being straightforward enough at their ends for the rest of the field to show what it knows at every opportunity. All bonuses will have an easy part that we expect to be answerable with little effort by the overwhelming majority of the nationwide field, a middle part that we expect half the field to know, and a hard part which will test deep knowledge of the subject matter among the top teams at each regional site.

In addition to controlling difficulty, we will also be controlling length. No tossup in this set will go past the seventh full line of text (measured in 10 point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins). We seek to ensure that individual bonus parts rarely exceed two lines in length.

If one needs a reference to previous tournaments as to what we aim for, ACF Regionals 2011, T-Party 2010, and Penn Bowl 2007 through 2010 (but not 2011) are decent reference points. If we err from those reference points, we seek to err slightly on the side of increased conversion. MAGNI will not be power-marked.

Eligibility:
This is a tournament for collegiate quizbowl teams. To that end, any teams consisting entirely of students (undergrad or grad) who attend the same school may play this tournament. Interested high school teams are eligible to play, as are solo players and teams which must play unaffiliated / unsponsored for whatever reason, but all such teams must consist entirely of students who attend one school. High schoolers enrolled in for-credit classes at a community college, college, or university may play for either school in which they are enrolled. Separate campuses of an overarching university count as separate schools. To clarify, all graduate students who are doing work
towards a degree are eligible, as is the case for ACF eligibility (i.e. if one is working towards a Ph.D but is not enrolled formally in classes for credit, they are eligible).

NO open teams or non-students may register to play at any site of this tournament. This editors' decision is non-negotiable.

If you are still unclear as to whether you’re eligible to play on a given team, email Auroni Gupta and Matt Jackson (auronigupta@gmail.com, mbjackson10@gmail.com).

Hosting / mirroring:

MAGNI will be available for hosting starting on Saturday, October 15th and ending Sunday, October 30th. We strongly encourage hosts to host on the 15th or 22nd if possible. In keeping with scheduling reform, we seek to get the set played, in every region, in as short a timeframe as possible and clear it for public discussion before ACF Fall happens.

Though hosts may deviate from this within reason, here is the default fee structure which hosts can expect to charge for MAGNI:
Base fee: $100 per team, -$10 per subsequent team (3 teams thus being 100 + 90 + 80 = $270)
Buzzer discount: -$10 per working buzzer
Moderator discount: -$10 per moderator
Travel discount: -$10 per 200 miles traveled


A list of confirmed host sites and their dates follows. If you don’t see your region on here or believe your region is large enough to accommodate / necessitate another mirror, email Auroni Gupta and Matt Jackson (auronigupta@gmail.com, mbjackson10@gmail.com).


Northeast: Brown University (with some Yale staff), Saturday, October 29. Contact Ian Eppler at ian_eppler@brown.edu or see thread.
Mid-Atlantic: George Mason University, Saturday, October 22. Contact Ben Cole at ben.cole.19@gmail.com or see thread.
Southeast: University of South Carolina, Saturday, October 15. Contact Eric Douglass at ericd25@hotmail.com or see thread.
Florida: Valencia College, Saturday, October 15. Contact Billy Beyer at wfb04@my.fsu.edu or see thread
Lower South: Rice University, Saturday, October 29. Contact Zachary Yeung at zyeung@gmail.com or see thread.
West Coast: UCSD, Saturday, October 29. Contact Auroni Gupta at auronigupta@gmail.com, or see thread.
North: Carleton College, Saturday, October 22. Contact Max Henkel at max.c.henkel@gmail.com or see thread.
Midwest: Ohio State, Saturday, October 22. Contact Andy Sekerak at Sekerak.9@osu.edu or see thread.
Lower Midwest: Missouri S&T (Rolla), Saturday, October 29. Contact Alex Smith at alexpsmith@gmail.com or see thread.
Northwest: None
Canada: McMaster, Saturday, October 29. Contact McMaster Quizbowl at macquizbowl@gmail.com or see thread.

MAGNI is shaping up to be a high-quality event for all college quizbowl teams in every region this fall. We hope to see you there!

[Transparent Pudding]

MAGNI is in all-caps, but you never say what it stands for. I've spent a while trying to figure it out, but I feel like making this post is easier

[Frater Taciturnus]

MAGNI is in all-caps, but you never say what it stands for. I've spent a while trying to figure it out, but I feel like making this post is easier

I would assume it is the son of THUNDER.

[RyuAqua]

MAGNI is in all-caps, but you never say what it stands for. I've spent a while trying to figure it out, but I feel like making this post is easier

Man...acronyms get nastily irritating.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

I don't think THUNDER ever stood for anything either.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

MAGNI is in all-caps, but you never say what it stands for. I've spent a while trying to figure it out, but I feel like making this post is easier

I would assume it is the son of THUNDER.

Correct. Although, in light of this being part of a general effort to restore fall tournaments to actual regular difficulty, I'm all in favor of having it stand for: Making ACF-style Genuinely Not Impossible.

[RyuAqua]

See above for small updates on hosts and hosting.

[RyuAqua]

Progress continues on the writing of this set, so I figured it was time for a brief update -- we now have five mirrors lined up for MAGNI. We're still looking to get a mirror in every major region - in particular, we've received no emails with regard to hosting in Canada, and want to make sure this tournament happens there as well. (EDIT: We now have a Northeast site.)

The original post has also been updated with distributional info.

[DumbJaques]

Progress continues on the writing of this set, so I figured it was time for a brief update -- we now have five mirrors lined up for MAGNI. We're still looking to get a mirror in every major region - in particular, we've received no emails with regard to hosting in the Northeast, Lower Midwest (Missouri/Kansas), and Canada, and want to make sure this tournament happens there as well.

The original post has also been updated with distributional info.

Have you found a Mid-Atlantic home for this tournament yet?

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

Progress continues on the writing of this set, so I figured it was time for a brief update -- we now have five mirrors lined up for MAGNI. We're still looking to get a mirror in every major region - in particular, we've received no emails with regard to hosting in the Northeast, Lower Midwest (Missouri/Kansas), and Canada, and want to make sure this tournament happens there as well.

The original post has also been updated with distributional info.

Have you found a Mid-Atlantic home for this tournament yet?

We have contacted GMU about hosting but they have not gotten back to us.

[Habitat_Against_Humanity]

If the northeast mirror is held at Yale, I can probably come staff for it.

[Sun Devil Student]

On one end, we are working hard to ensure that new / improving teams and former high school players still get plenty of points in some competitive games; on the other, prospective national championship teams and grizzled veterans will still be able to make a statement about how good they are by playing this set against one another.

I apologize in advance for any offense caused by my sounding skeptical, but I'm wondering how this is actually possible. How's the set shaping up - is it turning out more like an ACF Regionals-like set, or more like a "novice+" set, or something else? Or does it actually cover the entire difficulty spectrum from Regionals lead-in all the way down to CollegiateNovice giveaway within every single tossup? (Doing this within only 7 lines would give lots of small difficulty cliffs, I'd assume. Well, that's better than having one big one at the end at least.)

Most important questions: Is this a set you would recommend, in good faith, to a team of four college freshmen who have never seen a buzzer in their life - and could two such teams reasonably expect to combine for 250-300 points on any packet in this set?

(Match scores of something like 160-120 or 180-100 or so is my arbitrary threshold of "high-scoring enough to be fun" based on empirical observation. Obviously this is not a hard and fast rule, just an approximation of what I've personally seen.)

[Sun Devil Student]

P.S. I do want to say kudos to the set writers for trying, even if they don't actually succeed. I also recognize that freshmen in Arizona may lag behind the kind of college freshman you're using to calibrate CollegiateNovice difficulty given the exceptionally underfunded public education system in Arizona compared to most places. If that's beyond your ability to accommodate with this set, I understand - it's only possible to stretch one tossup so far when you give yourself only 7 lines of text to work with. I'd just like to know so that my team can warn new players about the difficulty appropriately, if we attend this tournament.

[dyetman89]

freshmen in Arizona may lag behind the kind of college freshman you're using to calibrate CollegiateNovice difficulty given the exceptionally underfunded public education system in Arizona compared to most places.

At the risk of derailing this thread, I for one am pretty skeptical of efforts to deduce some kind of causal relationship between "amount of money thrown at a school district" and "success at quizbowl" - at any rate, no one's ever been able to put forward a case purporting to instantiate such causation that couldn't have been accounted for just as plausibly by some confounding variable[s] (there have been whole threads on this matter, presently hibernating somewhere in the forum archives). I spent the lion's share of my highschool quizbowl career in the DC-NYC-Boston environs, playing against scores of teams from some of the wealthiest school districts in the nation, and I must say I didn't detect any unusually high level of latent qb talent among the casual teams who tramped out. Was there a higher density of such latent talent relative to, say, a rural backwater, assuming we could control for population size and all that jazz? Perhaps - but the gulf is not as wide as you might suspect.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

On one end, we are working hard to ensure that new / improving teams and former high school players still get plenty of points in some competitive games; on the other, prospective national championship teams and grizzled veterans will still be able to make a statement about how good they are by playing this set against one another.

I apologize in advance for any offense caused by my sounding skeptical, but I'm wondering how this is actually possible. How's the set shaping up - is it turning out more like an ACF Regionals-like set, or more like a "novice+" set, or something else? Or does it actually cover the entire difficulty spectrum from Regionals lead-in all the way down to CollegiateNovice giveaway within every single tossup? (Doing this within only 7 lines would give lots of small difficulty cliffs, I'd assume. Well, that's better than having one big one at the end at least.)

When we want to say that this set will have something for everyone, we really do mean it. You absolutely should bring a team of players, none of whom have played a tournament before, to this event. They might not put up dominating stats, but if they are intellectually curious, they will recognize several things and will get points. What they don't get will be stuff that has the potential to expose them to new topics.

Moreover, the change that we are trying to make has been done before, quite recently actually, at a higher difficulty level. VCU Open 2011 was the most accessible hard tournament ever written, in part because of the many answer-lines it contained that are mainstays of lower difficulty levels. We wish to apply this concept to an easier difficulty level, so that there will be a mixture of high school, easier college difficulty, and traditional regular college difficulty answer lines.

[grapesmoker]

P.S. I do want to say kudos to the set writers for trying, even if they don't actually succeed. I also recognize that freshmen in Arizona may lag behind the kind of college freshman you're using to calibrate CollegiateNovice difficulty given the exceptionally underfunded public education system in Arizona compared to most places. If that's beyond your ability to accommodate with this set, I understand - it's only possible to stretch one tossup so far when you give yourself only 7 lines of text to work with. I'd just like to know so that my team can warn new players about the difficulty appropriately, if we attend this tournament.

We're trying to make this set accessible by having somewhat challenging questions on answer lines that are accessible to the general field. Obviously I can't tell you much more than that. But I want to reassure you of the abilities of everyone working on this set; we know what we're trying to do with this set and we're more than capable of doing it.

[Sun Devil Student]

You absolutely should bring a team of players, none of whom have played a tournament before, to this event. They might not put up dominating stats, but if they are intellectually curious, they will recognize several things and will get points. What they don't get will be stuff that has the potential to expose them to new topics.

Would you be able to give any kind of estimate of what kind of "non-dominating" stats these might be? What does "several things" mean - that they'll convert a quarter of the tossups and have heard of another quarter, or that they'll actually have heard of 85% of the tossup answers and almost all the easy bonus parts and actually convert 8 tossups out of 20? (In the former case, two teams would end up with not only 10 dead tossups but these would be 10 dead tossups that are total gibberish to them, as opposed to the latter case where there might still be 7 or 8 dead tossups but most of them will be familiar answers.)

If two teams of absolute novices are going to end up with final scores of 80-60 after 20 tossups, then I would be hesitant to recommend that kind of slugfest to them, whereas if they could be reasonably assured of something like 200-150 (which requires, in theory, converting almost all tossups and approaching 10 PPB) then that would almost guarantee them having a good time at the tournament. If it's going to be more like 140-100 *but* with tossup and easy part answers they're guaranteed to have heard of even if they can't convert, then that's okay, however if it's 140-100 with a lot of unfamiliar material then that reduces the playability at the bottom of the field considerably (though not so far as to destroy it entirely, as would occur with an 80-60 final score).

If you really have no idea, then I'd understand since this tournament is being produced for the first time, but I'd appreciate more of a sense of what it will be like for the worst players.

[Matt Weiner]

Are you seriously demanding that people guarantee the exact scores that your B team will put up?

[Sun Devil Student]

Are you seriously demanding that people guarantee the exact scores that your B team will put up?

Not exact. Approximate. And I'm not "demanding a guarantee" but rather asking if the tournament writers (who are very experienced at this kind of thing) can give an estimate.

And I'm not worried about my B team here. I'm worried about F or G teams and whether they'd enjoy this as their first or second tournament ever. A couple bad blowouts don't prevent enjoyment of a tournament. Super-low-scoring defensive matches all day, however, do. Especially for new players who will use this experience to decide whether they like the game or not. If they're going to leave, I want them to leave because they don't like the competition itself, not because they got overwhelmed by an irreversible first impression of "impossibility."

Again, I'll understand if you can't give this kind of estimate with any accuracy. I just thought it wouldn't hurt to do some due diligence and ask.

[Horned Screamer]

This is a stupid thread.

User was warned for violating rule 3.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

Are you seriously demanding that people guarantee the exact scores that your B team will put up?

Not exact. Approximate. And I'm not "demanding a guarantee" but rather asking if the tournament writers (who are very experienced at this kind of thing) can give an estimate.

And I'm not worried about my B team here. I'm worried about F or G teams and whether they'd enjoy this as their first or second tournament ever. A couple bad blowouts don't prevent enjoyment of a tournament. Super-low-scoring defensive matches all day, however, do. Especially for new players who will use this experience to decide whether they like the game or not. If they're going to leave, I want them to leave because they don't like the competition itself, not because they got overwhelmed by an irreversible first impression of "impossibility."

Again, I'll understand if you can't give this kind of estimate with any accuracy. I just thought it wouldn't hurt to do some due diligence and ask.

People who have never picked up a buzzer before are the hardest people to predict results for.

For example, in the literature questions (which I am editing), I am trying to cater to such people by asking about things that I expect them to have encountered in real life, to have read for classes and in their spare time, and to have heard of even if they haven't read them. But there are highly varied levels of reading knowledge among people who've never played quizbowl, so I can't tell you what percentage they will answer.

You are going to be in a better position to make the kind of estimates you want when you see them in practices than we are ever going to be, sitting in our armchairs, conjuring images of hypothetical freshmen. I think the most important thing is to run practices on questions of the level of tournament that you're planning on taking them to. My suggestion is to try to take them to ACF Novice early in the year to make sure they experience a true easy tournament, and then read them ACF Winter 2010, Penn Bowl 2010, and/or ACF Regionals 2010-2011 in the practices in between Novice and MAGNI, to see how they enjoy playing questions of that level. Try letting your F team play your G team on a packet from one of those tournaments and take a look at the scores yourself. If they take to those questions, don't hesitate in the least to take them to MAGNI. If they find them a little bit too challenging, still take them; we're keeping greater accessibility in mind. But if they're evidently not having fun at all at questions of that level, then it might be better to let them sit this one out and wait for ACF Fall. Even if they don't enjoy questions of this difficulty yet by mid-October, I strongly suggest that you keep reading regular difficulty in practices so that they might be ready to go to a regular difficulty tournament by second semester.

Also, if retention is your goal, I suggest you not focus so much on how they're scoring. Talk to your teammates to find out what they enjoy. Some of them are going to be scrappy and enjoy playing questions on which they perform badly. Some will not. Be sensitive also to what role they want to play on a team, and don't rigidly adhere to stats in deciding who should be on which team. You might have a budding specialist in a particular category who will never put up very high stats no matter which team you put him on. Such a player might benefit from being the the fourth seat on the B or C team rather than the captain of your F or G team, so he can get used to being a cog in a machine, since that's his ideal role. Likewise, two decent generalists whom you were thinking of lumping together on a B or C team might improve more if you separate them and give them each a chance to be lead scorer on a slightly weaker team. In other words, you might find that more balanced D through G teams make for a better playing experience than teams that are distinctly striated by strength. Or you might not.

No amount of detailed questioning of us is going to help you improve their playing experience more than your working closely with them and experimenting with them.

[grapesmoker]

Not exact. Approximate. And I'm not "demanding a guarantee" but rather asking if the tournament writers (who are very experienced at this kind of thing) can give an estimate.

Dude, you're asking for the impossible. Of course we can't possibly tell you how your teams will do; we don't even know your teams! John's suggestion above is the best: sit them down at an ACF Regionals packet and see what happens. I've seen varying results for new players, which also obviously depend on who they're playing. We don't want to put ourselves out there by making an unfounded prediction about two Arizona teams we don't know and then have it come back to bite us. So yeah, just run the experiment John suggests and see what happens and decide on the basis of that whether this is a tournament for your F and G teams.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

I think John made the post that I was going to make with much more eloquence. I am taking a similar approach with the bio and chem questions in this set, all of which should be possible for people who take classes, read bio journals, or are otherwise curious about these two disciplines. Forget about how your newest recruits are scoring, I have actually seen your newest players from previous years get crazy good buzzes just from knowing things outside of quizbowl study and I think your confidence in these players' abilities and self-esteem is disappointingly lacking. One thing that we will not be doing is punishing you for not having read packets to prepare for this tournament, but, by the same token, we will not reward you for solely relying on rote memorization of packets either.

[Sun Devil Student]

John, Jerry, and Auroni - Thank you all so much for your detailed advice. Don't get me wrong, there are a few new freshmen who I know are "scrappy" (like I myself was - it took me a long time to realize not everyone takes crushing losses as well as I do) and there are a few who are unusually good coming in because they did quizbowl or Academic Decathlon or other such things in high school, and I'm not worrying about them at all; it's just that not all players fit that ideal description. In my time coaching ASU, I did actually do exactly what John suggested, for example ASU teams B through E at last year's ACF Fall were intended to be equally strong while minimizing shadowing effects, with F serving as a buffer for last-minute drops and A holding the team members who were too good to not greatly shadow everyone else.

I'm actually no longer in charge at ASU Quizbowl, having recently retired in order to spend more time securing myself a future career, but I'll pass your advice on to the current officers. I do hope I'll be free to play this tournament at UCSD's site, too. :)

[DumbJaques]

Until John Lawrence guarantees the ppb of an all-Puerto Rican Maryland L Team, I will not authorize my club to attend this tournament. I will also burn one piece of George Crumb sheet music every half-hour until these demands are met; afterwards, I will keep doing that.


On a more pertinent note, has GMU actually indicated any interest in hosting this event? That would be outstanding.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

On a more pertinent note, has GMU actually indicated any interest in hosting this event? That would be outstanding.

We took the initiative to contact them, but we haven't heard from any GMU person in a couple of weeks now. If anyone else on the Midatlantic wants to host, please don't hesitate to email either Matt or myself.

[Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr.]

I will also burn one piece of George Crumb sheet music every half-hour until these demands are met; afterwards, I will keep doing that.

Pretty sure John would do that for you if you asked.

[ThisIsMyUsername]

I will also burn one piece of George Crumb sheet music every half-hour until these demands are met; afterwards, I will keep doing that.

Pretty sure John would do that for you if you asked.

While I wouldn't go that far, I will say that the gentle crackling of the burning paper would certainly be the prettiest sounds those pieces ever produced.

[The Laughing Cavalier]

Hey Matt Jackson, I need to link to a tournament announcement in the budget I have to submit by Wednesday. Since there is no Mid-Atlantic announcement yet, would you mind editing the fee structure into your main post? Thanks!

[RyuAqua]

The mid-Atlantic site will be George Mason University, and will likely be tournament directed by Ben Cole. If any schools in the Pacific Northwest are interested in hosting a mirror of MAGNI for their circuit, please contact Auroni and me ASAP.

[RyuAqua]

The Canada site will be held at McMaster University on October 29th, the same place where Canadians can get their fix of MOO on the 15th or ACF Fall on November 5th. The above information has been updated accordingly.

[RyuAqua]

As of yesterday evening, every question in the MAGNI set has been written. We are well underway with putting questions into packets and performing a final check for length, appropriate difficulty, and grammatical coherence.

Once the set has run at its first sites this Saturday, we hope to establish a subforum (which you'd get access to from the "Usergroups" section of the Control Panel) in which players can discuss specifics of the set before it officially clears for public discussion on the 30th. More info on that as it arises.

EDIT: As of 8:11 PM EST, the MAGNI set has been completed and sent to its initial hosts.

[RyuAqua]

We now have a private subforum set up for discussion of MAGNI. To join, go into your User Control Panel, select the "Usergroups" tab, scroll through the (long) list to find "MAGNI discussion," click on the circle to the right, make sure the dropdown box says "Join selected," and hit "Submit." I will not approve you to join discussion in the group unless I know that you have played or staffed the set, though we'll be opening up discussion to the public (i.e. people who neither played nor staffed) after the last site ends on the 29th.

[RyuAqua]

All mirrors of MAGNI are now completed and the set is cleared for public discussion. The subforum should become publicly visible shortly (so those threads can continue there), and the set will be up on the Internet sometime within the next 24 hours or so.

EDIT: The subforum should now be publicly visible even to those who aren't logged in. If you're having trouble with this, contact me or an administrator and we'll see what's up.

In addition, the set, as reported in the subforum, is now available publicly at http://srivatsa.org/packets/magni2011/. If your organization is interested in using it for NASAT tryouts or something of the sort (though this tournament is most likely to be more difficult than NASAT), the burden is on your organization to contact the likely players and encourage them not to read ahead.