ANNOUNCEMENT: ACF Winter at Stanford

[wmrowan]

Stanford will be hosting 2010 ACF Winter. The tournament will be held January 16, 2010, which is the Saturday of MLK weekend.

To register teams, please email wmrowan AT stanford DOT edu with the number of teams you plan on bringing, as well as the number of staffers and/or buzzers you will bring.

Location: The tournament will be held in the Old Union, Lasuen Mall and White Plaza, Stanford, CA 94305. Free parking is available in the nearby Tresidder parking lot. The meeting room and registration time will be announced soon.

Packet submission: According to the ACF guidelines, any team with at least one person on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament prior to September 1, 2008 is required to submit a packet in order to participate in an ACF tournament in 2009-2010. Please refer to http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8778 for specifics on the packet submission. Packets should be emailed to acfwinter AT gmail DOT com.

Fee Schedule: We will be using the standard ACF Fee schedule.

Base fee - $120 per team.

Packet submission discounts/penalties:

Packet submitted prior to or on:
November 22, 2009: -$50
December 6, 2009: -$25 (-$50 for teams not required to submit packets)
December 20, 2009: No penalty (-$25 for teams not required to submit packets; optional packets will not be accepted after this deadline)
December 27, 2009: +$25
January 3, 2010: +$50
After January 3, 2010: The editors may grant one or more 24-hour extensions at an additional penalty of $10 per day.

Other discounts/penalties:

Fully functional buzzer systems: -$5 per buzzer (No maximum)
Staffers: -$10 each (No maximum)
Laptop: -$5 each (Maximum 1 per team.)
Travel: -$10 per 200 miles (one way, as determined by Google Maps)
International: -$20 (For teams representing schools located in a different country than the tournament host.)
Schools new to ACF: -$25
Teams new to quizbowl: -$75
High school teams: -$50

Minimum fee: $0

For further information regarding these discounts, please consult: http://acf-quizbowl.com/documents/packetsub.php#fees
Payment will be due at check-in. You can pay in cash or with a check made out to "Stanford Quiz Bowl Club."

[every time i refresh i have a new name]

UCSD is very surely driving up with one team.

[idrayer]

UCLA has already submitted 1 packet, so expect at least 1 UCLA team, more if we can get some novices to show up.

[manary]

Caltech is writing 1 packet, but may or may not send a team. Probably, but not 100%.
Micah

[Sun Devil Student]

Two ASU teams should be coming to this (each with one packet for your entertainment). Most of our people were unfortunately not able to attend due to the increased cost/distance.

I have a special favor to ask on behalf of ASU quizbowl. I hope it is not too great an inconvenience for the rest of this circuit, but if it is, I understand.

First, I would like to thank all the more-established teams that attended ACF Fall this year, for *not* playing their top players/teams, thus allowing newer teams like us to actually have some bonuses come our way on occasion. ASU's 11 new recruits had a great first experience in pyramidal quizbowl and many of them have become regular members of our club.

However, we're now at a stage where it would be a great service to our team's future development as a contributing member of your West Coast circuit if our members could witness a team actually score 20+ PPB in "regular difficulty" matches. So, I humbly request that someone at this tournament play their best A team and show us an example that we can try to emulate.

The two teams we are sending contain our most committed D2 players (and all our D1's, including our coach) and there is little worry of any of them being demoralized into quitting. But they have never had the chance to actually see a good-team-on-regular-difficulty with their own eyes. They need inspiration of a kind that I and my officers cannot provide. So if one of the other teams at this tournament could do this for us, we would appreciate that very much.

Thanks!

[Charbroil]

Now, I can't speak for those teams that will be attending ACF Winter at Stanford, but I have to admit, I doubt that any team is going to be influenced by this kind of request either way. Not only do most team heads not have the authority to force people to attend or not attend tournaments, but I imagine that everyone is going to attend this tournament who can and is willing to write a packet (just like every tournament, notwithstanding the gentleman's agreement about high class players not playing in novice events).

[every time i refresh i have a new name]

A full strength (or very close to it) UCSD team will represent UCSD at this event.

[manary]

Yeah - we have a big extracurricular activity that day so its just the people who aren't going that will play qb - i.e. none of our a team.
Micah

[Sun Devil Student]

To the UCSD team: Thank you very much!

To Caltech and everyone else: I understand. Hope all those other events go well for you.

[yjna4006]

Hello. Mission San Jose will attend with 3-4 teams.

[idrayer]

Can we get a field update soon?

[Bentley Like Beckham]

If ACF Winter at UW falls through (which it might), I may play in this tournament as Bellevue College.

[Bentley Like Beckham]

Ok, sign me up for this tournament.

[Bentley Like Beckham]

Also, just to clarify, you guys are honoring the "Discounts for shorthanded teams in financial duress:" section of the ACF Pricing guidelines, right?

[manary]

Caltech will NOT send a team to this tournament. Apparently something came up.
Micah

[Bentley Like Beckham]

Can we get a field update soon?

[wmrowan]

Field update:

3 MSJ teams
1-2 Stanford teams
1 UCLA team
1 UCSD team
2 ASU teams
+ 1 player from Bellevue College

Teams should also note that the meeting time will be 10am in room 216.

[idrayer]

What building? Is it The Armory?

[Schweizerkas]

Location: The tournament will be held in the Old Union, Lasuen Mall and White Plaza, Stanford, CA 94305. Free parking is available in the nearby Tresidder parking lot.

Room 216 of the Old Union.

[Bentley Like Beckham]

Field update:

3 MSJ teams
1-2 Stanford teams
1 UCLA team
1 UCSD team
2 ASU teams
+ 1 player from Bellevue College

Teams should also note that the meeting time will be 10am in room 216.

Just to be clear, I plan on playing as a "team" and not a "player" (which implies a free agent or something), as per ACF eligibility rules.

[Bentley Like Beckham]

By the way, if people are interested in playing my visual tournament (and Stanford has a projector available), I'd be willing to run it this weekend.

[unnecessarily hot]

EDIT: Never mind, I see that the answer to my question was answered above. Anyway, Berkeley is sending 1 team.

[recfreq]

i'd love to play the visual tourney; sounds like a great idea.

[Sun Devil Student]

Certain members of my ASU delegation are very interested in the visual tournament, but unfortunately we all leave early Sunday morning, so if you could do this on Saturday night after ACF Winter finishes that would be great. I know this is a very late request and if it's not possible, we understand.

[every time i refresh i have a new name]

This happened, Stanford's house team (Andrew, Arnav, Brian) won undefeated after a 9 round full round robin and a 3 round playoff round robin. UCSD lost twice to Stanford and finished second. Prelim stats up to round 9 are here: http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/qb ... winter2010

[Bentley Like Beckham]

Thanks to Stanford for hosting this. A special thanks to Brian for obtaining a projector so we could run the visual tournament for people who felt like sticking around.

I would like make the following suggestion to all California schools. Print out schedules and scoresheets before the tournament starts! My memory could be failing be, but I don't think I've been to a tournament in California where we've not had to copy the entire schedule down from the board after someone tries to write one up by hand after waiting for every team to show up. Just do yourself a favor and come up with a schedule for n, n+1 and n-1 teams ahead of time and print it out. This will help eliminate all of the 15+ minute delays that always happen when printed schedules aren't provided.

Also, print out invoices so you don't need to waste time doing math in your head for discounts.

[Swank diet]

If you're going to set 10 AM as a start time (is this standard West Coast procedure?) then you should have the tournament up and running by then. Spending lots of time trying to figure out how to run a 4-team playoff also seemed like a bit of a waste and organization in general was a bit lax. It's just common courtesy to teams who are driving 8 hours to play at your tournament to have the basics set up in advance. Also, it seemed like one moderator in particular was extremely slow and running behind all the time, so it would've been nice to have him replaced to speed things up. I know things happen, but these seemed like preventable delays for the most part.

I did like that a projector was available for the visual tournament and the location itself- with lots of couches, food available downstairs, rooms all in one small area, etc. was exceptional. I'd love to drive back up to Stanford for more tournaments, but I hope they will proceed at a faster clip and be a bit better-organized than this one.

[Sun Devil Student]

To Stanford tournament staff:

Great tournament. Thanks for hosting us and for schooling us in the art of quizbowl, for which I transmit to you the expressed gratitude of several ASU quizbowlers.

I just realized I forgot to get a receipt from you guys for our $105 registration fees. Can you e-mail one to asuquizbowl@gmail.com?

Thanks!

[cvdwightw]

If you're going to set 10 AM as a start time (is this standard West Coast procedure?)

I don't think this is standard West Coast procedure, but a side effect of hosting at some schools. I don't believe that the Old Union even opens until 10, and ACF Regionals is likely to start at 10 because I'd rather have teams get an extra half-hour of sleep rather than wait for half an hour while the Irvine staff figures out how to deal with whatever crisis we've discovered the Irvine Scheduling Department has foisted on us that morning.

[Avram]

If you're going to set 10 AM as a start time (is this standard West Coast procedure?) then you should have the tournament up and running by then.

Most UCLA events have a 9:00 start time, and while we haven't always been great about actually starting at 9, I don't think we've been consistently significantly late.

[Sun Devil Student]

Prelim stats up to round 9 are here: http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/qb ... winter2010

Any word on the full stats (including playoffs)?

My D2 captain has already asked where to find the stats for this tournament.

Also, if someone in charge at Stanford could e-mail my club a receipt for the registration fees that would be great.

[Schweizerkas]

The stats for the playoffs may now be found here:
http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/qbsql/stats_team.php?t=acfwinter2010p.
Sorry for the delay.