Half Hollow Hills West Invitational (Dix Hills, NY 1/7/2012)

[Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill]

That is exactly what happened. Hunter C was in playoffs, Hunter D was not.

[WSchneider]

No Hunter at all?
Edit: Actually never mind. I think someone said that Hunter would be sending their C and D teams for this, so I guess that is plausible.

The Hunter teams in attendance were C and D. Also, the team USA was comprised of Woodlands/Morristown Beard players, for anyones interest.

[thebigbossandy]

Congratulations to St. Joe's A on 1st place and to Georgetown Day School B for 2nd place.

[Redgrass1]

Is anyone going to post the stats? Just wondering where it would be.
(Join the group!)

[Granny Soberer]

Great Neck South was 3rd, White Plains was 4th, Ardsley was 5th

[Important Bird Area]

Stats will be up on naqt.com sometime soon.

[SpeedyJohn]

I just wanted to give a shout-out to David Madden and the Ridgewood quizbowl team for giving us a ride back to Manhattan. Thanks to them, we were able to make our train by seconds, and rather than being stranded on Long Island we will be back home in DC.

--Georgetown Day Quizbowl Delegation

"NHBB must not be destroyed"
--Cato the Elder

[Granny Soberer]

Yeah, that was great of David and Ridgewood to do. Once my thoughts are more coherent, i.e. tomorrow, I'll post my final thoughts, but suffice it to say that while this tournament was a lot of fun and ran very well for so many teams, there were some big problems keeping it from being as good as it could be.

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

Yeah, that was great of David and Ridgewood to do. Once my thoughts are more coherent, i.e. tomorrow, I'll post my final thoughts, but suffice it to say that while this tournament was a lot of fun and ran very well for so many teams, there were some big problems keeping it from being as good as it could be.

I agree with Ryan's points, especially as by talking to him I am pretty sure I know what many of his thoughts are from talking to him, but I will let him become coherent instead of duplicating what he would say.

And yes, I think it was a great thing of Dave Madden to offer to do, GDS B seemed incredibly stressed by the belief that they would miss their train, and I am sure it is a great relief to them that they did not miss it, and it is best that they had the opportunity to play in the final round and not have to miss a final match for such an unfortunate reason.

[jonpin]

I am back from moderating. The tournament was going remarkably smoothly for a 101-team tournament (plus one Team USA to round out the brackets), with the first 5 rounds done by 2 PM. Perhaps it will be of interest to note that computational math toss-ups were crossed out; computational math bonuses were left in.

I find this to be damning with faint praise. Having one game done by 10:30, and five games done by 2pm (when an already generous schedule says these will happen by 9:45 and 1 respectively) is not "remarkably smoothly". If you wish to defend this by saying "It's such a large tournament, it's hard to run it better", that to me says that the tournament is too large to run well.

How the brackets were arranged I do not know.

Seventeen prelim groups of six. From what I could tell from the schedule, the apparent #1 seeds won 15 of the 17 groups. Georgetown "B" beating Seton Hall and Mountain Lakes beating "Tribeca" A were the exceptions.

Some constructive criticisms for next year:
1. Having 100 teams clamor for schedules at the same time after having waited for half an hour is not going to work very efficiently. If you absolutely must (re)print schedules the morning of for a tournament this massive, have teams go to their round one games (making any quick corrections by hand) and have your runners pass out new schedules to the rooms after round one. That'll save a lot of time.
2. Have clear rules for the playoffs. The switch to two parallel groups at the Elite Eight was nice as it did allow the best teams more head-to-head games, but you should decide and publish ahead of time the seeding criteria (original seeds, performance over 2 playoff games, or all 7 games combined) and rules (presumably 1-4-5-8 and 2-3-6-7). There was also uncertainty as to whether the top two from each group were advancing to semifinals (the schedule in the mailed packet said it would go straight to a final, and I don't think anything contradicted that at any point).
3. If possible, give a 5- or 10-minute lesson in scorekeeping to the non-quiz bowl helpers. They may still need an experienced mod to explain what's going on, but it's better than them having never seen a scoresheet before.
4, Variety in moderators. A team shouldn't play all five morning rounds with the same moderator, just for the sake of variety and to avoid any unfairness from a team that becomes accustomed to a moderator's rhythm or vice versa can't understand a mod's accent.

[Arthur.Ramsay]

Hello to all:

I would just like to take the time to recognize a few amazing people who made this day a success.

Mr. Diver and Mr. Truocchio, as second- and first-year coaches, for helping to organize this torunament.

The teams, without whom there would have never been a tournament in the first place.

Teacher and Coach Moderators, who were fantastic at making sure rounds ran smoothly.

My mom, Mrs. Ramsay, as well as Abby Ritter and Hannah Dragone, who were all indispensable to helping the building stay under control under the direction of Mrs. Margulies.

Mr. Maroney and Azaria Zornberg, who worked (and will continue to work) tirelessly on the statistics for the entire tournament, along with a few AP Computer Science students, who can all type more in a minute than I can in five.

Student volunteers, who all put in their own time this past week to be trained as either buzzer operators, scorekeepers, or moderators.

Dave Madden, as well as Alan Matlick and Joe Rello, who helped tremendously today and yesterday, as well as supplying almost 40% of the buzzer systems used today.

Dianna Hu, Quan Zhou, Erica Huang, Kim Brazier, Levent Alpoge, Will Schneider, Alex Mastorgiannis, Robert Pond, and Winston Jiatu, who all came down from their various colleges for the weekend (if not the past week or whole break) just to help out and moderate. They are all very committed and I hope they come back next year!

Lois, one of our school secretaries, who coordinated the P.A. system and also acted as an invaluable resource (yet again, as this is not her first Hills Invitational)to our coaches, Mrs. Margulies, and Mr. Blayne.

The remainder of the Brainstormers, Sandhiya Kannan, James Battle, Dimitri Mastrogiannis, Nick Ng, Elana Weber, and Lexi Weber, who all did a fantastic job moderating.

Alan Blayne, a quiz bowl legend, who also works for NHBB and formerly taught AP Calculus. Without our veteran coach, we would have never been able to get everything else done in time. Mr. Blayne came in multiple times the past week to bracket for the prelims, drop off the trophies for the entire playoff bracket, organize the rooms, assign moderators, scorekeepers, and timers, and make sure that everybody had something to do and did it to the best of their ability. It is impossible to describe all of the work he did on the day of the tournament, such as bracketing the playoffs and using his quiz bowl expertise to make this tournament the largest tournament in New York State history to date.

Fern Margulies, parent extraordinaire and mother of the team captain, who runs registration and everything else. She put in more hours than almost anybody else for this and should get an award for doing so. She and her son are the glue that held the entire event together, along with Mr. Blayne. She set up the entire breakfast and lunch extravaganza, as well as kept track of the buzzer systems and brought in a television so teams could view their scores and standings as the day progressed. Although I was moderating, I know for a fact that she put her heart and soul into this event and it has been a pleasure getting to know her over the past year and a half.

Andy Margulies. What can I say? No matter what, he always gets the job done in time, be it quiz bowl or anything else. The extraordinary way in which he was able to collaboratively create a non-national tournament with over a hundred teams in attendance was, in my mind, a feat which could only be accomplished by a truly dedicated student such as himself. When I joined the team last year, I figured that he was helping the coaches run the club, while the opposite is actually true. He is a truly phenomenal person and I have no doubt in my mind that he will be successful in whatever he chooses to do. He is someone who I personally consider to be a mentor, and it will indubitably be a challenge to follow the footsteps of such a great captain when he heads off to NYU's Stern School of Business next autumn. He will not be forgotten.

Once again, thanks to all of you who made this event possible, especially Andy, Fern, and Alan.


-Arthur Ramsay

[Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill]

I am back from moderating. The tournament was going remarkably smoothly for a 101-team tournament (plus one Team USA to round out the brackets), with the first 5 rounds done by 2 PM. Perhaps it will be of interest to note that computational math toss-ups were crossed out; computational math bonuses were left in.

I find this to be damning with faint praise. Having one game done by 10:30, and five games done by 2pm (when an already generous schedule says these will happen by 9:45 and 1 respectively) is not "remarkably smoothly". If you wish to defend this by saying "It's such a large tournament, it's hard to run it better", that to me says that the tournament is too large to run well.

I didn't intend this to be insulting at all. Unfortunately, I can't really come up with any defense that isn't a variation on "it could've been worse".
I do have to say there was a lot of confusion during playoffs. Since none of the teams (or almost none) would possibly compete in the same room for both rounds 6 and 7, it would've been more convenient to give the moderators who wouldn't need to leave between the two rounds the same room for both. I was surprised to find out that this wasn't the case, and that I in fact held up two games in round 7 by a few minutes by assuming it was.

Yes, I agree that this tournament was pretty huge. Yes, a much smaller field cap could have been placed and the tournament could've run a lot smoother, but it'd be kind of hard to justify that when the circuit is effectively centralized around this tournament. There's basically two things you could do in the future: get better staff so that this tournament could run even more efficiently while maintaining the size it's known for, or arrange more tournaments and get schools to go to them.
We're certainly getting closer to achieving the second goal: New Jersey has five tournaments lined up after February break, and my old team's trying to breathe life into Long Island with KPAQT, sending information packets to practically every high school on Long Island (not to mention flyers to a lot of the teams here). I think the first of my solutions could follow from the second: more tournaments means more dedicated teams, which could mean more former players willing to volunteer for tournaments while in college. It's a matter of getting more schools interested in going to other tournaments, and maybe fleshing out the late fall line-up a bit (is it too early to propose the SBU Tournament at The End of The World for Nov-Dec 2012?).

Or you could just try limiting schools to 2 teams each, so diversity of the field wouldn't be that harshly affected. It would've cut around a quarter of the teams at this tournament.

[thebigbossandy]

I want to personally thank all of the teams for their participation in making this tournament the success it was. I understand that we did have some difficulties, and I do apologize for it. It has been a difficult year for the quiz bowl team, working with novice advisors. If it weren’t for Mr. Alan Blayne, Hills West’s former quiz bowl coach, and his TIRELESS hours of work behind the scenes, this tournament could never have been as successful as it was. The quiz bowl community is lucky to have such a dedicated advocate and supporter, even after having been retired for two years.

I would also like to thank David Madden for making it possible for Georgetown Day to stay for the finals. He, just like Mr. Blayne, is a true quiz bowler.

My thanks go out to the members of the National History Bowl staff, who lent their valuable support to help us make this tournament successful.

Additionally, I would like to thank my former Hills West quiz bowl team members for coming back and helping me. Mr. Blayne truly instilled the quiz bowl spirit in us.

To Will Schneider, Robert Pond, Naib Mobassir, Andrew Ibendahl, Caitlin Dwyer, James Lasker, Kevin Shamieh, Scott McGrath, Jensen Cheong, Alan Matlick, Joe Rella, Stuart Hartman, and to all the quiz bowl teams that lent us moderators I wish to express my personal thanks.

Lastly, I want to thank my mother, without whose tireless effort and encouragement, this tournament may not have taken place. She, with the guidance of Mr. Blayne, was responsible for all refreshments and providing organizational support.

Once again, thank you to all who attended. I hope you enjoyed it, and I look forward to seeing you all in the future.

[thebigbossandy]

Also, I forgot to thank Lois Schreier who always is there for the quiz bowl team.

[Great Bustard]

This was my third year at this tournament, coming after I played it in 1998 and was there to help out last year as well. Despite the delays and issues of logistics, I had a great time, as did the kids from Ridgewood and Dwight Morrow who came. Some thoughts on what this tournament does right:
1. One thing this tournament does right, and which other schools can potentially learn from is that it's always on the same Saturday every year, thereby making scheduling it into my calendar a breeze. I know firsthand that this isn't always easy to do for other schools (including for NHBB), but that does certainly help schools plan on attending it.
2. While I personally haven't had all that much success with the direct mail route to random schools for NHBB, this tournament and the non-buzzer Leonia tournament do go that route and have some success with it.
3. I think a number of teams come because once a year, it's fun to be a part of a quiz bowl extravaganza with a huge amount of teams.
4. This tournament's success shows that a $90 tournament fee does not tend to hold a lot of teams back, and that extra money I'm sure will be instrumental in funding HHH's participation at other tournaments.

Some suggestions:
1. This tournament can always use experienced readers. Would this tournament consider funding travel costs up to, say $30, for a select number of readers to come from Yale, Princeton, RPI, and other schools? That would help.
2. This tournament really should have 3 divisions next year: Elite, Regular, and JV. Each could have about 30 teams. That would allow for much closer games and smoother logistics. From a competition standpoint, I'm not sure what White Plains, for example, gains by trouncing 5 teams in the prelims by a combined total of roughly 2500-400. Or what those 5 trounced teams gain. Meanwhile, 3 divisions would also allow for less time going from room to room, since you could have 3 separate tournament HQs too. Likewise, you could have maybe a sixth round of prelims for the elite teams who tend to finish the set more quickly because they're powering half the questions, if not more.
3. The seeding for the round robin in the playoffs should have been thought through in advance. I think the way we did it was fair and optimal, but that should have been broadcast in advance. I'd recommend keeping the same approach next year.
4. Stick with A set next year. The longer length would make things go even longer and would frustrate many of the newer teams.

Again, given the date of this tournament, and its longevity and continuity, I can basically guarantee that Ridgewood will be back with 4 teams next year and that I'll be back to help out again too. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to promote our NHBB area tournaments as well - I hope that they will also contribute to more Long Island and other area schools playing more quizbowl!

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

2. This tournament really should have 3 divisions next year: Elite, Regular, and JV. Each could have about 30 teams. That would allow for much closer games and smoother logistics. From a competition standpoint, I'm not sure what White Plains, for example, gains by trouncing 5 teams in the prelims by a combined total of roughly 2500-400. Or what those 5 trounced teams gain. Meanwhile, 3 divisions would also allow for less time going from room to room, since you could have 3 separate tournament HQs too. Likewise, you could have maybe a sixth round of prelims for the elite teams who tend to finish the set more quickly because they're powering half the questions, if not more.

I definitely agree with this statement. While logistically I think just Varsity-JV (or whatever 2 names people want to use) would be an improvement. Though I certainly understand the idea of Elite-Regular-JV divisions, I can see it being hard to differentiate between Elite and Regular, but I am not experienced in these things.

Dave Madden's point of other teams being trounced certainly applies, and also, more divisions would lead to more fair seeding. The top (13 or so?) teams were all seeded basically by just how much they dominated their early round opponents - Irvington A had a combined total of roughly 2300-450 against our opponents and that placed us 8 seeds below White Plains (we were the 11th seed) Our only close game was the playoff game we lost to Bergen A, which was a close game, and I (and the rest of our team, I believe) would have very much enjoyed a tournament format which allowed the majority of games to be of that quality.

Also, I thought the playoff format - given the 1 division prelims - was a very good choice (I did not know that the workings of the round robin were not decided until the last minute until reading it now, but that went marginally smoothly), though multiple divisions would allow for generally more fair playoffs without the need for any single-elim.

[ProfessorIanDuncan]

I started writing this before Sam posted his reply but I feel a second opinion wouldn't hurt. I may be wrong.

This tournament really should have 3 divisions next year: Elite, Regular, and JV. Each could have about 30 teams.

While the example you make with White Plains is good, I cannot help feel that divisions don't work perfectly for the sole reason that in the lower divisions there will be a team that is better that the others in that division. Granted I have never seen this at a pyramidal tournament, the league that our school hosts does in fact have two divisions and the winner of the lower one seems to,more often than not, be able to compete in the upper division. However, divisions would get rid of some of the potentially slightly unfair prelim schedules (i had no problem with them for the most part and i must commend the people who run the tournament for making the prelim schedule as I understand it can be very difficult). One example was Seton Hall, a historically good team that can go far when it is fielding a strong team, didn't win their group because they lost to GDS "B" which as i understood it was not a true B team whereas I felt that our schedule this year didn't feel especially challenging. Because of this we finished in the top 16 (#11 seed), however I do not feel that our A team is "elite". But that may just be the pessimist in me talking.

As for your other points I agree wholeheartedly, although I do not know what happened behind the scenes so to speak. Which leads me to my last statement:

I would like to thank whoever helps run this tournament because it is one of my favorite tournaments of the year and it seemed like it ran pretty smoothly and efficiently. And I hope that everyone who came had as much fun as I did if not more.

[Great Bustard]

I definitely agree with this statement. While logistically I think just Varsity-JV (or whatever 2 names people want to use) would be an improvement. Though I certainly understand the idea of Elite-Regular-JV divisions, I can see it being hard to differentiate between Elite and Regular, but I am not experienced in these things.

Whenever this is done, teams should be allowed to self-select which division they play in. TDs should have discretionary power to force certain teams to play elite, if it's offered, but even that should really be reserved for obvious situations.

[ProfessorIanDuncan]

TDs should have discretionary power to force certain teams to play elite, if it's offered, but even that should really be reserved for obvious situations.

I assume it would also be used to round out the field because if teams self-select then they would likely not create the perfect number of teams per division. From my experience helping set up the schedule for one local tournament. That is where the problem lies because teams of the same caliber will be split into two divisions and half of them get dominated and the other half dominate.

multiple divisions would allow for generally more fair playoffs

I also think that i there were multiple divisions then the B or C teams might not have to wait for the A team which makes the younger players more content and eliminates an excuse from not participating in a tournament (however flimsy that excuse is).

[Northern Central Railway]

I had a good time moderating this tournament. To offer my own two cents on other opinions offered in this thread:

- I too would think it would be good in the future if there weren't any teams in the same room for every round in the morning. I was one of the moderators who had the same team in my room for every round of pool play, and that team in my room seemed like they were getting tired of being the same room - for the later prelim rounds they started changing their seating order "just to get some variety" (their words).

- Make the system for determining the pools for the final 8 known in advance next year. It seemed as though the discussion of how to do the final 8 took about 10 minutes, which could have been avoided.

- Assign moderators so that coaches who are reading aren't reading for their own team. It just makes sense.

I'd make a comment about the wait in between rounds, but this was the first time I read at a tournament with >32 teams so I have no idea if this is the norm or not.

At any rate, just about every team and coach I dealt with during the day seemed like they were having a good time. HHH West must put together an amazing packet in the mail to convince a team out of NJ doing their first year of organized quiz bowl (it was nice to hear of a new program skipping bowl completely and starting with good quizbowl) to drive almost 2 hours to Long Island, but that's a credit to the tournament organizers.

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

However, divisions would get rid of some of the potentially slightly unfair prelim schedules (i had no problem with them for the most part and i must commend the people who run the tournament for making the prelim schedule as I understand it can be very difficult). One example was Seton Hall, a historically good team that can go far when it is fielding a strong team, didn't win their group because they lost to GDS "B" which as i understood it was not a true B team whereas I felt that our schedule this year didn't feel especially challenging.

I feel as though slightly unfair may be a bit of an exaggeration - though they are only "Slightly" unfair in the sense that very good teams generally had easy 5-0 schedules and some did not, but for the teams who had no realistic hope of winning their prelim decision they were more than a little unfair.

Because of this we finished in the top 16 (#11 seed), however I do not feel that our A team is "elite". But that may just be the pessimist in me talking.

Though as the captain of your team I have my own things to say about this statement, is also notable that elite is nothing more than an adjective, they could just as easily be Top-middle-bottom, etc, so (though it would be self-electing) this really only means that the top 1/3 of the field would be in one division, the middle 1/3 in another, and the bottom 1/3 in another. and, based of the results of this tournament, our team seeded 11th and finishing in the top 16 would certainly count within this top 1/3, which is all elite really means.

[Granny Soberer]

I fully support the idea of multiple divisions at this tournament. None of our prelim games were closer than 400 points or so, which helps no team. That would also (hopefully) make logistics a little smoother, especially if each division can be run as a self-contained entity.

However, I don't agree that the tournament as a whole should be run on an A set. From my experiences in the playoff and round robin games, the games between top teams essentially turned into buzzer races, with teams 30ing most bonuses and rendering bonus conversion irrelevant. If teams were to be split into different division based on skill level, it would be possible to use a non-novice set for the top division and keep the A set for the newer and/or novice teams.

[David Riley]

If I may offer a suggestion as an outsider following this discussion:

In addition to the above suggestions for improvement, you might contact Rick Barry at Brookwood rick_barry@gwinnett.k12.ga.us, or Jonah Greenthal jonah@jonahgreenthal.com at the University of Chicago, who have experience in running large tournaments. Just a thought.

[Great Bustard]

Well, as amusing as it is to see you guys argue on the boards about your own team, I'll at least say that it's been great to see Irvington get more active outside of Westchester of late. Obviously "elite" is all relative - is Irvington yet among the national elite? No. But among the elite in NY state? Sure. And certainly at a tournament with dozens of novice teams. The point about some teams having to choose either between likely having a losing record by playing up, or dominating the lower teams by playing down is at some level unavoidable. But at least if you allow teams to self select, then you give teams this choice. This would, at least, allow for on the whole better competition. The issue of getting even numbers in brackets being more difficult with more divisions is valid. But at most tournaments, 2 divisions would suffice. At HHH, since the school was filled to capacity, there was a waiting list and qb is going to grow in the area in the future, I would recommend having 3 divisions with maybe 24 JV teams (no one higher than 10th grade), 60 regular division teams, and 18 elite teams for a field of 102. How does that sound?
Also, I agree with Ryan that if you do go this route, try and get a non A level set for the elite division (though for regular and JV it would work well).
Paging Jeff Hoppes - would you consider having one NAQT set be largely the same questions, with some questions replaced, and all tossups lengthened so that you effectively build an IS set off an A set (or vice versa). That way you would be able to service a larger tournament with divisions where an A set is better for newer teams, and IS for more experienced ones.
David Riley's comment is spot on, and to that esteemed short list, I would add Eric Huff of Dorman and Elliott Rountree of Chattahoochee.

[Important Bird Area]

Paging Jeff Hoppes - would you consider having one NAQT set be largely the same questions, with some questions replaced, and all tossups lengthened so that you effectively build an IS set off an A set (or vice versa). That way you would be able to service a larger tournament with divisions where an A set is better for newer teams, and IS for more experienced ones.

We could do this, but it would take a considerable amount of effort (eg, what happens when the new leadins create repeats? We would have to write some replacement questions.) I suspect it would be more efficient to just write an additional regular-difficulty set. (Of course this requires an area like northern New Jersey where all six regular sets sell out. There still aren't that many of those nationwide.)

[Naib]

I'd like to thank Andy Margulies for having me - it was an interesting experience moderating in a high school tournament again. I congratulate him and the rest of the HHHW volunteers and staff for a noteworthy feat housing over 100 teams. I only wish that I'm nearly as competent when hosting possible upcoming tournaments at Stony Brook University. I definitely agree with Dave Madden's suggestion of a triple bracket system for upcoming HHHW invitationals as many of the games this weekend were one-sided. All in all, the tournament was fun and I'd definitely be interested in moderating next year; good luck to Andy and the graduating HHHW students in all their future exploits.

[gnshsqb]

I just wanted to say that this tournament was surprisingly efficiently run for having 102 teams and that all of our 6 teams had a great time. My team seemed to like the ro8 pool play since it allowed for more games rather than single elim. I do also agree with Ryan et al that having one large division makes for a terribly disheartening/boring preliminaries for the most part, seeing as one of his 400+ margin games was against our E team and ended something like 700-0.

Shoutout to Arthur Ramsay, who modded/put up with us for I think 9 of the 10 rounds we played and also for dealing with our somewhat ridiculous 'entourage' during the playoffs.

Though bringing six teams does make me wonder what the record for most teams is at an NAQT tournament....

[Important Bird Area]

Though bringing six teams does make me wonder what the record for most teams is at an NAQT tournament....

I'm not sure what the all-time record is, but I do know that six isn't particularly close. (Start here.)

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

Though bringing six teams does make me wonder what the record for most teams is at an NAQT tournament....

I'm not sure what the all-time record is, but I do know that six isn't particularly close. (Start here.)

It wasn't an NAQT tournament, but at Dave Madden's Tri-State History Bowl, I distinctly remember playing Ridgewood K.

[Granny Soberer]

Though bringing six teams does make me wonder what the record for most teams is at an NAQT tournament....

I'm not sure what the all-time record is, but I do know that six isn't particularly close. (Start here.)

It wasn't an NAQT tournament, but at Dave Madden's Tri-State History Bowl, I distinctly remember playing Ridgewood K.

I seem to remember David Madden saying that there were 16 teams there.

...for dealing with our somewhat ridiculous 'entourage' during the playoffs...

The round that had GNS B through F, Ardsley B, and Irvington A, B, and C as an audience may have been the best-attended quizbowl match I have ever played in, and I played in the finals of a national tournament (albeit a not very legitimate one).

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

The round that had GNS B through F, Ardsley B, and Irvington A, B, and C as an audience may have been the best-attended quizbowl match I have ever played in, and I played in the finals of a national tournament (albeit a not very legitimate one).

Just as a note, I am pretty sure your finals game in both Hudson Valley History Bees were better attended, Ryan.

Also, until stats are posted, does anyone who watched the final game know what the score was/how the game went? I had the chance to see GDS B play earlier in the day and they were very good, and I did not get a chance to watch St. Joe's, so I am interested in how the match unfolded (other than the winner which we of course now know)

[Edward Powers]

Saint Joe's won, 460-270. It was close until half-time, then SJHS hit 3-4 powers in a row, giving them a comfortable margin GDS could not overcome. In fact, speaking of powers, the two teams hit 15 or 16 powers combined, with quite a few buzzer races, reinforcing Ryan's argument up-thread concerning talented teams and the inevitabilty of buzzer races for such teams playing on A-Sets.

As for GDS B, to be fair to them, they were probably off their game a little in the final because they were worried about making their train ride home, a not inconsiderable concern, since they had to get back to Washington DC or remain stuck in Dix Hills until Sunday.

[Great Bustard]

... the two teams hit 15 or 16 powers combined...

This sounds like a violent assault on the extended family of the esteemed St. Joe's coach. Sorry, couldn't resist...
In other news, GDS apparently also split their top talent to help qualify a second team for HSNCT. That's perfectly fine of course, but anyone looking at the results should take that into account.

[Edward Powers]

David is correct--GDS split its real A Team and still managed to land both teams in the Final 8 Round Robin Phase, with its B Team winning its Round Robin against Ardsley, State College and Great Neck South to get to the Finals. So it is not hard imagine how much more formidable GDS would have been had its A Team not made the decision to split its best players between these two excellent teams.

[Charles Martel]

Unless a team is specifically aiming to qualify two teams for nationals (which I think GDS already has), I don't see any reason that they should split their real A-team. It's more important to have the best result for your top team.

[Important Bird Area]

To the best of my knowledge, Georgetown Day B had not previously qualified for HSNCT.

[huatzer shiangtsay]

Was there any particular reason why the computational tossups were not played? One player on our A team, Richard Yip, received a national honorable mention for his performance at USAJMO as a Freshman, and all three teams had AIME participants on them, so we were a little put off by their exclusion. I didn't see any prior indication that they would not be played; was there something I missed?

[Urech hydantoin synthesis]

Read this to gain an understanding of why you shouldn't expect mathcomp to be the norm in a tournament.

[Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill]

But it IS a norm for NAQT, since NAQT DOES include math computation toss-ups in its packets (which were crossed out mostly by hand by Will the day before the tournament), so Bernard's question isn't entirely unwarranted.
I'll leave someone from Hills West to answer why the computation questions were thrown out, but I can't imagine it being any different from the reasons given in that link.

[AKKOLADE]

NAQT allows hosts to opt out of using the math calc TUs, if I recall correctly. They also don't use math calculation TUs at HSNCT.

[Scaled Flowerpiercer]

NAQT allows hosts to opt out of using the math calc TUs, if I recall correctly. They also don't use math calculation TUs at HSNCT.

Though any argument for or against computational math can open up many cans of worms, I must admit that this policy does have an unfortunate side effect: reducing the math distribution in packets. Though of course with unreleased sets I want to be as vague as possible - with comp math removed, there was very, very few math tossups left. In the future, might it be considered that, if a tournament wishes to not use the math calc tossups, replacement non-computational math tossups could be brought in to replace them, in order to bolster the math distribution to a more reasonable proportion?

[Important Bird Area]

IS #112A, like our other Introductory Invitational Series sets, contained 6/5 non-computational math.

I'll ask about the possibility of adding more for hosts who do not wish to use computation, but I strongly suspect that that would be prohibitively expensive.

[jonpin]

While I think Bernard's question has been answered, one thing that I'd recommend hosts take into account is that since NAQT sets do contain math calculation tossups and bonuses (at H3W, MCT's were skipped, MCB's were read), the act of skipping them is changing the distribution of the packets and should (in my opinion) be communicated to teams ahead of time rather than assumed knowledge. In certain cases, it could affect a school's team selection, and even if it doesn't I feel it's good practice to alert teams to anything out of the ordinary.

[Edward Powers]

We found a set of 5 interconnected buzzers which are not ours, along with a power cord, tossed in with one of our buzzer sets. If you are missing these items, contact me and we will try to get them back to you.

EDIT: Millburn High School of NJ has claimed them, having misplaced them somehow at our DAFT Mirror in December.

[Important Bird Area]

Could someone please post a list of the top 16 teams? We don't need complete stats for all 102 right away, but we would like to confirm HSNCT registrations for the teams that are newly-qualified from this event. Thanks.

[Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill]

I wrote down the top 8:
Ardsley A, Saint Joe's A, White Plains A, Georgetown Day School B, State College A, Bergen A, Georgetown Day School A, Great Neck South A
I also know first-hand that Irvington A, Scarsdale and Kellenberg A qualified. I do not know the other 5.

[Granny Soberer]

Ranney, Livingston A, and Horace Greeley also qualified.

[ProfessorIanDuncan]

A Stuyvesant team was in the top 16 also i believe. I know they had three teams in the playoffs and im pretty sure either their a or b team were top 16

[Edward Powers]

If my bracket is correct, and I think it is, the final 16 were as follows:

1. Saint Joe's A; 2. GDS B; tie for 3rd & 4th were Great Neck South A & White Plains A; tied for 5th & 6th were Bergen Academies A & Ardsley A; tied for 7th & 8th were GDS A and State College A; then the following 8 were tied for 9th: Tribeca A (aka Stuyvesant A); Seton Hall Prep A; Irvington A; Horace Greeley A; Scarsdale; Mountain Lakes; Ranney; Kellenberg A.

EDIT: It seems that Ryan has Livingston A defeating Seton Hall Prep A to make into the final 16 and thus qualifying; my bracket has Seton Hall A defeating Livingston A...so this one is currently uncertain. Also, the reason I have ties for 3 & 4, 5 & 6, 7 & 8 is precisely because I do not have the round robin stats of those 6 teams which would be used to break ties among those teams.

[Important Bird Area]

Thanks, everyone.