2012 ACE IQC - Monday, May 28 Atlanta

[Eric Huff]

Who is the Best Quizbowl Player in the Country?

ACE is proud to announce the inaugural
Individual Quizbowl Championship

Where & When
Monday, May 28, 2012 (Memorial Day)
Hotel TBA - Downtown Atlanta, GA

Questions:
The question set will be written by members of the college quizbowl community, then edited and compiled by Nick Clusserath. We aim for the question difficulty to be slightly easier than PACE NSC. There will be both powers and negs. The 30-question distribution:

Science (6):
History (6):
Literature (7):
Fine Arts (4):
RMP (3):
Social Science (1):
Geography (1)
Current Events (1)
Math Theory (1)

Tournament Format:
This is subject to change due to final field size, but here is the tentative format:

Each player will be competing in eight preliminary rounds, with each round consisting of a max of ten players (but almost certainly less). The top 12 players (minimum), based on preliminary total points, will advance to the championship playoff rounds. That number is likely to increase depending on the field size. The rest of the field will play two additional rounds to determine their final placing in the tournament, guaranteeing each player ten rounds total throughout the tournament.

We will be crowning both an overall champion and a JV champion (highest finishing sophomore or younger).

Who Can Play?
This tournament is open to any student in grades 6-12. This is an individual competition, and there is no minimum or maximum number of students that can enter from a given school.

Depending on interest, space and staffing, we reserve the right to cap the field. If we institute a cap, we will take registrations on a first-come-first-served basis.

Fees/Registration
Registration for the tournament is $99.

The registration deadline is Friday, May 4, 2012. Registrations will be accepted after this deadline (as space is available) but will carry a $15 late registration fee.

Interested players can register on our website HERE

[Eric Huff]

We are pleased to announce that we will be giving cash prizes to the top four finishers in the inaugural ACE Individual Quizbowl Championship.

1st Place - $500
2nd Place - $300
3rd Place - $200
4th Place - $100

If you'd like to register or just get some more information, please visit our website at:

http://acequizbowlcamp.com/iqc/

[wareagle]

Will you be giving any field updates?

[Eric Huff]

Nikhil Desai (Bellarmine College Preparatory (CA))
Daniel Brach-Neufeld (Georgetown Day School (DC))
Sahr Singh (Dodgen Middle School (GA))
Jared Cowan (Georgetown Day School (DC))
Harsha Paladugu (Meyzeek Middle School (KY))
Sean O'Brien (Wando High School (SC))
Garrett Johnston (Creekview Middle School (GA))
Sameer Rai (Bellarmine College Preparatory (CA))
Abhinav Goyal (Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet (TN))
William B. Fisher (MacArthur High School (IL))
Weston Pallay (Bridgeport High School (WV))
Michael Coates (Warren G. Harding High School (OH))
Ankit Aggarwal (Bellarmine College Preparatory (CA))
Rohan Nag (MLK Magnet (TN))
Adam Silverman (Centennial High School (GA))

[nadph]

The top four finishers in this tournament were, in order, Nikhil Desai (Bellarmine), Ankit Aggarwal (Bellarmine), Adam Silverman (Centennial), and Sameer Rai (Bellarmine). The rest of the top ten were Daniel Brach-Neufeld (GDS), Michael Coates (Warren G. Harding), Alex Covington (Marist), Dylan Minarik (Belvidere North), Matthew Moschella (Christiansburg), and Tristan Willey (Macomb).

This tournament was a fine idea, but I think the set could have used more polishing and editing (there were some odd repeats of material, and some tossups had poor clue ordering and/or wording). Hopefully more contributors and participants can be found for next year's iteration.

[Strange Fascination]

This tournament was an absolute thrill to read for and watch. The games in the playoffs were incredible; I had the pleasure of reading a one-on-one game in the semis between Nikhil and Sameer that came down to the last tossup. There was also, according to Nikhil's stats, a prelim game where 26 of 30 tossups were powered. With a more polished set (that is also more difficult, at least in the playoffs) and a bigger field, this can be a fantastic thing.

[dtaylor4]

I can't go into too much detail due to a lack of direct knowledge, but there were some issues with finishing the set last week.

Full disclosure, I wrote the mythology and European lit. I would not be surprised if the Euro lit had some issues, as I wrote all of it in less than 24 hours sometime last week.

If people have questions/critiques about questions in either category, feel free to post them or email them.

[Matthew Jackson]

So I thought about posting this earlier on in the year, but I guess after the tournament's conclusion is just as good a time as any.

1) What was the writing team for this set?

2) Unlike Nikhil and Raynell, I'm not sure this tournament is such a great idea, and I'd like to hear more about the reasons for launching it. It seems like right now, the demands on top high school quizbowl programs are quite high: on top of attending HSNCT and NSC if possible, top players are also expected to attend NASAT and the History Bee and Bowl, which both emerged within the past three years. Adding a fifth high-stakes national event on top of that in such short succession is going to be too much time - and money - for a lot of the best players to handle. On top of that, there's the kinds of effort it takes to write a fifth event for such a restricted audience - writing multiple 30-question rounds of good quality is no small task, and doing so for an event like this seems to be a misdirection of effort. If the previous nationals don't want/need additional writers, that effort is probably best spent on future high school and college sets. (Or, given who the hosts are, on questions for...ACE Camp! It gets harder for camps to recycle old questions year after year as more people hear all the sets that are available; aren't a lot of new ones going to be necessary?) If this is just a fun thing that players are invited to do to cool down from HSNCT, I suppose there's little harm in offering it, but the large prizes seem to imply that ACE wants this to be a big deal for people. I'd be interested in hearing more about how this went and ACE's plan for its future.

[The Toad to Wigan Pier]

Are the official stats and the set posted anywhere?

[Eric Huff]

First, let me again thank all those who volunteered their time to come play, staff and spectate the 2012 ACE IQC.

Matt:

You raise some great points, many of which have been at the heart of internal discussions we have had at ACE since we first formulated the idea of the IQC. Ultimately our goal is to have an event that supplements what quizbowl players are doing throughout the year without creating undo burden on teams/players. That is why we hosted this when and where we did; we wanted it to be as easy as possible for players from around the country to come together and play. A tournament of only 24 might not be the ideal use for a question set. Ultimately, we would want a larger field in order to justify the time, effort and expense of organizing the event and writing the set. As we discuss the future of this event in our meetings this summer, ACE will have to decide if there is potential for growth.

Will:

We will be posting results and the question set on our website in the coming days.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Here are my concerns:

It seems like right now, the demands on top high school quizbowl writers are quite high: on top of writing HSNCT and NSC if possible, top writers are also expected to contribute to NASAT and the History Bee and Bowl

Of course, this is a poor approximation: there's limited crossover between HSAPQ and PACE and NAQT, but many people write for more than one of the above organizations, and all could probably use more writers. Adding another set to be played during nationals season is a crazy strain on the writer pool, too.

[The Toad to Wigan Pier]

We will be posting results and the question set on our website in the coming days.

Any update on this?

[Matthew Jackson]

We will be posting results and the question set on our website in the coming days.

It's been a month and a half and I'm having trouble finding this. Is it up yet?

[Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin]

It's been a month and a half and I'm having trouble finding this. Is it up yet?

http://acequizbowlcamp.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2012-IQC.pdf

Sorry for posting nearly a year after the fact, but I think this was a lot of fun (and inspiring, of course). In spite of doing badly, I got to meet a lot of people, learned new things, and somehow lost the "Knowledge is Powers shirt" before leaving.

Is ACE going to host another one of these? I know it is a bit early, but I would like to know so I can plan ahead.

[Cheynem]

Is the question set available?