The Quizbowl Resource Center

by **Cheynem** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:29 pm

Hello. I am running another iteration of my "infallible" player poll. While the season isn't quite technically over, I think by this point we have an understanding of who our Top 25 players are.

So, like always here's the deal:

-Send me a ballot (e-mail in profile) of your top 25 quizbowlers. They should be active students (so no Jonathan Magin, no Mike Bentley). They ideally would have played either ICT or ACF Nationals, but there's certainly some good players who didn't (Sam Bailey, for instance), so I'll leave that up to you (I'll let the voters also consider if/how they want to rank people like Mike Sorice or Shantanu Jha, who are still students but could not/did not play the nationals).

-Last year someone sent me a ballot with just 2 people. I'll allow these, but I'd prefer not to unless you really have a strong reason why.

-Obvious joke ballots will be discounted.

-May 9th is probably the cutoff point for these (so like 2 weeks).

For reference, here are last year's results. I'll try to mark the players I know for sure are not eligible this year:

1. Mike Sorice, Illinois (did not play ICT or ACF Nationals)
2. Eric Mukherjee, Penn
3. Rob Carson, Minnesota (not eligible)
4. Matt Bollinger, Virginia
5. Chris Ray, Maryland
6. Andrew Hart, Minnesota
7. Evan Adams, VCU (now at UVA, still eligible)
8. Matt Jackson, Yale
9. Auroni Gupta, UCSD
10. Selene Koo, Chicago (not eligible) and Guy Tabachnick, Brown
12. John Lawrence, Yale
13. Kurtis Droge, Michigan
14. Ted Gioia, Harvard
15. Andy Watkins, Harvard (now at NYU, I think, but didn't play anything all year)
16. Ike Jose, Illinois
17. Jeff Hoppes, Berkeley (not eligible)
18. Dallas Simons, Harvard
19. Aaron Rosenberg, Brown (not eligible)
20. Will Butler, UVA (now at Georgia Tech, still eligible)
21. Gautam Kandlikar, Minnesota (not eligible)
22. Kevin Koai, Yale
23. Trevor Davis, Carnegie Mellon
24. Dwight Wynne, Irvine (I think still eligible, but didn't play either nationals if i recall)
25. Henry Gorman, Rice

Also receiving votes: Sam Bailey (did not play either nationals), Robert Harden (not sure on his status), Tommy Casalapsi, Neil Gurram, Ray Luo (I assume still in school, but didn't play much at all), Marshall Steinbaum, Aaron Cohen, Stephen Liu, Graham Moyer, Mike Cheyne, Ben Cohen (if i recall, didn't play either nationals), Will Nediger

Feel free to jump in if you know of any corrections to what I marked as eligibility.

by **Inkana7** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 2:44 pm

EDIT: never mind, I'm dumb

by **Mike Bentley** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:19 pm

Cheynem wrote:They should be active students (so no Jonathan Magin, no Mike Bentley).

There goes my chance to be voted greatest quizbowl player ever.

by **ThisIsMyUsername** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:07 pm

Last year, we waited until after voting to have a discussion about how we were ranking people, which was not productive in terms of informed vote-casting. To avoid that, I thought I'd start some discussion.

To me, looking at the stats from this year's nationals, there are eleven clear entrants to the Top 25 who fulfilled the role of leading player / generalist for their respective teams. Those eleven are (in approximate order, attempting to adjust for the strength of their teammates):

Matt Bollinger
Eric Mukherjee
Chris Ray
Ike Jose
Andrew Hart
Auroni Gupta
Will Butler
Henry Gorman
Neil Gurram
Guy Tabachnick
Trevor Davis

Then there are eight players who obviously belong on this list, but who are experiencing really strong shadow effect due to the strength of their teammates, to the point where one cannot rank them using stats as easily as one can for the above players. Those are the paired leaders on Harvard, Yale, and Michigan and the second and third scorers on UVA:

Dallas & Ted
Matt Jackson & Me
Will Nediger & Kurtis
Evan & Tommy

The problem is that these eight obviously need to be folded into the previous eleven, but I neither know how to rank us internally (besides the fact that the first-listed is the stronger of the two members in each pair), nor where exactly to fold us in. The general sense I have is that Matt Bollinger, Eric Mukherjee, and Chris Ray are categorically above us six, and that we are all above Henry Gorman. Or, in other words: in some order, Ike, Andrew Hart, Auroni, Will Butler, Dallas, Ted, Matt Jackson, Will Nediger, Kurtis, Evan, Tommy, and I represent players 4-15 of the Top 25.

The bottom six presumably will be drawn from the following ten people: Kevin Koai, Marshall Steinbaum, Stephen Liu, Libo Zeng, Marnold, Rafael, Mike Cheyne, Doug Graebner, Daichi, Sean Smiley. I have not placed these people in any order. I would probably preference Kevin and Libo above the others.

Thoughts?

EDIT: Mike Cheyne's correction

by **Cheynem** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 5:11 pm

What about Evan and Tommy from UVA? I would say there's a far more pronounced shadow effect there going on, but Evan was a top 10 player last year and certainly deserves a spot on the Top 25 in my opinion.

by **Magister Ludi** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:29 pm

In an effort to improve the issues from last year's poll, I'm going to try to explain a few of the common fallacies I've seen affecting some voters in the past. But before going into that topic, I was wondering if the purpose of this thread was envisioned as discussing different methodologies for evaluating players (i. e. specialist vs. generalist, nationals vs. regular season success, the value of powers) or comparing evaluations of individual players (i. e. I've seen this guy from my region play a lot and he is way better than this other guy)?

by **Duncan Idaho** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:30 pm

Just for clarity, I'm pretty sure Robert Harden graduated last year. I thought Trevor Davis had as well.

by **Smuttynose Island** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:58 pm

Duncan Idaho wrote:Just for clarity, I'm pretty sure Robert Harden graduated last year. I thought Trevor Davis had as well.

Trevor played ICT

by **marnold** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:26 pm

Here's my open ballot. My method and assumptions: I think abstractly and holistically about "goodness" of a player (1) at their current strength* (2) on approx Regionals+ difficulty questions (3) that represent sort of a hybrid of NAQT and ACF styles. Also, (4) I tend to value generalist knowledge/potential as a #1 relatively less than most people, rather thinking of them as a contributor towards a potential title-winning team.

EDIT: I redid my ballot under the same assumptions but with some shuffling and correcting of omissions below.

by **Gonzagapuma1** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:41 pm

My Open Ballot:
1. Matt Bollinger
2. Eric Mukherjee
3. Chris Ray
4. Ike Jose
5. Matt Jackson
6. Andrew Hart
7. John Lawrence
8. Auroni Gupta
9. Dallas Simons
10. Will Nediger
11. Kurtis Droge
12. Evan Adams
13. Guy Tabacknick
14. Will Butler
15. Ted Gioia
16. Marshall Steinbaum
17. Trevor Davis
18. Kevin Koai
19. Doug Graebner
20. Henry Gorman
21. Stephen Liu
22. Niel Gurram
23. Mike Cheyne
24. David Seal
25. Arun Chonai (Maryland, bitches)

by **Cheynem** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 11:50 pm

take that d. david seal

by **Demonic Leftovers** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:05 am

Here are my rankings. I decided to make some very hasty, not at all thought out rankings of the top four players in each major category as well (except social science because I forgot and don't feel like doing it) and an all freshman team. These are meant to be conversation starters, so don't flip out if you think you should be the fourth best RMP player and I didn't list you. When ranking I thought mostly along Marnold's lines, except I probably valued generalist skill slightly more. Also I should note I only ranked people who played either ICT or ACF Nats.

Player Poll:
1. Matt Bollinger
2. Eric Mukherjee
3. Ike Jose
4. Chris Ray
5. Matt Jackson
6. Auroni Gupta
(Note Andrew Hart should have been ranked here, but I forgot to reinclude him when making some alterations to the list)
7. Will Butler
8. John Lawrence
9. Will Nediger
10. Dallas Simons
11. Ted Gioia
12. Guy Tabachnik
13. Neil Gurram
14. Evan Adams
15. Henry Gorman
16. Kurtis Droge
17. Trevor Davis
18. Kevin Koai
19. Libo Zeng
20. Marshall Steinbaum
21. Stephen Liu
22. Marnold
23. Mike Cheyne
24. Daichi Ueda
25. Tommy Casalaspi

All-Freshman Team:
1. Tommy Casalaspi
2. Graham Moyer
3. Arun Chonai
4. David Liu

All-Science Team
1. Eric Mukherjee
2. Will Butler
3. Ashvin Srivisata
4. SteveJon Guth

All-History Team
1. Chris Ray
2. Matt Bollinger
3. Marshall Steinbaum
4. Dallas Simons

All-Literature Team
1. Matt Bollinger
2. Ted Gioia
3. John Lawrence
4. Will Nediger

All-RMP Team
1. Matt Bollinger
2. Matt Jackson
3. Ike Jose
4. Dallas Simons

All-Fine Arts Team
1. John Lawrence
2. Kevin Koai
3. Matt Bollinger
4. Ted Gioia

All-Geography Team
1. Dallas Simons
2. Chris Chiego
3. Chris Ray
4. Marshall Steinbaum

All-Current Events Team
1. Chris Chiego
2. Marshall Steinbaum
3. Matt Jackson
4. Myself (David Seal)

All-Trash Team
1. Mike Cheyne
2. Myself (David Seal)
3. Neeraj Vijay
4. Chris Ray

by **theMoMA** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:23 am

John seems like he's on the right track. I'd bump up Mike to the list of players who are very good but experience a strong shadow effect; see SCT for an example of what he can do as a team leader.

by **theMoMA** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:09 am

Here's my ballot with brief commentary. I tried to make this about 1/3 "hypothetical performance on a regular-difficulty packet solo," 1/3 "performance at the two nationals," and 1/3 "performance in the regular season." When I give scoring slash numbers, I mean rank in ACF prelims/ACF playoffs/ICT.

1. Bollinger. Two finals, one championship, 2/4/7 in scoring. Strong performances in the regular season. Scored most of the points for the most consistently good team in quizbowl this year.
2. Mukherjee. Locks down his categories, led ICT in powers, most prolific scorer (3/2/4). Only blemish is second-bracket finish at a stacked ICT.
3. me. Well, someone has to counterbalance Marnold's criminal under-ranking. 7/7/8 in scoring with 6th and 8th place finishes puts me as one of only three players who finished in the single digits in all five of those measures, along with Matt B. and Ike. I do predictably well on my own measures for generalist ability and regular-season performance.
4. Ray. 4/8/6 scoring, 10th at ICT and 4th at Nats. Led one of the strongest regular-season teams to respectable finishes at both nationals. We all know what he can do.
5. Jackson. 6/11/10 in scoring. The strongest player on what may be the best m/ACF team this year, but had a lot of help. I think he's probably the best generalist on his team, so he gets a boost for that.

6. Jose. 1/5/9 in scoring. He led his team to lofty finishes at both nationals, making a surprise final at ICT, but his team's finishes outpaced their scoring numbers, so you wonder if some of this is unsustainable. Had a good regular season, but maybe not up to the standards of the guys in front of him. Clearly an emerging force, and I may be underrating him.
7. Lawrence. 19/12/15 in scoring. He got better as Nationals went on, and is clearly one of the best specialists-with-generalist-knowledge in the game. Had the best teammates of any top-ten player this year, but we might get to see what he can do as a #1 guy if he moves on to a new school after graduating. I have faith in his team-leading generalist ability.
8. Gupta. The #1 scorer at ICT couldn't make the top bracket, but was in what may have been the most brutal prelim bracket in the tournament. Either way, finishing #9 in the ICT field is quite an accomplishment. Still, it's hard to rank him higher than this because he's in an isolated circuit and only played one of the national tourneys.
9. Butler. Showed he could be a #1 player on a meaningful team this year, but didn't have enough teammate firepower to make a serious top-bracket challenge. Also plays in a relatively isolated circuit and only played one national, so it's hard to rank him higher. Regardless, science knowledge + generalist knowledge will do well in my rankings.
10. Nediger. 9/16/16 in scoring on teams that took 3rd and 9th. Will is Michigan's top player on hard questions, but Kurtis is sometimes their best regular-season player. His team didn't make the top bracket at ICT, but they did make a run at the Nationals title and took third in a stacked field.

11. Simons. 17/19/11 in scoring on a team that took 5th and 6th. Beat out Ted in scoring at both nationals but Ted seemed to outscore him in the regular season. Probably the better generalist of the two top Harvard players, and imposing on classics and many other pockets of the distribution, especially in history.
12. Gioia. 25/21/13 in scoring on a team that took 5th and 6th. Ted is one of the best humanities players out there and was consistently Harvard's best or second-best player all year long (if I remember correctly, he was more often than not their best scorer in the regular season). You could make the argument that he belongs in the top-ten depending on how you value deep knowledge of a few subjects vs. contributions in many subjects.
13. Droge. Kurtis was often Michigan's top regular-season player, and is a very good hard-question player in his own right, especially considering how much Libo overlaps with him in his primary area, history. A player with his kind of generalist knowledge who finishes 3rd and 9th at the nationals will do well in these rankings.
14. Adams. Evan has perhaps the largest shadow effect of anyone in the top fifteen. On pure generalist ability, he could rank as high as 8th, but individual performance is a consideration too.
15. Davis. People sleep on Trevor too often, but he is one of the game's best history specialists and has top-ten generalist knowledge. As I learned at VCU Open, he's an incredibly good team player as well, so watch out if he gets teammate help when he goes to grad school next year. A top-20 solo finish at ICT coupled with his generalist knowledge gets him to here.

16. Cheyne. A top history/social sciences/literature specialist with random pockets of knowledge everywhere and vastly underrated generalist/team-leading ability.
17. Tabachnick. Guy and Mike are very similar players. I get to see Mike a lot more, but I'm always impressed by the deep pockets of knowledge that Guy possesses in seemingly every category. And, of course, who isn't impressed with his game-best linguistic fraud ability? If he played more tournaments, he'd vault up these rankings.
18. Gorman. Another case of isolated circuit and limited knowledge on my part. I haven't played Henry in a while, but his numbers are always impressive and his team manages respectable finishes with him doing most of the heavy lifting. Winning the second bracket at Nationals was a nice accomplishment; let's see if this team can build on it.
19. Arnold. Benefits from some name recognition on his team, which is also led by the capable Rafael Krichevsky, who seems to know things about Judaism and music. Michael is a good generalist who also has areas of specialty in philosophy and other humanities that can help a good team at higher-difficulty levels.
20. Koai. One of the game's best specialists. Kevin gets winning buzzes in literature (poetry especially), visual arts, and, of course, music. He gets a similar PPG at every tournament, but you know with him that you're getting one or two of the earliest buzzes in the tournament at some point during each packet. That has extremely high value, even for what would probably already be the best music team in the country without him.

21. S. Liu. If this year's nationals season is any indication, Stephen is quickly emerging as one of the best science players in the country, and he also has a wealth of generalist knowledge. He seems poised to rocket up these rankings if he can fill some of the scoring void that Dallas will leave at Harvard next year. We got a preview when he led Harvard in scoring in the ACF Nats prelims.
22. Graebner. Doug's scoring, at 10/20/40, puts him as one of the 15 or so players who made the top bracket at both nationals while scoring in the top 40 at both. He might be the most dominant visual arts player right now, and he has random pockets of deep knowledge throughout the history and literature distributions. This makes him an extremely dangerous player at the nationals level, and an emerging threat at regular difficulty.
23. Steinbaum. Marshall (11/29/30) was also one of those players to make both top brackets while scoring in the top 40. His knowledge in European history, social sciences, and current events runs deep, and he's consistently the highest scorer on a successful Chicago A team.
24. Chonai. Arun looks like a future star to me. His buzzes come from all over the distribution and he's learning from (and getting shadowed out by) one of the best generalists in the game in Chris Ray.
25. Zeng. Libo (29/29/27) is a fearsome history player with some primary science knowledge who consistently scores similar points to his teammates Kurtis and Will.

Honorable mention (in no particular order): Neil Gurram, Sean Smiley, Kevin Malis, Rafael Krichevsky, Ashvin Srivatsa, Carsten Gehring, Frank Firke, Gordon Arsenoff, Jarret Greene, Jasper Lee.

Apologies if I missed anyone glaring.

by **Jean Baudrillard** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:56 am

theMoMA wrote:3. me. Well, someone has to counterbalance Marnold's criminal under-ranking. 7/7/8 in scoring with 6th and 8th place finishes puts me as one of only three players who finished in the single digits in all five of those measures, along with Matt B. and Ike. I do predictably well on my own measures for generalist ability and regular-season performance.

But is this the real Andrew Hart?

by **Tees-Exe Line** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:17 pm

I find that I care more about giving my opinion on this than I'd like to admit.

1. Matt Bollinger
2. Ike Jose
3. Eric Mukherjee
4. Matt Jackson
5. Andrew Hart
6. Chris Ray
7. Ted Gioia
8. Dallas Simons
9. Kurtis Droge
10. Sam Bailey
(* Sam is the best active player on Chicago; he obviously lost visibility by not going to Nationals and also because he played on the B team at a couple of tournaments after learning he wouldn't be around for Nats.)
11. Will Nediger
12. Guy Tabachnick
13. John Lawrence
14. Michael Arnold
15. Me
16. Mike Cheyne
17. Evan Adams
18. Trevor Davis
(* Trevor is very impressive; he probably would score much higher than this in a tournament consisting of one-on-one matchups.)
19. Doug Graebner
20. Kevin Koai
21. Steven Liu
22. Billy Busse
23. Ashvin Srivatsa
24. SteveJon Guth
25. Neil Gurram

Numbers 21-25 are pretty much arbitrary and I wouldn't be able to offer much of an argument for the given order.

People not included for lack of data, though they probably should be: Will Butler, everyone on Penn except Eric, Auroni Gupta.

by **marnold** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:30 pm

Here's my redone ballot when I'm not drugged on Nyquil. I'm most troubled that I forgot the man who took over Seth's title as crunkest man in the game, Sam Bailey.

1 Eric Mukherjee
2 Matt Bollinger
3 Chris Ray
4 Matt Jackson
5 Dallas Simons
6 Andrew Hart
7 Will Nediger
8 John Lawrence
9 Ted Gioia
10 Ike Jose
11 Auroni Gupta
12 Kurtis Droge
13 Sam Bailey
14 Will Butler
15 Evan Adams
16 Guy Tabachnick
17 Libo Zheng
18 Marshall Steinbaum
19 Rafael Krichevsky
20 Kevin Koai
21 Trevor Davis
22 me
23 Henry Gorman
24 Mike Cheyne
25 Charles Tian

Near misses: Tommy Casalaspi, Stephen Liu, Doug Graebner, Charles Hang, Josh from MIT, Neil Gurram, Aaron Cohen

Also here's my "buy and hold" list for people on the come-up:
- Charles Hang. Yeah, unfortunately.
- Arun Chonai. Seems both good and remarkably steady.
- Charles Tian. My idiosyncratic list will probably be the only one that ranks him now, but I'd be stunned if he wasn't ranked by most people next year. He knows the shit out of history, and watch out if he ever finishes that Crimean War book! The quandary of Chicago in the post-Seth era is they'd probably win every tournament if you could play 8 people at once, but there isn't really a natural way for the various good players they have to coalesce into an A-team around a core like it did around Seth. For next year, maybe one of Marshall, Daichi, Doug, Sam or Charles will separate from the pack some - or maybe not and Chicago B will continue to be just as good as Chicago A. I think Charles might be the most likely to breakout.
- Joshua Alman. He's being underrated as it is because he only played one nationals and sort of appeared as a bolt from the blue there. But guys: he went 35/10/0 over the course of the ICT. That shit cray.
- Billy Busse. Ike, Aaron, Billy and a fourth will be strong.

by **Grams's Go-Go Boots** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:33 pm

Tees-Exe Line wrote:People not included for lack of data, though they probably should be: Will Butler, everyone on Penn except Eric, Auroni Gupta.

How about "#1 scorer at 2012 ICT for the 9th place (tied) team" data?

by **Tees-Exe Line** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:49 pm

Fred wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:People not included for lack of data, though they probably should be: Will Butler, everyone on Penn except Eric, Auroni Gupta.

How about "#1 scorer at 2012 ICT for the 9th place (tied) team" data?

Fair enough. When I said "lack of data," I meant that I haven't seen them play or play often enough to form an opinion independent of published stats that I don't value particularly highly in relation to a player's actual value in a match against a hard team. I tend to rank players based on where I've seen them score good buzzes and bonus conversions in matches against me. Obviously not terribly scientific, but I think that's more useful than PPG.

by **grapesmoker** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:01 pm

Not that I care to get into the whole ranking thing, but Auroni is one of the top 10 players in the game today.

by **Cheynem** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:03 pm

You could always submit a ballot like you did last year!

by **grapesmoker** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:11 pm

Cheynem wrote:You could always submit a ballot like you did last year!

crazy talk

edit: sent

by **theMoMA** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:22 pm

Sam definitely belongs on a list of the best active players (and should have at least factored into my honorable mentions; sorry for forgetting about you, buddy!). I do think that the nationals are crucial to how players did this season (and these rankings are, to me, as much about how you did as how good you are), so it's hard for me to place anyone without nationals data. (Also, my rankings are a super-scientific 1/3 nationals performance, so it's hard to do well while missing the nats.)

by **Grams's Go-Go Boots** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:26 pm

Tees-Exe Line wrote:
Fred wrote:
Tees-Exe Line wrote:People not included for lack of data, though they probably should be: Will Butler, everyone on Penn except Eric, Auroni Gupta.

How about "#1 scorer at 2012 ICT for the 9th place (tied) team" data?

Fair enough. When I said "lack of data," I meant that I haven't seen them play or play often enough to form an opinion independent of published stats that I don't value particularly highly in relation to a player's actual value in a match against a hard team. I tend to rank players based on where I've seen them score good buzzes and bonus conversions in matches against me. Obviously not terribly scientific, but I think that's more useful than PPG.

Okay, I get that. I wouldn't really go straight by PPG either. (One example of the "problems" with just using that would be last year's NSC All Star Game.) At the same time, there's obviously some value to scoring more than 60% of the points for a top ten team at a national championship.

by **Cheynem** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:36 pm

I currently have ballots from Dan Puma, David Seal, Andrew Hart, Marshall Steinbaum, Michael Arnold, Matt Bollinger, Bruce Arthur, and Jerry Vinokurov. I plan on keeping this open for a while at least, but please send in more if you're interested. Currently, there are 38 players with at least one vote and there are numerous razorthin margins for who is on the list and for what place.

by **The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:58 pm

My Ballot

1 Eric Mukherjee
2 Matt Bollinger

In lieu of individual commentary here, let me list some non-self-serving reasons for this order.
-Stats at ICT put Penn at 3rd best ppb, with me winning the power count pretty handily. This, combined with the fact that we’re awful at trash, geography, and not that great at CE (unlike a UVA team with David Seal on it) seems to mean I’m doing something worthwhile.
-Stats at ACF nationals put Penn at 4th best PPB (correcting for the fact that MD didn’t see the finals packet, plus like 3 bonus parts I said the right answer for and wasn’t given points). This is not all that remarkable in itself, but I would humbly submit (without offending my teammates, who did an amazing job at both tournaments) that UVA, Michigan, and Yale all had a supporting cast with far more experience and point-scoring ability than I did
-Both times we’ve played against two-time national champions Yale, we managed to take it down to the last one or two questions.

3 Chris Ray – Seems pretty noncontroversial to put him here. Leading generalist on a top-bracket team who can buzz on any category, anytime (Except Asian history, against me). I read between the lines of his nationals performance; I think it’s worth weighing the fact that he lost many games by a single question and has beaten UVA at more than one regular difficulty tournament.

4 Matt Jackson – leading scorer on a two-time ACF nationals winning team. I’ve always been impressed by the amount of real knowledge of third parts I’ve seen from him (esp in history and phil), and I respect his science fraud ability (probably the only person at MO to almost get my tossup on Anfinsen’s experiment – he said “Afnisen”. Take that, consonant order). Factoring the amount of shadow effect he suffers from on that team, I think he deserves his spot here.

5 Ike Jose – I’ve always been impressed with Ike, and his performance at ICT showed that he’s capable of leading a team to a very high finish (with, I don’t think it’s unfair for me to say, nor does it take anything away from him, some amount of luck and support). Unfortunately he couldn’t replicate it at ACF, but he still managed to win the UG title with only 2 teammates. This makes him solidly top 5 in my eyes.

6 Auroni Gupta – Has generalism in pretty much every category. Kind of hard to place him in this ranking, but I’m willing to bet he’d beat Andrew and Ike at most measures of generalist ability. Science ability/real knowledge moves him up here.

7 Andrew Hart – Excellent literature player, very good generalist overall. Very frustrating to play against when he’s having a good round.

8 Dallas Simons – Now we transition from generalists to #2/specialist type players. Of this group, Dallas probably has the best ability to buzz outside of his tried-and-true categories and provides great support to a fairly well-balanced Harvard team.

9 John Lawrence – probably the single best specialist/generalist hybrid player active right now, and will murder his 2/2 per packet much more consistently than pretty much anyone on this list. I value that a great deal; if this were a ranking based on individual category lockdown ability, JL would probably be first or second.

10 Ted Gioia –what’s to say about Ted? He’s like JL with added social science and philosophy ability (though JL is pretty good at the phil too) and less music. If he stopped getting angry every time questions didn’t meet his exacting standards, he’d probably play way better.

11 Will Nediger – Amazing at literature. Seriously. Led a very good Michigan team to a highly respectable 3rd place finish, with several first line and early buzzes along the way.

12 Evan Adams – Excellent supporting cast on a very dominant UVA team. Great literature and history player in his own right, also a great generalist. It’s been some time since I’ve seen him lead a team, so I’m not sure how much of that generalist ability he still has, but I’m willing to bet its considerable.

13 Kurtis Droge – It’s hard for me to rate the Michigan players relative to each other, but minus Will, Kurtis seems to be the one who leads that team in scoring at gets key generalist buzzes all over the place.

14 Sam Bailey - mostly secondhand knowledge tells me that he’s the best player on Chicago A right now.

15 Will Butler – amazing science player. Wish he came to the other national so I could evaluate him better. Always been impressed with his buzzes across the board.

16 Guy Tabachnick – the master of general knowledge and random pockets of specialization. Amorphous, incredibly difficult to pin down. Will randomly surge in games to lead his team to victory.

17 Libo Zeng – excellent history player, almost scarily so. Would be much higher on this ranking if he didn’t neg physics three out of the four times I’ve seen him play.

18 Kevin Koai – Great 3rd on a back-to-back national championship team. Debatable whether he’s still the best music player of all time, given the rise of JL, but his buzzes in poetry and math are quite excellent too.

19 Marshall Steinbaum – good at CE, History, and SS, I guess? I think I’ve only played against him once.

20 Rafael Krichevsky – Pretty impressive almost every time I’ve seen him play. Great buzzes in art, RMP, and elsewhere.

21 Trevor Davis – great generalist, barely saw him play this year. 20th place at ICT solo merits a mention here.

22 Tommy Casalaspi – Considerable deep pockets of knowledge in literature, art, and history. Seems kind of lackadaisical in comparison to many players ranked above him.

23 Mike Cheyne – great at the kind of things Mike Cheyne is great at.

24 Arun Chonai – won the Penn-UMD Indian Freshmen Contest, beating Saajid at MUT with an insane PPB. Incredible pockets of specialist knowledge which are completely unpredictable. Pretty much the ideal 3rd or 4th on a team. Rapidly improving, would not be surprised to see him much higher next year.

25 Saajid Moyen – Rapidly improving, made a great showing at ACF nationals for a freshman.

People I should mention: David Seal, Michael Arnold, Doug Graebner, Daichi Ueda, Matt Menard, Billy Busse, Joshua Alman, Neil Gurram, SteveJon Guth, Dan Puma, Chris Chiego, Ashvin Srivasta probably lots of others I’m forgetting.

by **Ras superfamily** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:33 pm

The way I am ranking players is by my perceived value in adding them to a team looking to win nationals.

My ballot:

1. Eric Mukherjee: Eric can be added to any team and make it a national contender, as everyone saw with 2010 Penn.
2. Matt Bollinger: Matt can probably do the same, but unfortunately it does not appear to be possible to lock down humanities as easily as Eric locks down science.
3. Ike Jose: Ike can probably take any team to national contender status, but I don't think he can beat the top players to as many questions as Eric or Matt.
4. Auroni Gupta: Same thing as above. He does exceptionally well on his UCSD team, and he will add a tremendous amount of value to wherever he goes to med school.
5. Chris Ray: Chris is a great player, but it seems as though he didn't quite do as well on the Nats questions as he usually does on regular stuff.
6. Matt Jackson: He seems to know his subjects very well, and obviously is capable of being a standout player on a nationals winning team. I think his true value lies in being able to buzz on pretty much whatever he wants, though. He somehow pulls science bonus parts too.
7. John Lawrence: Same deal except for different subjects than Matt. I think whenever I see Yale play, John appears to be scoring more than Matt (which is always against top teams), but Matt finishes higher in overall scoring. I don't know what to make of this, but I have John after Matt simply because of stats.
8. Will Nediger: He had great buzzes when we played Michigan, and appears to do very well on harder sets compared to his teammates.
9. Andrew Hart: He lead his team to many good wins this year including one at Nats against Maryland, a 1 seed.
10. Will Butler: Another valuable science player. I think he could easily take a team into contending status simply because there aren't that many great science players.
11. Dallas Simons: I have only played against the Harvard team once, so to be honest I am basing my rankings of Dallas and Ted on other ballots and stats.
12. Ted Gioia: see 11
13. Evan Adams: Somehow fits in very well into a superpowered UVA team and is obviously capable of being a generalist on any team as he was at VCU.
14. Kurtis Droge: I don't really have much commentary from here on out simply because I don't see these guys play that often.
15. Guy Tabachnik
16. Sam Bailey
17. Libo Zheng
18. Kevin Koai: Kevin is probably getting ridiculously overshadowed by his amazing teammates.
19. Rafael Krichevsky
20. Neil Gurram
21. Trevor Davis
22. Mike Cheyne
23. Tommy Casalaspi: Always seems to get a clutch fine arts buzz when I see him.
24. Marshall Steinbaum
25. Ashvin Srivatsa: Ashvin is Ohio's home town hero because of his DII ICT championship and ACF Nats championship. A good and soon to be great science player, Ashvin was certainly a deciding factor in Yale's wins this year, especially against us at ICT and Nats where he managed to get a TU out of the science distribution in games that Yale won by a margin of one tossup.

by **Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr.** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:40 pm

As far as I can tell he's a better player than you are, so you can live with it I guess.

by **Excelsior (smack)** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:24 pm

I don't really have a full ballot to submit; just one point I'd like to make:

Any ballot that lists me and not Josh Alman from MIT is doing it wrong. Ludicrous ICT statlines like 35/10/0 over 13 games (as near as I can tell, that's more 15s per game than everybody besides Eric and Bollinger [though, granted, he was in the second bracket at ICT], with the majority of those buzzes presumably in science), plus the fact that he's destroyed me on non-bio science every time I've played him should be sufficient evidence that he's significantly more worthy of inclusion than I am. Even independent of any reference to my place on a given ballot, I'm fairly confident that he deserves a spot on anyone's ballot, seeing as how he has a lockdown on 2-3 science tossups a game, which is invaluable on any team that doesn't have Eric on it.

by **Fond du lac operon** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:43 pm

Excelsior (smack) wrote:Ludicrous ICT statlines like 35/10/0 over 13 games (as near as I can tell, that's more 15s per game than everybody besides Eric and Bollinger [though, granted, he was in the second bracket at ICT]

If you're willing to trade second-bracketness for a smaller sample size, he was fourth in powers in the prelims, behind Eric, Bollinger, and Ted Gioia. (He also had three fewer powers than Neil in SCT prelims, but he didn't 10 nearly as much in a murderous field.)

I can't really marshal any additional statistical evidence for him, but I'll second that he deserves a look-see.

by **Emily Krok** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:06 pm

marnold wrote:I realize I did this to myself by being modest by ranking him higher than me on my own ballot, but the number of people ranking Rafael higher than me (by a lot) is starting to grate on me.

Open ballot:

1. Rafael Krichevsky
2. Matt Bollinger
3. Eric Mukherjee
4. Chris Ray
5. Matt Jackson
6. John Lawrence
7. Ike Jose
8. Auroni Gupta
9. Will Nediger
10. Will Butler
11. Andrew Hart
12.Ted Gioia
13. Dwight Wynne
14. Evan Adams
15. Dallas Simons
16. Henry Gorman
17. Kurtis Droge
18. Guy T.
19. That guy from MIT people are raving about
20. Trevor Davis
21. Marshall Steinbaum
22. Doug Graebner
23. Charles Tien
24. Arun Chonai
25. Sam Bailey

Just Out: Mike Cheyne, Neil Gurram, M. Steinbaum [THIS IS NOT THE MARSHALL STEINBAUM I PUT AT 21, OKAY]

Just Out Just Out: Marnold, Gary Weiser, Fred Morlan

by **Cheynem** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:19 pm

Due to outrage, I will not count this ballot unless you are specifically indicate this is not a joke ballot and can explain your rankings.

by **mhayes** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:20 pm

Here's my open ballot (no offense intended to anyone):

1. Eric Mukherjee
2. Matt Bollinger
3. Chris Ray
4. Matt Jackson
5. Auroni Gupta
6. Ike Jose
7. Andrew Hart
8. John Lawrence
9. Will Nediger
10. Dallas Simons
11. Evan Adams
12. Kurtis Droge
13. Ted Gioia
14. Will Butler
15. Guy Tabachnik
16. Henry Gorman
17. Marshall Steinbaum
18. Michael Arnold
19. Neil Gurram
20. Trevor Davis
21. Libo Zeng
22. Kevin Koai
23. Mike Cheyne
24. Sam Bailey
25. Doug Graebner

My large list of honorable mentions (in no particular order): Dwight Wynne, Daichi Ueda, Kevin Malis, Saajid Moyen, Harrison Brown, Tommy Casalaspi, Jasper Lee, Jarrett Greene, Joshua Alman, Charles Tian, Aaron Cohen, Rafael Krichevsky, Stephen Liu, Arun Chonai, Ashvin Srivatsa, Charles Hang, SteveJon Guth, Greg Baboukis, David Seal, Chris Chiego

by **marnold** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:32 pm

marnold wrote:Also, speaking of egotism: I realize I did this to myself by being modest by ranking him higher than me on my own ballot, but the number of people ranking Rafael higher than me (by a lot) is starting to grate on me.

People are apparently convinced I was deathly serious about this when I'm not really at all. So, uh, consider this a clarification I guess.

by **The Motley Eye** » Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:49 pm

The discussion about female participation in collegiate quizbowl can now be found here.

by **ThisIsMyUsername** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:22 am

TheCopleyIndian wrote: I think whenever I see Yale play, John appears to be scoring more than Matt (which is always against top teams), but Matt finishes higher in overall scoring. I don't know what to make of this, but I have John after Matt simply because of stats.

Well, this makes sense if you think about it. A perfect generalist's ideal situation is playing against the packet, because he gets all the questions. A perfect specialist doesn't have an ideal situation, because he theoretically should be able to get the questions within his area no matter who he's playing. Of course, neither Matt nor I is a perfect generalist or specialist (and Matt is actually a very good specialist in his best areas), but this pattern still somewhat holds for us. Matt will clean up in the prelims in all the matches where we play crappy teams, and buzz less when we're playing good teams. I will get a similar number of buzzes no matter who we play. That's why our stats tend to equalize in playoff matches. Nonetheless, Matt still is undoubtedly the more valuable player, even in such situations, because he has to continue to act as generalist on the bonuses.

by **Magister Ludi** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:22 pm

This will come across as self-serving, but I want to point out that people should not just ignore the regular season when making these rankings and rank players on teams based solely on their ppg at nationals. It appears to be the community consensus that Dallas outplayed me this year, but objectively I had a better overall year. God knows I love Dallas and think he deserves a spot in the top ten, but I outscored and outpowered him at every tournament this year except ICT and ACF (where I got more tossups than he did). I outscored Dallas 55 ppg (with 25 powers) to 23 ppg (with 5 powers) at BARGE, 50 ppg (with 17 powers) to 24 ppg (with 7 poers) at Penn Bowl, and 36 ppg (with 16 powers) to his 18 ppg (with 8 powers) at CO. Dallas is certainly a better overall player than me, but this one year I should probably be ranked ahead of him.

by **RyuAqua** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:43 pm

Magister Ludi wrote:This will across as self-serving, but I want to point out that people should not just ignore the regular season when making these rankings and rank players on teams solely based on ppg at nationals. It appears to be the community consensus that Dallas outplayed me this year, but objectively I had a better overall year. God knows I love Dallas and think he deserves a spot in the top ten, but I outscored and outpowered him at every tournament this year except ICT and ACF (where I got more tossups than he did). I outscored Dallas 55 ppg (with 25 powers) to 23 ppg (with 5 powers) at BARGE, 50 ppg (with 17 powers) to 24 ppg (with 7 poers) at Penn Bowl, and 36 ppg (with 16 powers) to his 18 ppg (with 8 powers) at CO. Dallas is certainly a better overall player than me, but this one year I should probably be ranked ahead of him.

As odd as it was to see this in Ted's own voice, I've been thinking this for a while and found it odd that so many people agreed with John's initial analysis of Dallas being the better member of the pair.

Further thoughts and possibly some explanation for them in a day or two.

by **magin** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:54 pm

Every time we have these ranking threads, people seem to take them as exacting numerical rankings of the best N players, which leads to a bunch of silly arguments about who the 10th best player in quizbowl is, and why Player X should be 7th instead of 9th, and so on.

I'd rather see tiers that group people together by similar ability instead of trying to finely rank everyone. Players have ranges of ability based on the questions and how well they're playing that day instead of a general skill level g, and I think it's very easy to overlook that in these rankings.

As a bonus, here's a ranking of this year's ACF Nationals editors.

Tier One:
Me. My questions were great, except for the ones that weren't so great.

Tier Two:
Jerry, Bruce, and Susan. Don't you dare rank them ahead of me. My editing PPG was totally higher.

by **Mike Bentley** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:07 pm

magin wrote:Every time we have these ranking threads, people seem to take them as exacting numerical rankings of the best N players, which leads to a bunch of silly arguments about who the 10th best player in quizbowl is, and why Player X should be 7th instead of 9th, and so on.

I'd rather see tiers that group people together by similar ability instead of trying to finely rank everyone. Players have ranges of ability based on the questions and how well they're playing that day instead of a general skill level g, and I think it's very easy to overlook that in these rankings.

As a bonus, here's a ranking of this year's ACF Nationals editors.

Tier One:
Me. My questions were great, except for the ones that weren't so great.

Tier Two:
Jerry, Bruce, and Susan. Don't you dare rank them ahead of me. My editing PPG was totally higher.

I think the last time you divided people into tiers you grossly underestimated my (read: everyone on the team except me) CO team in 2010.

by **Magister Ludi** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:14 pm

I think there are a few common fallacies that people fall into when ranking individual players in this poll, which people should be aware of:

1. Ignoring the regular season in rankings. One should remember that the poll is meant to determine who played the best over the entire year. If you ranked players solely based on how they did at Nationals there wouldn't be any need for a poll.

2. Overvaluing how players perform individually against your team. It's easy for someone like Eric to over-value a humanities player since they play well against his team or for someone like me to under-value Evan Adams because he does not play as well against me as he does against other teams.

3. Viewing ppg in the upper playoff bracket at ACF Nats as the primary ranking metric. First of all, you don't want to shaft people such as Auroni Gupta for not getting a chance to play ACF. Secondly, people need to evaluate ppg at ACF critically. Secondly. there is a big difference between players such as Kevin Koai putting up 20 ppg that they will convert in almost every room and Ike Jose scoring 60 ppg because he gets to rack up high scores when he plays weak humanities teams. For example, Kevin maintained a 26 ppg at CO when playing with top players, but Ike dropped to 17 ppg as the lowest scoring member of the team when he played with other good people at VCU Open. In my experience, the most overrated players in this poll are

4. Letting final placement at Nationals overly inflate individual player’s ranking. It’s important to remember that the difference between third and fifth or fourth and sixth in these tournaments often comes down to small margins like buzzer races that don’t reflect meaningful differences between players' skill levels. I have a feeling this year that if Harvard had won one more buzzer race in our very close games against UVA or Illinois in the playoffs at ACF--and accordingly had finished tied for third instead of fifth--Dallas and I would finish a couple spots higher in this poll. though that would not mean we were any better players.

5. Regional Bias. This issue especially arises at the back end of people's polls as they tend just to pick people they see a lot at their local tournaments for the last few spots. For example, I might be inclined to chose players such as Raphael from Columbia, Miriam Nussbaum, or Spencer Weinrich (who are all very good players) when picking the last few spots on my poll since I've personally seen them make good buzzes numerous times throughout the season. But it's important to spend a little time looking at the stats for players who you don't see regularly to make sure you don't shaft less conspicuous players like Matt Menard or Jasper Lee who have had very good seasons but don't post a lot.

by **Cheynem** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 7:33 pm

don't leave us hanging, ted!

by **Tees-Exe Line** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 8:10 pm

Ted, there isn't enough there for me to be even close to acquainted with everything I'm doing wrong. Please, more. I need guidance!

by **RyuAqua** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 8:21 pm

I agree with Jonathan that a tiers approach would not only be more reflective of how players exist in clumps of skill level, but also easier to write up and better for reducing the bickering. Maybe for next year, this should be split into a "Top Tier" of five, a "High Tier" of ten, and a "Mid-High Tier" of fifteen, or similar groupings. Regardless, here's my participation in the exercise (for rather small values of "a day or two"); count it as an open ballot and as submitted.

1. Matt Bollinger
2. Eric Mukherjee
3. Ike Jose
4. Chris Ray
5. John Lawrence
6. Auroni Gupta
7. Matt Jackson
8. Will Butler
9. Andrew Hart
10. Ted Gioia
11. Will Nediger
12. Kurtis Droge
13. Dallas Simons
14. Guy Tabachnick
15. Evan Adams
16. Henry Gorman
17. Trevor Davis
18. Neil Gurram
19. Stephen Liu
20. Kevin Koai
21. Doug Graebner
22. Tommy Casalaspi
23. Marshall Steinbaum
24. Mike Cheyne
25. Rafael Krichevsky

Some explanations/comments:

-The best two players in college quizbowl right now are Matt Bollinger and Eric Mukherjee. In many ways, the story of college quizbowl for the next two years - at least - is going to be the story of which of these two has stronger teammates and locks their respective categories down better. (Or of whether anyone can unseat them.) Ultimately, I think the numbers and successes of this year point to Matt Bollinger as the better player of the two, and thereby the best player in college quizbowl right now. In a post-Seth, post-Jerry, inter-Sorice era, he may be the youngest "best college player" of the past half-decade, if not longer. Mattb outpowered Seth Teitler at Peaceful Resolution despite having great teammates, got an absurd 63 powers at SCT across 9 games there, and really seems to have reined in his negging in the latter part of this year at both nationals, placing his teams higher at both while still being an individual award-winner among stronger teammates than Eric's. Mattb really is becoming an "all-humanities" player in the same way Eric has been an "all-sciences" player for years, and he is really that good at it. Expect to see him in at least four more national championship finals, building on his first title to compete for more.

-Ike above Chris: Ike took his teams to higher finishes at ICT and Nats with a less-known supporting squad at each. These two are both great players, and it seems like Chris has more grounded specialties than Ike, but the numbers and placings lead me to put Ike ahead for today. (That said, Chris is apparently going into year seven with Maryland. Be ready, everyone!)

-I ranked myself below John, whose ability to scale to just-plain-impossible difficulty in his subjects is really unlike anyone else I've ever seen, and who really has been developing generalist ability in history, philosophy, and social science alongside his best-in-the-game specialties of literature and music (and an underreported skill at visual art questions). His ability to just march on through ludicrous answer lines as everyone else balks has been key these past two years, more so, as I see it, than what I've been doing.

by **Smuttynose Island** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:59 pm

This is my ballot. Please don't kill me Matt Bollinger.

1. Eric Mukherjee
2. Matt Bollinger
3. Chris Ray
4. Matt Jackson
5. Auroni Gupta
6. Ike Jose
7. Andrew Hart
8. Will Butler
9. John Lawrence
10. Evan Adams
11. Will Nediger
12. Ted Gioia
13. Sam Bailey
14. Guy Tabacknick
15. Dallas Simons
16. Kurtis Droge
17. Henry Gorman
18. Trevor Davis
19. Neil Gurram
20. Kevin Koai
21. Marshall Steinbaum
22. Mike Cheyne
23. Rafael K.
24. Stephen Liu
25. Tommy C.

by **Susan** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:59 pm

Ted wrote:3. Viewing ppg in the upper playoff bracket at ACF Nats as the primary ranking metric. First of all, you don't want to shaft people such as Auroni Gupta for not getting a chance to play ACF. Secondly, people need to evaluate ppg at ACF critically. Secondly. there is a big difference between players such as Kevin Koai putting up 20 ppg that they will convert in almost every room and Ike Jose scoring 60 ppg because he gets to rack up high scores when he plays weak humanities teams. For example, Kevin maintained a 26 ppg at CO when playing with top players, but Ike dropped to 17 ppg as the lowest scoring member of the team when he played with other good people at VCU Open. In my experience, the most overrated players in this poll are

C'mon, Ted, don't leave us hanging.

by **ryandillon** » Tue May 01, 2012 12:05 am

1. Eric Mukherjee
2. Matt Bollinger
3. Ike Jose
4. Andrew Hart
5. Chris Ray
6. Matt Jackson
7. Will Nediger
8. Auroni Gupta
9. Dallas Simmons
10. John Lawrence
11. Evan Adams
12. Ted Gioia
13. Will Butler
14. Kurtis Droge
15. Guy Tabachnick
16. Sam Bailey
17. Henry Gorman
18. Kevin Koai
19. Neil Gurram
20. Trevor Davis
21. Libo Zeng
22. Tommy Casalaspi
23. Marshall Steinbaum
24. Marnold
25. Mike Cheyne

by **aestheteboy** » Tue May 01, 2012 1:04 am

This is kind of late, but I really have to say this: Doug is the best active player on Chicago quizbowl team (also, God knows that I love Sam). I'll let you guys decide whether Marshall or I understand quizbowl reality better.

by **Tees-Exe Line** » Tue May 01, 2012 2:00 pm

aestheteboy wrote:I'll let you guys decide whether Marshall or I understand quizbowl reality better.

I'll certainly grant you that. You do know who has access to the tournament questions in advance.

by **Cheynem** » Tue May 01, 2012 4:28 pm

This will probably close by Friday unless there are any other ballots to be counted. Please send them in.

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