bmcke wrote:I totally loved doing this, but I want to raise something: should Canadian schools be mirroring open tournaments? I know Waterloo KABO was announced and planned before the difficulty of the tournament was clear, but I think the field yesterday might have preferred easier or shorter questions. I don't mean to say that we couldn't handle the KABO questions (I saw plenty of good buzzes and 20s/30s despite the overall low stats) but that playing something easier next time would be more fun. Canada is a friendly circuit with enough young people and casual players, and not too many people trying to train themselves for a run at Nationals. Some Ottawa players lost interest in going to KABO when I told them I couldn't promise low difficulty.
Yeah, I'm sorry I misjudged the difficulty of this set (though Kurtis did warn me). I don't know if not mirroring hard tournaments is the solution. If the IO mirror Mac mentioned wanting to host happens, I'll be there, despite how much out of it I was yesterday. On the one hand, it may not be fun only being able to answer 1 or 2 questions per round, but on the other hand, I found the KABO set far more interesting than one-lining questions on a set like MUT.
I want to thank everyone who came out to our mirror and seemed to be trying to enjoy themselves despite the high difficulty of the questions. The social aspect of our circuit becomes apparent at events like this, and I think it's nice that, as Brendan says, our circuit is more friendly than competitive. With time (a
lot of time), we might reach the point where we can enjoy hanging out
and do well on sets like this KABO, but we'll only get to that point by continuing to try harder events. Maybe something a little easier than this set for the near future, though.
Of course, a thank you goes out also to the staffers who read, kept score, and ran stats all day--Aaron, Daniel, Ming-Ho, Aayush, Joseph, Stephen, this tournament couldn't have happened without your efforts!