2006 Jefferson Invitational Academic Tournament - January 14

BuzzerZen · Post by **BuzzerZen** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 7:01 pm

I am proud to announce that the 2006 Jefferson Invitational Academic Tournament will be taking place at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology on Saturday, January 14th, 2005. Questions will be house written untimed tossup-related bonus. Our tournaments usually draw a diverse and highly competitive field.

Teams: Schools may bring as many teams as they wish. We will be accepting registrations from unaffiliated teams or solo players, as long as no team member has graduated from high school. Such teams will not qualify for PACE. Field will be capped at 64 teams.

Game format: 20 pyramidal tossups with related bonuses, with a halftime after 10 tossups. No timeouts, substitutions only at halftime. A more complete rules document will be provided at some point.

Tournament format: There will be 10 preliminary rounds. The field will be divided into two brackets, which will alternate playing rounds. Thus, each team will play 5 rounds in the prelims -- three in the morning and two after lunch. Rounds after the first will be Swiss paired to ensure even matches. Note that since prelim rounds alternate, a given team will have around 25-30 minutes between rounds. Teams are welcome to watch other games when the other bracket is playing. We may have one or two rooms available for scrimmages. The top 8 teams from each prelim bracket, ranked by wins and points, will advance to a single-elimination playoff. Teams that win in the round of 16 (i.e. the top 8 teams) will continue to play consolation rounds for the rest of the playoffs so we will rank teams 1st through 8th place.

Questions: House-written by members of the TJ It's Academic team. Questions consist of long-ish, pyramidal tossups (10 points, no powers, yes bouncebacks) with strictly related bonuses (30 points, multipart, no bouncebacks). A note that this tournament has somewhat of a reputation for difficulty, but we try to ensure that all questions are gettable by at least one person out of eight average players by the giveaway clue at the end of the tossup. Playoff questions will probably be noticibly more challenging than prelim questions.

National tournament bids: Pending PACE affiliation, the top 4 teams will recieve bids to the PACE NSC which will take place on June 17-18 at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.

Awards: The top 3 teams will recieve trophies that will be both shiny and hefty. The top individual scorer (and possibly the runner-up) will recieve some sort of edifying gift. The neg champion (and possibly the runner-up) will recieve some sort of embarassing gift. Past neg prize examples include a women's bowling trophy, defaced Powerpuff Girls picture books, a copy of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, a purple ribbon proclaiming "I Tried my Best," and a water bottle sculpted to resemble the form of Washington Mystics star Alanna Beard.

Cost:
$45 for the first team from each school.
$40 for subsequent teams.
-$5 per working buzzer system
$20 for a copy of the questions

Want to register? Questions? Contact tournament director Evan Silberman by e-mail at buzzinearly <at> gmail <dot> com. If you have questions of general interest, please post to this thread. We hope to see you all there!

BuzzerZen · Post by **BuzzerZen** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:17 pm

Field post, 12/30:

GDS x2
Woodson x2
Gov x4
Raleigh Charter x2
Gonzaga
Fairfax
McLean
Paul VI
Robinson x3
Hayfield
Edison
Oakton x2
21 teams.

We still have plenty of room (we're hoping for at least 48 teams, and will accept more if staffing permits), so email me at [email protected] if you want to register.

insaneindian · Post by **insaneindian** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 2:47 pm

we are hosting our middle school tournament that day

BuzzerZen · Post by **BuzzerZen** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:59 pm

There's still time to register, folks. We've got 31 teams signed up right now, and we're hoping for plenty more. Email me ASAP if you are interested in registering your team.

Lapego1 · Post by **Lapego1** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:09 pm

Evan, do you have any sort of field update?

dschafer · Post by **dschafer** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:56 am

I know we're somewhere around 43 teams; we'll try and have a field update this afternoon.

BuzzerZen · Post by **BuzzerZen** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:18 pm

Field update:
GDS 2
Woodson 1
MLWGSGIS 4
Raleigh Charter 2
Gonzaga 1
Fairfax 1
McLean 1
Paul VI 1
Robinson 3
Hayfield 1
Edison 1
Oakton 2
Marshall 1
Clover Hill 2
State College 2
Eleanor Roosevelt 1
National Cathedral 2
St. Andrews 1
Blake 1
Madison 2
Robert E. Lee 1
Whitman 2
Annandale 2
Elizabeth Seton 1
Howard 1
Richard Montgomery 2
Centennial 2

43 teams

See you all on Saturday.

dschafer · Post by **dschafer** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 5:35 pm

Prelim results are available on the TJ It's Academic Tournament page.

dschafer · Post by **dschafer** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 8:30 pm

Final results:

1. State College A
2. RM A
3. Gov B
4. Centennial A
5. Raleigh Charter A
6. Raleigh Charter B
7. National Cathedral A
8. Gov C

Prelim results are available on the tournament page; playoff results will be posted shortly.

Thank you to all 44 teams who came, from as far as Raleigh, NC and State College, PA, and we hope to see you again next year.

insaneindian · Post by **insaneindian** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 8:47 pm

Round 9

RM A 365, State College A 80

wow, i wonder what happened in the playoffs

Post by **DumbJaques** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 9:53 pm

The day was pretty rife with upsets. RM B beat Gov A and Raleigh Charter A, then lost to gov B as the #2 seed in the first playoff round. Gov A lost to centennial A, who went 3-2 in the prelims and lost to gov B in the third place game. Raleigh Charter A was also upset in the quarter-finals by State College.

There certainly were some rounds that, overall, were quite good. I did feel like they were weirdish, something which probably accounted for the plethera of upsets, and a few rounds were definitely problematic (most notably the round in which seeds 15 and 14 beat seeds 2 and 3) in terms of answer selection and consistency of difficulty/style.

There was a protest in the final, one which we made a bit of an issue about, but I would like to say here that State College won that game. I do not beleive the protest would have resulted in a change in that, and I pressed it mainly because I had a problem with the manner in which it was handled (something which there is no point in getting into a fight over here). State College most certainly deserves congratulations for winning, and for playing an excellent final round on questions that were difficult for both teams.

Bugsy · Post by **Bugsy** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:04 pm

Again, congrats to State College. We sorta let that one slip out from under us.

To be honest, I doubt I would have even gotten the answer right if I had been prompted.

One quibble: at times, the questions seemed unreasonably (a bonus on Armenia?) or unnecessarily (the requirement to give the entire name of the ID court case? Asking for the school district would have been more reasonable) difficult.

dschafer · Post by **dschafer** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:10 pm

Just for reference, the playoff results are now available on the tournament page.

rchschem · Post by **rchschem** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:14 pm

Nice tournament. We'll study our English counties and Indian capitals next time.

Congrats to State College--I watched them play twice (didn't see the finals) and was duly impressed.

Eric

quizbowllee · Post by **quizbowllee** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:32 pm

Is there any chance that the questions from this tournament will become available in the near future? I'd be interested in seeing them.

BuzzerZen · Post by **BuzzerZen** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 8:51 pm

Since we sold the questions at our tournament, they won't likely be made freely available anytime soon. Anyone may purchase them for $20 (electronic copy) if they promise not to redistribute them.

Matthew D · Post by **Matthew D** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:04 pm

I wouldn't mind getting a copy myself...

jbarnes112358 · Post by **jbarnes112358** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:30 pm

The questions were of high quality, for the most part. Many of the questions were difficult, but not many were excessively difficult for the serious quiz bowl team. Their tournament announcement warned that they had a reputation for having difficult questions. However, the ovewhelming majority of the questions were certainly within the realm of reasonable. IMHO it would be $20 well spent - certainly good practice for PACE and NAQT nationals.

quizbowllee · Post by **quizbowllee** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 12:19 am

Yeah, just tell me who I need to contact and/or where to send the check. I'm definitely going to buy them.

BuzzerZen · Post by **BuzzerZen** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 7:53 am

E-mail me to order questions:
buzzineary <at>.gmail <dot> com

NRScout98 · Post by **NRScout98** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 11:59 am

His email is actually buzzinearly <at> gmail <dot> com

quizbowllee · Post by **quizbowllee** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 12:21 pm

Yeah, I figured that out...