TQBA Online Tournaments

[quizbowlcaptain]

For those of you who have played/helped run a TQBA, do you think it would be a good idea to attend one of next year's online tournaments?

[kvikstrom]

The TQBA online tournaments are about the best run tournaments we play in. Well worth signing up!

[ajyara]

TQBA has its pros and cons, but I will share with you my personal experience with TQBA.

The quality of TQBA is pretty good, and there are a good amount of rounds to guarantee satisfaction. However, the price for a TQBA is typically $160 dollars per team, and in the TQBA Middle School State Championship, it cost over $220 dollars per team. Most tournaments range their prices from $70-80. It's understandable that TQBA definitely has some extra costs, especially compared with your average 7-10 game tournament, however $160 is more than enough to cover costs, and in certain cases, I questioned the quality of the TQBA tournament I was playing. The fields are always quite good for TQBA tournaments, but for $160, you would expect that they should be packed with national competitor level teams in order to get your money's worth.

Overall, I would say TQBA tournaments are quite good, but you could get a much better deal's worth by looking at tournaments at the site (e.g. SWAMP, EMPOWER). Of course, the experiences with TQBA tournaments vary, but my experience with TQBA was standard, which is not a good thing comparing it with tournaments that are half the price.

[Nabgabber]

Like any provider of online tournaments, TQBA does have its pros and cons, that much is certain. However, as someone who has been playing TQBA tournaments for the past four years, I do think playing TQBA will be an enjoyable experience for your team, despite its higher price.

First off, TQBA's tournaments are incredibly well-staffed and well run. Most, if not all, of the moderators you will encounter in the top division of any online TQBA tournament are very experienced adults—their pay makes up the bulk of the entry fee. In addition, in my experience both playing and staffing, TQBA's tournaments are extremely well planned and there is a lot of work done to ensure they run smoothly.

The fields are always quite good for TQBA tournaments, but for $160, you would expect that they should be packed with national competitor level teams in order to get your money's worth.

It is true that not all TQBA tournaments attract a nationals-level field; most of them are not advertised as such. That shouldn't prevent your team from signing up for a TQBA tournament—there are some tournaments that perennially attract national contenders. The Texas Invitational, for example, typically gets a nationals-quality field in both the high school and middle school iterations. This year's event already includes two top-10 teams and is likely to garner more. TQBA's big tournaments usually also guarantee more games than their regular events, as well as being run on harder sets that better represent the difficulty of questions seen at MSNCT.

Although I don't think you should attend every TQBA tournament, it may benefit your team to consider attending tournaments like the one mentioned above.

[komododragon655]

I've played two TQBA tournaments and heard from many who often play TQBA tournaments (mostly because they are in Texas or lack nearby high-quality tournaments). I would NOT recommend playing TQBA tournaments if there are reasonable alternatives.

TQBA has the benefit that most online tournaments have. Online tournaments attract strong fields (because travel is not an issue) and are convenient. I understand the appeal and it is why I run a few high-quality and reasonably priced online tournaments myself. Outside of having a strong field and being convenient, TQBA has essentially nothing to it, and yet a price tag double or triple that of mainstream tournaments.

My impression with TQBA tournaments is that they are fairly well run, but since TQBA runs so many of them, they do not put enough care that each tournament and team deserves. Most tournaments are born out of the same schedule sheet and same bad format (6-or-so almost-random prelim rounds), followed by single elimination. This benefits top teams (because single-elimination = more ties in standings = more NCT qualifications) but completely screws over bottom teams (few rounds & uncompetitive games/blowout losses), not to mention fairness and the agreed-upon standards of tournament formats. The two exceptions to this bad format are when 1) the tournament field is so small that it is practically impossible to run something bad, or 2) when the tournament is deemed special enough for the TQBA team to put in some effort and come up with a format that is fair and guarantees teams a decent number of rounds.

Additionally, TQBA is run with buzzman.live despite the rest of the community agreeing on buzzin.live as a fair, user-friendly, virtual buzzer system. On the issue of stats, full team and individual stats take days, even weeks, to post, and they will sometimes never be posted at all! On the issue of staffers, I agree there is a sizeable amount of great people moderating TQBA tournaments, and to be clear, the issues outlined here are not their fault. However, I have heard in the past that middle schoolers were required to staff without compensation a TQBA tournament to be allowed participation in the state championship. If you can't see the problem here, you belong in the TQBA echo chamber.

I urge everyone reading this post not to give TQBA your hard-earned $160 (or sometimes TWO HUNDRED TWENTY DOLLARS). There should be better alternatives and more high-quality online tournaments, and you can find a few listed here.

[CPiGuy]

I've played two TQBA tournaments and heard from many who often play TQBA tournaments (mostly because they are in Texas or lack nearby high-quality tournaments). I would NOT recommend playing TQBA tournaments if there are reasonable alternatives.

[More things that are correct.]

I endorse this product and/or service.

Playing quizbowl is better than not playing quizbowl, and from what I can tell, playing TQBA tournaments is generally a good experience. Especially if you don't have other options (perhaps because there are few middle school tournaments held in your area in person), or if you are not in a position to care about the price (if your school district, or your family, is willing to pay and not question it), go for it. The good thing about TQBA is that they run tournaments on more or less every set NAQT produces, so if you really want to play a lot of quizbowl (and, to be clear, I heartily endorse playing a lot of quizbowl), and you can't do that in person, you can definitely do that with TQBA (although you'll probably end up paying a solid four figures over the season).

However, if you are a middle school team who is generally looking to be competitive at MSNCT (which if you're looking to play several online tournaments there's a good chance you are), I would honestly just recommend you play two different high school tournaments (with reasonable fields -- if 90% of the field is in the top 100 on Groger Ranks, probably do not sign up for that tournament) rather than spend more money than that on one TQBA middle school tournament. Even if you don't place as well, playing a bunch of competitive games on sets of comparable difficulty to MSNCT playoffs will be way better preparation (historically, most of the top teams at MSNCT have had significant experience playing HS-level questions), and you'll get to play twice as many tournaments!

For my part, I am hoping to run a couple online MS set tournaments next season; I think TQBA is providing a really important service by letting schools play online -- a lot of teams in their fields are from pretty remote areas or otherwise regions without a frequent in-person tournament circuit -- but I'd like to give teams an opportunity to do this without having to pay one hundred and sixty United States dollars for the privilege. Any tournaments I run will be announced on these forums, so stay tuned I guess.

[quizbowlcaptain]

(e.g. SWAMP, EMPOWER).

I have looked at both SWAMP and EMPOWER and though they looked to be great tournaments, not everyone uses Discord. A lot of people (including myself) use Zoom. Although your reasoning of cost makes sense.

[alexsms]

Our experience in TQBA was somewhat average with some lowlights. The schedule was not sent out until 11 PM EST the night before (idk if this is the norm for Romero tournaments) and the moderators weren't exceptional. Probably not worth $160 given the fees of other well-run tournaments are more like $80. I get that there aren't that many quiz bowl tournaments out there, especially in some areas where the circuits for in-person tournaments are limited or nonexistent, and that TQBA is providing an opportunity with its online tournaments, but I think it could be improved significantly.