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cwasims

I am pleased to announce that the WORKSHOP team will be hosting an online open mirror of 2021 WORKSHOP on April 24, 2021 on Discord. You can find more information about the set here . I, Chris Sims, will be the tournament director. Eligibility All players, including those in school and not in school...

cwasims

In light of some recent discussion about positive feedback from editors, I realize I really should've taken the time to acknowledge some of the excellent submissions I was able to receive and use for Winter (if a few months late). I will focus on the categories I edited because I remember them best,...

cwasims

A few thoughts based on reading some more packets in practice as well as some critiques I had during the tournament: In pack A, the tossup on "Jews" erroneously claims that Handel's Judas Maccabaeus is an opera as opposed to an oratorio (and also includes an earlier clue about it in a toss...

cwasims

-The "space" phil TU dropped Kant + relational/absolute kind of early, the later clues feel harder to me than connecting those ideas. -Loved the "7" in music TU. Future writers should look to this question as an exemplary music theory TU, which we should have more of. I didn't l...

cwasims

For the "space" tossup, I probably should have figured out that because the question was in the philosophy distribution - answers like "reference frame" wouldn't really make sense and "relative position / location" was probably not likely to be what it was going for. S...

cwasims

Much like Chandler, I had a great experience editing this tournament - William was a wonderful head editor, and I will echo Chandler's comments amount Nick's immense contributions to the set. This was one of my first times editing, and my first time at a level higher than novice difficulty, so this ...

cwasims

Could I see the tossup on virtue in packet J? thanks! After the “life of growth” and “life of perception” are ruled out in one text, this concept is discussed as a possible function for man. A book titled for this concept claims that the “state of grave disorder” of its author’s field is due to a f...

cwasims

Could I see the tossup on virtue in packet J? thanks! After the “life of growth” and “life of perception” are ruled out in one text, this concept is discussed as a possible function for man. A book titled for this concept claims that the “state of grave disorder” of its author’s field is due to a f...

cwasims

Additionally, packet submission has the unfortunate side effect of often creating duplicate questions especially at lower difficulties. There isn't a large surplus of physics answerlines at ACF Fall and I imagine many of the submissions had the same flavor (pardon the pun) even if the answerline va...

cwasims

Thanks for the discussion so far! I would be interested in hearing more about whether people have observed that negs might have a greater impact on female player's playing style - if that's indeed the case, then I think that alone would provide a good reason for experimenting with no-neg formats. I ...

cwasims

After some occasional and maybe not especially rigorous thought about the gameplay purpose of negs in QB, I will confess that I’m not really convinced of the overall benefit of having them in the game. I think the gameplay benefit is very situational and that they usually end up penalizing actions t...

cwasims

Another clarification: it seems right now that a team's first buzz if both players answer at the end of the question is determined by how quickly they type and submit their answer. This seems fairly unideal to me since you can't coordinate between your teammate online and usually one player will be ...

cwasims

One thing I'll add to this discussion: although PPB is a pretty reliable indicator of a team's skill across an entire tournament, the ~10 bonuses a team hears in a close game have a high variance associated with them that can only imperfectly advantage the team truly better at bonuses as opposed to ...

cwasims

The results are now in from the trash ballot. There were four ballots from Isaac Renert, Milan Fernández, Henry Atkins, and Simone Valade. 1. Aaron Dos Remedios (96, median 2, max 1, min 3) 2. Christine Irwin (91, median 3, max 2, min 5) 3. Derek So (83, median 5.5, max 3, min 7) Tied-4. Simone Vala...

cwasims

Sorry for the delay in getting the results out, but voting is now over for (most of) these polls. We didn't have enough trash or open ballots for me to feel comfortable reporting them officially, so I guess those can just stay open and if people want to submit they can. Main Poll We had 10 ballots f...

cwasims

People have expressed to me that they would like an extension on the various polls. I'll give everyone another week, so please send in your ballots by midnight Pacific time on May 9. At this point, the open and trash polls may not happen due to lack of interest - I won't be publishing the results if...

cwasims

And... a slightly more Toronto-leaning ballot than Henry's, although we agree on many placements. I've noted approximately where I'd place open players. MAIN BALLOT 1. Derek So. Derek barely played, and definitely seems to fallen a bit from his peak last year, but I think he still edges out Rein giv...

cwasims

I am pleased to announce the 2019-20 iteration of the Canadian circuit player poll! Although the season has been cut short, most of the tournaments we would normally consider in this poll have happened normally and the criteria will be similar to last year. Although this will not include national to...

cwasims

I did some work on the Toronto page recently, and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out: https://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Toronto I think Wiki pages for clubs should use some transparent and (ideally) verifiable criteria for determining who gets listed in the membership section: I don't think everyone ...

cwasims

I will fulfill my lifelong dreams of becoming an eternal grad student by starting a (probably JD/)PhD in economics at Northwestern in the fall. I definitely plan on playing as time permits, and I'm looking forward to meeting the team and the Midwest circuit generally.

cwasims

A few scattered thoughts: At Toronto, almost none of our players played QB in high school (many played Reach for the Top, although that doesn't tend to be too helpful), and yet I don't really hear any of our players (even those who leave/reduce their involvement) complaining about the difficulty of ...

cwasims

Unsurprisingly, the university has cancelled our room bookings so this tournament will not happen.

cwasims

Taper or die. Can you do any less? wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 1:53 am Is this tournament still happening?

I would be willing to run it if our room bookings aren't cancelled, although I think only people who live in or near Toronto should plan on coming.

cwasims

In one of the bottom-bracket games of 2017 ACF Nats, when I played on a two-person team with Zhenglin Liu, there was this tossup that was in large part based around Aldous Huxley's obsession with Carlo Gesualdo. My only knowledge of this connection was from an aside in my Music History 2 textbook th...

cwasims

For SCT, the staffer discount at $40 per school-provided staffer is also substantially larger than what I would otherwise provide (and what I can get local staff for providing). Of course, there's a broader question about compensation in QB that I don't want to wade into, but at least at U of T we ...

cwasims

As a host for both ACF Regionals and SCT, I found that both tournaments had one very unusual feature of their fee schedules that ended up creating strange incentives for teams and hosts. For ACF Regionals, I'm very unclear what the rationale is behind providing a massive shorthanded discount for a t...

cwasims

Thanks to everyone for coming to this tournament! This was one of the biggest fields we've gotten in Canada ever, which was really great to see. McGill A cleared the field to win Division 1, and McGill B won a one-game final against Toronto C to win Division 2. Various permutations of the stats can ...

cwasims

This post is reserved for field updates. The field has been closed at 8 teams.

Field
Toronto x4
Waterloo x2
Queen's
Toronto Scholars

cwasims

I am pleased to announce that the Eastern Canadian site of WORKSHOP will be held at the University of Toronto on Saturday, March 7, 2020. The tournament will take place at Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St., with team check-in beginning at 9:30am in SS 2101 and gameplay beginning at or before 10:...

cwasims

Someone in the General Discussion thread brought up an example of “bait,” which was disappointingly more widespread than one question. Off the top of my head, the E minor question had a sentence along the lines of, if I recall correctly, “Victor Herbert’s second cello concerto in this key inspired ...

cwasims

Someone in the General Discussion thread brought up an example of “bait,” which was disappointingly more widespread than one question. Off the top of my head, the E minor question had a sentence along the lines of, if I recall correctly, “Victor Herbert’s second cello concerto in this key inspired ...

cwasims

I am pleased to announce that the Southern Ontario site of Spring Undergraduate Novice will be held at the University of Toronto on Sunday, March 8, 2020. The tournament will take place at Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St., with team check-in beginning at 9:30am in SS 2101 and gameplay beginning...

cwasims

Thanks to all the players and staffers for coming to the tournament today! Final stats have been posted here.

Toronto A cleared the field to win the tournament and Waterloo won the undergraduate championship by having two more wins than Toronto D.

cwasims

A somewhat more unorthodox response to this concern might be to not give any points for getting a tossup right and have the only benefit of buzzing correctly being the chance at answering the bonus. While this might exacerbate concerns about variability in bonus difficulty, I think this would signif...

cwasims

Could this not be applied to many categories? I'll take history. You mention the Battle of Iwo Jima. You could read a long book or article on Iwo Jima, which would take as much time as like reading Pride and Prejudice. You could do this for all of World War II or any of the major battles--El Alamei...

cwasims

I'm pleased to announce that the University of Toronto Academic Trivia Club will be holding the Eastern Canadian mirror of Terrapin Open on Sunday, March 29, following the main site of Canadian Hybrid the previous Saturday. Because of room booking incentives, I will provisionally cap the field at 6 ...

cwasims

There will be a mirror of Ohio Trash on the Sunday after this tournament - the announcement for that tournament can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=19&p=364599#p364599.

cwasims

The University of Toronto Academic Trivia Club is pleased to announce a mirror of the Ohio Trash set happening on Sunday, February 9, 2020. This is the Sunday after our SCT tournament. This tournament will take place in Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St. Tournament will begin at 9 am sharp so ple...

cwasims

The University of Toronto Academic Trivia Club is pleased to announce that we will be hosting the NAQT Eastern Canada Sectional Championship Tournament on Saturday, February 8, 2019. The tournament will take place in Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St., with registration beginning at 9:00am in SS ...

cwasims

I am pleased to announce that the Eastern Canadian site of 2020 ACF Regionals will be held at the University of Toronto on Saturday, January 25, 2020. The tournament will take place at Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St., with team check-in beginning at 9:30am in a SS 2101 and gameplay beginning a...

cwasims

Thanks to everyone who came out to EFT in Toronto today! Toronto B defeated McGill A 300-260 to win the tournament in the first game of an advantaged final. Over 60 players at a tournament is probably pretty close to a record for a tournament in Canada and it was great to see several teams who haven...

cwasims

The University of Toronto Academic Trivia will be holding a mirror of the 2019 Early Fall Tournament (EFT) on October 5, 2019. Logistics The tournament will begin at 10am sharp in Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St., Toronto. Please arrive by 9:40am if you are playing, and by 9:35am if you are sta...

cwasims

The University of Toronto Academic Trivia Club will be hosting a mirror of NAQT's Collegiate Novice set (CNS-186) on September 21, 2019. Logistics The tournament will begin at 10:00am in room 2105 in Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St, Toronto. I would ask all staff and people bringing buzzers to ...

cwasims

This was my first CO, and I really enjoyed the tournament. The history was excellent, with lots of interesting questions and a distribution that felt pretty much exactly right from a regional/era perspective. The thought was great, with the focus on contemporary philosophy in particular being much w...

cwasims

2. Rein Otsason (212, Highest #2, Lowest #5, Median #2) 3. Aayush Rajasekaran (206, Highest #2, Lowest #5, Median #3) Sigh... I fear it may look like I have some vendetta against Rein, but conscience compels me, etc. etc. Also, the McGill chat challenged me to produce a compelling argument for my (...

cwasims

The results are in! Thank you to our voters Adam Swift, Kevin Lei, Chris Sims, Joe Su, Jack van Nostrand, Daniel Lovsted, Erik Christensen, Raymond Chen, and Milan Fernandez. 1. Derek So (225, Unanimous #1) 2. Rein Otsason (212, Highest #2, Lowest #5, Median #2) 3. Aayush Rajasekaran (206, Highest #...

cwasims

I'll extend the deadline on this until May 20th to give people some more time to get ballots in.

cwasims

I guess the bottom line is this: polls like this are defined by their eligibility requirements. If, for instance, I had just said in the initial post that this was a Canadian player poll and that people should submit 25 players on their ballots, then it would certainly appear that anyone playing at ...

cwasims

Thank you, Naveed, for going back 3 years to find a poll that had substantially different eligibility requirements to prove a point that is clearly not true anymore. Each of the last two polls have had basically identical eligibility to this year's version, and I recall complaints about Rafael not b...

cwasims

I suppose I could amend the description to make it absolutely clear that the "Canadian" here refers to the circuit and not the country overall, but no one (to my knowledge) has ever actually interpreted the poll this way until you started posting--indeed, if you actually took the name lite...

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