PACE Platinum Qualifier - First Annual Richmond Educational Eagles’ Duel on May 1, 2021 @ Discord

[Godwin Quiz Bowl]

WE ARE VERY SORRY TO SAY THIS, BUT DUE TO A LACK OF ATTENDEES THE FIRST ANNUAL RICHMOND EDUCATIONAL EAGLES' DUEL WILL BE POSTPONED TO THE NEXT SEASON.

Overview
Mills Godwin High School’s Quiz Bowl club is proud to host the First Annual Richmond Educational Eagles’ Duel, a PACE Platinum Qualifier tournament (the top 25% of the field qualifies for PACE Nationals), on Saturday, May 1th, 2021.

Eligibility
This tournament is open to all high school-level Quiz Bowl teams, but preference will be given to teams on the East Coast (Virginia, D.C., Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Georgia, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Vermont).

Distribution
The subject distribution for the tournament is as follows; each packet has 20 questions and a tiebreaker, and each question is comprised of a toss-up and three bonuses. We will be using a varsity-level housewrite for this tournament. Steals are allowed. Apologies for the decimal percentages.
Literature - 21.05%
Science - 21.05%
History/Geography - 21.05%
Social Science - 8.77%
Mythology/Religion - 8.77%
Fine Arts - 8.77%
Current Events - 5.26%
Trash - 5.26%

Platform & Schedule
The tournament will be entirely virtual and be hosted on Discord. A link to the server will be sent to the email used to register for the tournament approximately a week prior to the tournament. Team divisions and match schedules will be provided the day before the tournament on the tournament server. Unless a request has been filed and granted from the tournament director, all player cameras must be on for the duration of each match. The tournament will start at 9 AM EST/8 AM CST and is scheduled to end at 7 or 9 PM EST/6 or 8 PM CST with an expected 12 rounds per team. As always, cheating is strongly condemned and any suspicion of cheating or suspicious behavior will be investigated. We will abide by the PACE Honor Pledge, found at https://www.pace-nsc.org/pace-honor-pledge/.

Registration
Registration is open until April 26th, the Monday before the tournament, and can be completed using the Google Form https://forms.gle/PYTaj3EtFFQd8nt2A. Please fill out the form with the name of your high school (unless you are not affiliated with a high school but are still of high school age, in which case mention this in the additional information section), your team lead’s/sponsor’s contact information (please ensure the email address you provide is checked regularly), and the names of each team member (you can have a maximum of 4 players participating at any point during a match, but a limit of 6 players on a team with 2 on backup; the minimum team size is 1 member). Regardless of a team’s size, the base cost per team registered is $75, with payment details to come very soon. There will be no buzzer or moderator/staffer discounts as the tournament is online and outside moderators and staffers will not be used. The field cap is tentatively set to 32 teams, but may be increased with demand. There is no cap on the number of teams a school or organization may register. All questions, concerns, or requests should be sent to [email protected] with the subject line “Tournament Inquiry.”

Field (1/32)
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics - 1

[Vixor]

Is the lack of preference for Vermont intentional? Also is there a subject distribution for this set?

[Godwin Quiz Bowl]

Apologies about not including the subject distribution. The lack of preference for Vermont was not really intentional; I'll edit the post accordingly.

[eygotem]

a provisional PACE Platinum qualifier tournament (the top 25% of the field qualifies for PACE Nationals)

This... is not true. Firstly, PACE provisional qualifiers are treated the same as "regular" qualifiers in terms of NSC qualification—i.e., the top 10% of the field qualifies for the NSC. Secondly, this tournament is not even listed as a PACE provisional qualifier as of yet. For now, you should say something like "we anticipate that this tournament will be a qualifier for the PACE NSC."

The tournament will start at 9 AM EST/8 AM CST and is scheduled to end at 5 or 6 PM EST/4 or 5 PM CST with an expected 12 rounds per team.

This is a very ambitious schedule. As previous online tournaments have shown, virtual quiz bowl rounds almost always take longer to complete than in-person rounds. I (and many others in the quiz bowl community) would highly recommend either reducing the number of rounds (to say, 10), or extending the tournament's ending time to something more realistic.

As for the questions—given your team's lack of writing experience and the short timeframe before the tournament, I (and many others) would recommend that you either recruit outside editors with more experience, or mirror one of these question sets instead.

[Godwin Quiz Bowl]

Thank you for your post. An email from VP Bindas told us to change provisional to pending, and we are planning on getting our packets certified if we need to as well. We finished writing all of our packets months ago and only have a packet left to edit currently. We also adjusted our schedule in line with your comment about tournament length. We will mirror or recruit outside editors if it becomes necessary, but as of now we don't see any significant problems arising unless our packets somehow invalidate subject distribution requirements or something along those lines. Thank you for your advice.

[eygotem]

Ok, if your questions are already mostly done then there shouldn't be much of an issue (though it remains to be seen if PACE will deem the set worthy of platinum qualification).

You moved back the stated end time by one hour, but I still don't believe it is realistic. By NAQT's online tournament guide: "As a very rough estimate, a standard-length game with completely new players and staff would likely take twice as long as the same game played in-person. Games with experienced players and experienced staff might take 30% to 40% longer." A 12-round online tournament would likely drag on into the evening, making for a sub-optimal playing experience.

[Godwin Quiz Bowl]

Adjusted again.