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This is currently being discussed.AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Is there a reason why PACE only allows players 3 seconds to answer after buzzing in instead of the (m)ACF standard 5 seconds?
Personally, I think that three seconds after a buzz feels like a LIFETIME for a coach, let alone a player on the opposing team. With that long a pause allowed, you might as well remove the stall rule entirely. The championship HSNCT match last year, won on a delayed answer that danced VERY close to a stall (in the mind of the answering party as well as many in the audience, as I recall from a post on this board, and clearly for members of the opposing team), is a great example of how long a three second count can be.AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Is there a reason why PACE only allows players 3 seconds to answer after buzzing in instead of the (m)ACF standard 5 seconds?
So what do you want, 1 second? A half second? I love the 5 second rule and i think that any less is ridiculous for a player that's trying to come up with an answer when a question is being read incredibly fast.Romero wrote:This is a topic near to my heart. The 5 seconds adds an element of gamesmanship to a match. Quiz Bowl is not just a game of reflexes, it is also a game of deep thinking and on the fly critical thinking. The 5 seconds allows players to think laterally and figure out where the question is going. We should not penalize a student who is using critical thinking to answer tossups.
Chris Romero
Texas A&M Quiz Bowl 1999-2007
I think he's in favor of five seconds on the grounds that it allows one to think of the answer.Carangoides ciliarius wrote:So what do you want, 1 second? A half second? I love the 5 second rule and i think that any less is ridiculous for a player that's trying to come up with an answer when a question is being read incredibly fast.Romero wrote:This is a topic near to my heart. The 5 seconds adds an element of gamesmanship to a match. Quiz Bowl is not just a game of reflexes, it is also a game of deep thinking and on the fly critical thinking. The 5 seconds allows players to think laterally and figure out where the question is going. We should not penalize a student who is using critical thinking to answer tossups.
Chris Romero
Texas A&M Quiz Bowl 1999-2007
I think he's in favor of 5 seconds, though I'm also a bit confused.Carangoides ciliarius wrote:So what do you want, 1 second? A half second? I love the 5 second rule and i think that any less is ridiculous for a player that's trying to come up with an answer when a question is being read incredibly fast.Romero wrote:This is a topic near to my heart. The 5 seconds adds an element of gamesmanship to a match. Quiz Bowl is not just a game of reflexes, it is also a game of deep thinking and on the fly critical thinking. The 5 seconds allows players to think laterally and figure out where the question is going. We should not penalize a student who is using critical thinking to answer tossups.
Chris Romero
Texas A&M Quiz Bowl 1999-2007
Yeah i have no idea what's going on actually in this post, now that i read it again.Charbroil wrote:I think he's in favor of 5 seconds, though I'm also a bit confused.Carangoides ciliarius wrote:So what do you want, 1 second? A half second? I love the 5 second rule and i think that any less is ridiculous for a player that's trying to come up with an answer when a question is being read incredibly fast.Romero wrote:This is a topic near to my heart. The 5 seconds adds an element of gamesmanship to a match. Quiz Bowl is not just a game of reflexes, it is also a game of deep thinking and on the fly critical thinking. The 5 seconds allows players to think laterally and figure out where the question is going. We should not penalize a student who is using critical thinking to answer tossups.
Chris Romero
Texas A&M Quiz Bowl 1999-2007
"5 seconds: good, less than that: bad"Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Yeah i have no idea what's going on actually in this post, now that i read it again.Charbroil wrote:I think he's in favor of 5 seconds, though I'm also a bit confused.Carangoides ciliarius wrote:So what do you want, 1 second? A half second? I love the 5 second rule and i think that any less is ridiculous for a player that's trying to come up with an answer when a question is being read incredibly fast.Romero wrote:This is a topic near to my heart. The 5 seconds adds an element of gamesmanship to a match. Quiz Bowl is not just a game of reflexes, it is also a game of deep thinking and on the fly critical thinking. The 5 seconds allows players to think laterally and figure out where the question is going. We should not penalize a student who is using critical thinking to answer tossups.
Chris Romero
Texas A&M Quiz Bowl 1999-2007
I don't agree with any of this. I understand that you're exaggerating when you say "If you're going to increase the answer time by two-thirds, you might as well just increase it by INFINITY-THIRDS!" but I don't understand the point you're trying to make with the exaggeration. Players still can and often do stall with a five-second answer time, so the effect of changing to five seconds is not close to the same as changing to unlimited time.Joshua Rutsky wrote:Personally, I think that three seconds after a buzz feels like a LIFETIME for a coach, let alone a player on the opposing team. With that long a pause allowed, you might as well remove the stall rule entirely. The championship HSNCT match last year, won on a delayed answer that danced VERY close to a stall (in the mind of the answering party as well as many in the audience, as I recall from a post on this board, and clearly for members of the opposing team), is a great example of how long a three second count can be.
Just so we're all on the same page here, NAQT rules set two seconds as the amount of time a player has to begin a tossup answer.Captain Sinico wrote:NAQT's issue last year was one of rule enforcement rather than rule establishment in as much as the moderator presumably knew three seconds were to be had, but seemed to give longer than that. While it is inevitable that rules are not always enforced precisely, I see no reason to believe that a moderator giving extra time will give more or less extra time if the proper amount of time is less or more.
(Three seconds is the space after the end of the tossup for at least one team to buzz.)NAQT rules wrote:An answer to a tossup must begin within 2 seconds after the player has been recognized. An answer begun after the moderator has said "Time" will be treated as no answer. Ties between the player and the moderator are decided in favor of the player.
Mike, I have to base my comments on my own experience, which is limited to two HSNCTs, a few regional tourneys at the HS level, and local play; I am not familiar with mACF format, nor have I seen a match play out with a five second rule. From that limited experience, however, my opinion is that the purpose of the buzzer in quiz bowl is to indicate that you know the answer. If a player is "gaming", as Chris puts it, then he/she knows the rules in advance and games in accordance with them. All the events we've attended have had 3 second rules (or less), and as I said, waiting on that three count, which is variable with any moderator to some extent, can be excruciating, particularly when you are playing against a "gamer." If you need five seconds AFTER you buzz to come up with your answer due to lateral thinking, why did you buzz? I don't see why it is arbitrarily better to have five seconds to think about what you want to say than three, or seven, or ten. I have never played QB at the college level; is it a mark of particularly good quiz bowl players that they buzz before they know what they are going to say, then consider in that five seconds? Seriously, I want to know if I need to change the way I coach my kids.Captain Sinico wrote: I don't agree with any of this. I understand that you're exaggerating when you say "If you're going to increase the answer time by two-thirds, you might as well just increase it by INFINITY-THIRDS!" but I don't understand the point you're trying to make with the exaggeration. Players still can and often do stall with a five-second answer time, so the effect of changing to five seconds is not close to the same as changing to unlimited time.
Actually, what I want is for players to read minds so they can answer before the question was asked. Seriously, I'm not saying answers should be instantaneous, Mr. C. I'm saying that my understanding of the purpose of that three second period has always been to give the player leeway for having a momentary "brain freeze", not to offer a chance to think out the answer further. If you pushed the button, you declared you knew the answer, not that you would know it five seconds from now if you could think about it. Again, I understand strategy is involved. There have been players in our area who will buzz slightly ahead of the moderator's reading a key word, knowing they will pick up a syllable or even the full word 75% of the time before the moderator is able to stop reading. That's a calculated risk, and if they want to take it, fine. Five seconds, though, is a lot of time to allow for a player to think before having to begin answering a question they, by buzzing, claimed to know the answer to.Carangoides ciliarius wrote: So what do you want, 1 second? A half second? I love the 5 second rule and i think that any less is ridiculous for a player that's trying to come up with an answer when a question is being read incredibly fast.
What people are arguing here is that 3 seconds isn't enough time to overcome the "brain-freeze" you mentioned. I don't agree that we should go out of our way to reward gamesmanship, but we should realize how fast-paced games between even teams are going to be. During our finals match against LASA at Prison Bowl, for example, there was a tossup on "nitrogen," and I recognized a clue in the second or third line. I couldn't pull the answer immediately after hearing the clue, but I knew I could in the time limit, and more pressingly, I knew that LASA could too. After buzzing in, it took a little while to work out the answer (they're talking about this molecule, which has this structure, which contains...), but within the 5 second time limit, I came up with the correct response. I don't really see how your finger-wagging "You buzzed, so you should know the answer!" argument applies to this situation. The fact is that every clue after that one would have been useless to me, and it was very likely that LASA would buzz if I didn't. This isn't whatever issue of morality or maturity that you're making it out to be: it's just that the early clues to pyramidal questions can get very complicated, so that even if a team buzzes when they know a clue, it'll take a few seconds to draw out the answer. Rather than rewarding gamesmanship, the five second rule removes a player's fear of "brain freeze" and allows them to actually buzz once they hear a clue that they know. In my experience, three seconds is often just not enough time.Joshua Rutsky wrote:Mike, I have to base my comments on my own experience, which is limited to two HSNCTs, a few regional tourneys at the HS level, and local play; I am not familiar with mACF format, nor have I seen a match play out with a five second rule. From that limited experience, however, my opinion is that the purpose of the buzzer in quiz bowl is to indicate that you know the answer. If a player is "gaming", as Chris puts it, then he/she knows the rules in advance and games in accordance with them. All the events we've attended have had 3 second rules (or less), and as I said, waiting on that three count, which is variable with any moderator to some extent, can be excruciating, particularly when you are playing against a "gamer." If you need five seconds AFTER you buzz to come up with your answer due to lateral thinking, why did you buzz? I don't see why it is arbitrarily better to have five seconds to think about what you want to say than three, or seven, or ten. I have never played QB at the college level; is it a mark of particularly good quiz bowl players that they buzz before they know what they are going to say, then consider in that five seconds? Seriously, I want to know if I need to change the way I coach my kids.Captain Sinico wrote: I don't agree with any of this. I understand that you're exaggerating when you say "If you're going to increase the answer time by two-thirds, you might as well just increase it by INFINITY-THIRDS!" but I don't understand the point you're trying to make with the exaggeration. Players still can and often do stall with a five-second answer time, so the effect of changing to five seconds is not close to the same as changing to unlimited time.
Actually, what I want is for players to read minds so they can answer before the question was asked. Seriously, I'm not saying answers should be instantaneous, Mr. C. I'm saying that my understanding of the purpose of that three second period has always been to give the player leeway for having a momentary "brain freeze", not to offer a chance to think out the answer further. If you pushed the button, you declared you knew the answer, not that you would know it five seconds from now if you could think about it. Again, I understand strategy is involved. There have been players in our area who will buzz slightly ahead of the moderator's reading a key word, knowing they will pick up a syllable or even the full word 75% of the time before the moderator is able to stop reading. That's a calculated risk, and if they want to take it, fine. Five seconds, though, is a lot of time to allow for a player to think before having to begin answering a question they, by buzzing, claimed to know the answer to.Carangoides ciliarius wrote: So what do you want, 1 second? A half second? I love the 5 second rule and i think that any less is ridiculous for a player that's trying to come up with an answer when a question is being read incredibly fast.
(these posts split off from the PACE NSC thread)AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Is there a reason why PACE only allows players 3 seconds to answer after buzzing in instead of the (m)ACF standard 5 seconds?
I don't understand how this is supposed to count against the rule. The other team getting or almost getting a question is always excruciating. So what?Joshua Rutsky wrote:...waiting on that three count... can be excruciating, particularly when you are playing against a "gamer."
Because you knew you knew the answer.Joshua Rutsky wrote:If you need five seconds AFTER you buzz to come up with your answer..., why did you buzz?
I didn't say it was. Your case is necessarily that it's worse; I'm countering that I don't see how it's worse, not that it's necessarily better.Joshua Rutsky wrote:I don't see why it is arbitrarily better to have five seconds to think about what you want to say than three, or seven, or ten.
I always tell my players to use their post-buzz time to consider their answer. After all, the time's there, so you'd better use it. At any rate, yes, good players often buzz when they think they know the answer, even if they don't think they can say it at that instant, and come up with it in whatever time they have, be it 5 seconds, 2 seconds, or "however long it takes an incompetent CBI staffer to notice that I have buzzed and read my nametag." Certainly other players have longer recall time, less confidence, less non-binary-association knowledge, less notion of how to win, or some combination of those things and will only buzz when they know they can already say the answer (or at least what they think to be the answer.)Joshua Rutsky wrote:is it a mark of particularly good quiz bowl players that they buzz before they know what they are going to say, then consider in that five seconds?
I disagree. I think that if you are "impulse buzzing" it would actually be easier to get the answer out quicker than if someone was trying to use lateral thinking to "figure out" the answer. I have had plenty of buzzes where I buzz in and think "oh crap what did they just say?" but when I got time called I didn't feel it was because I only had 3 seconds, I felt it was a bad buzz that I shouldn't have made.Dan-Don wrote:I think 5 seconds is absolutely necessary for your brain to catch up with your thumb, especially if one does a lot of impulse buzzing. Anything more than 5 would probably be overkill, but I think 2 is way too short and might actually punish quicker players. I realize NAQT is on the clock, so I would advocate them going to 3 seconds, but it seems that PACE could easily up it to 5 without making anyone unhappy.
Part of the problem here is that, any way we slice it, quizbowl is still a game. Teams win and teams lose. Good players will automatically tend toward a strategy that works best for them. This includes making buzzes at the point where they recognize a clue, figuring they can recall the answer. And this is of course, a gamble. Employing this strategy will result in more correct answers but also more negs. A higher time limit to answer skews the odds more toward correct answers and a lower limit skews the odds toward more negs.Joshua Rutsky wrote:Mike, I have to base my comments on my own experience, which is limited to two HSNCTs, a few regional tourneys at the HS level, and local play; I am not familiar with mACF format, nor have I seen a match play out with a five second rule. From that limited experience, however, my opinion is that the purpose of the buzzer in quiz bowl is to indicate that you know the answer. If a player is "gaming", as Chris puts it, then he/she knows the rules in advance and games in accordance with them. All the events we've attended have had 3 second rules (or less), and as I said, waiting on that three count, which is variable with any moderator to some extent, can be excruciating, particularly when you are playing against a "gamer." If you need five seconds AFTER you buzz to come up with your answer due to lateral thinking, why did you buzz? I don't see why it is arbitrarily better to have five seconds to think about what you want to say than three, or seven, or ten. I have never played QB at the college level; is it a mark of particularly good quiz bowl players that they buzz before they know what they are going to say, then consider in that five seconds? Seriously, I want to know if I need to change the way I coach my kids.
Maybe... but a longer time limit will encourage even more players to buzz in before they actually "know" the answer figuring they will recall within the time frame given. This could lead to MORE negs, not less...Howard wrote: A higher time limit to answer skews the odds more toward correct answers and a lower limit skews the odds toward more negs.
Agreed- this is a KEY skill and players should be coached to get a good felling for this. You have to buzz when you know you'll know the answer in x seconds, not when you actually know the answer. (x=(time until prompted) + (time allotted to answer in this format) - (just enough so you don't get negged)).Howard wrote:But I think the discussion we've been having here misses one important point. Encouraging players to ring even before they know the answer pushes them to practice their thinking and recall skills. In time, repeating this type of situation will improve their overall recall abilities.
Yeah, I agree: the effect of a post-buzz time change depends on the type of player and how they're playing. For example, I always have liked exploiting my post-buzz time to a maximal extent, to the point that probably half or more of my buzzes in competitive games are the "buzz off clue I think I know and only then worry about what the answer actually is" type. However, the first time I played CBI, which had a "be recognized, then answer immediately" policy, I negged a ton because that post-buzz strategy is ill-adapted to that rule (and, of course, because they had other stupid rules and bad, hose questions that caused people to neg undeservedly...) Eventually, however, I almost never negged in that format unless my guess was actually wrong, because I only buzzed when I already knew what I was going to say or was damn sure I was about to.pblessman wrote:Maybe... but a longer time limit will encourage even more players to buzz in before they actually "know" the answer figuring they will recall within the time frame given. This could lead to MORE negs, not less...Howard wrote: A higher time limit to answer skews the odds more toward correct answers and a lower limit skews the odds toward more negs.
TIMBER!pblessman wrote:Agreed- this is a KEY skill and players should be coached to get a good felling for this.