The Quizbowl Resource Center

I'm starting this thread for information and discussion about the Harvard Fall Mirror tournament we are hosting at Rockford Auburn (IL.) on Dec. 3.
We anticipate having a field of from 20 to 30 teams. We will either have pool play in the morning, with rebracketed groups in the afternoon based on the morning results, or have round-robin play in two divisions, depending on the field. All teams are guaranteed nine or more rounds of play. We will use mACF rules, with negs but no powers (because they are not marked in the questions), and bonuses will rebound.
An email invitation has been sent to many Illinois coaches. If a reader of this board is interested in attending and has not received an email, please contact me at linda[DOT]greene[AT]rps205[DOT]com for an entry form and more information. We also are looking for a few more moderators; if you can help, please contact me. We provide breakfast and lunch and can pay a modest stipend to help cover travel costs.

Here's the field so far:

Auburn 2
Belvidere North
Carbondale
IMSA 2
Keith Country Day
Loyola 2
Macomb
New Trier
Stevenson 2
Wheaton North 2
Wheaton-Warrenville South 2

Maybe/interested:
Boylan
Guilford

Unfortunately, the MSL(or is it the CSL?) has its tournament the same day, so members of that league, like St. Viator and Buffalo Grove, won't be able to come this year.
There are 17 confirmed entries above. If you want to join us, please contact Coach Greene with your entry ASAP. We can go with a field of 18 or 20 (maybe 24 if we can get more moderators).

Wow, that looks like a good field.

Field update and schedule:

Boylan has confirmed, bringing one team, to make a field of 18 (3 pools of six in the morning, followed by rebracketing for the afternoon, based on morning results).

Loyola and IMSA have both asked about entering their C teams, for a total of 20.

With 20 teams, we could either: (1) divide the field into two groups of ten for round-robin play (9 rds.), followed by two more rounds ---the top two from each division play each other for the top four spots, the next two teams from each division play for 5-8, the next two for 9-12 and so on. . .or, (2) have four pools of five teams (4 rds.) and also do one cross-over match (which would not count for advancement) to give everyone 5 rds. of play before lunch. Then the top two teams from each pool form the championship bracket for the afternoon, playing a round robin (except, carry over the match already played against the team in the same morning pool), giving them six more matches, plus an advantaged final if needed. The other 12 teams would be in placed in two consolation brackets of six and play either four or five rounds in the afternoon, depending on whether they play the team from their morning pool again or not.

The thing I don't like about option one is that only four teams (rather than six or eight) would get to go for the championship in the playoffs. The possible problem with the second option is that if the questions are harder one round than another in the morning, with teams not all having their crossover match the same round, that could affect the results and advancement.

I haven't heard back from Guilford yet, and if any other entries were mailed or FAXed to our school, I won't be able to get them until Monday (the building is closed today through Sunday).
So, Monday/early Tuesday we'll know about any expansion beyond the 18 already confirmed entries.

I like the 4 pools of 5 method; it offers 6 playoff games vs. 3 playoff games. I wouldn't worry about the crossover issue; if you seed the teams 1-20, snake draft them into your four pools, then make sure that the same ranked teams play each other at the same time (i.e. the two best teams in each pool play in Round 5, rather than one pool doing it in Round 1, another in Round 2, etc.), then you'll have a fair basis to determine things.

Coach G wrote:Field update and schedule:

Boylan has confirmed, bringing one team, to make a field of 18 (3 pools of six in the morning, followed by rebracketing for the afternoon, based on morning results).

Loyola and IMSA have both asked about entering their C teams, for a total of 20.

With 20 teams, we could either: (1) divide the field into two groups of ten for round-robin play (9 rds.), followed by two more rounds ---the top two from each division play each other for the top four spots, the next two teams from each division play for 5-8, the next two for 9-12 and so on. . .or, (2) have four pools of five teams (4 rds.) and also do one cross-over match (which would not count for advancement) to give everyone 5 rds. of play before lunch. Then the top two teams from each pool form the championship bracket for the afternoon, playing a round robin (except, carry over the match already played against the team in the same morning pool), giving them six more matches, plus an advantaged final if needed. The other 12 teams would be in placed in two consolation brackets of six and play either four or five rounds in the afternoon, depending on whether they play the team from their morning pool again or not.

The thing I don't like about option one is that only four teams (rather than six or eight) would get to go for the championship in the playoffs. The possible problem with the second option is that if the questions are harder one round than another in the morning, with teams not all having their crossover match the same round, that could affect the results and advancement.

I haven't heard back from Guilford yet, and if any other entries were mailed or FAXed to our school, I won't be able to get them until Monday (the building is closed today through Sunday).
So, Monday/early Tuesday we'll know about any expansion beyond the 18 already confirmed entries.

Are there any updates to this?

Yeah, IMSA C will be playing tomorrow. :)

gauss1181 wrote:Yeah, IMSA C will be playing tomorrow. :)

Boylan's in, Loyola B out, IMSA C in.

For those interested Auburn A, IMSA A, IMSA B, Macomb (re: Tristan), Loyola and Belvidere North made the top bracket, and Tristan was the leading scorer in the morning. We're currently doing playoffs so results will be posted later.

The middle bracket is New Trier, Auburn B, Stevenson A, Wheaton North, Carbondale, Wheaton Warrenville South A.

We will shortly be starting the finals, in which IMSA A has the advantage again Auburn A.

Auburn won the first game of the final 380–275. Game 2 beginning now.

Auburn wins, 480-160.

So the final results seem to be:

1. Auburn A
2. IMSA A
3. Loyola
4. Belvidere North
5. Macomb
6. IMSA B
7. Carbondale
8. New Trier

Tell me if any of this is wrong, of course. I thought this tournament was a great experience, it was well run and the questions were excellent.

I think that's right.

We had a lot of fun at this tournament. I'll probably have more to say in a discussion thread on the set.

Kudos to Greg Peterson, who moderated quite well in the finals. Filip notably said something like, "I really like this guy. He says things properly."

Thanks to Ms. Greene and Auburn for running this tournament - it was indeed very well-run. For the most part, I thought the question set was easily one of the best we've played on all year although there were a few clunkers and a very noticeable amount of repeats. It should be noted we were without Marcel, Morgan, and Paddy.

Stats: prelims playoffs overall

Unfortunately, all the playoff rounds are missing bonus data, and all the playoff rounds except the finals are missing tossup data — that is, rounds 6–9 have only match scores entered. I have asked Ms. Greene via email what will be done, if anything, to rectify this.

jonah wrote:Stats: prelims playoffs overall

Unfortunately, all the playoff rounds are missing bonus data, and all the playoff rounds except the finals are missing tossup data — that is, rounds 6–9 have only match scores entered. I have asked Ms. Greene via email what will be done, if anything, to rectify this.

I know I personally kept score/stats for all the matches and I saw many others doing this, so I think we could at least reconstruct a decent amount of this if for some reasons the scoresheets don't have good data.

EDIT: (You might want to post if you did do this so we can get a better idea of how much material we'd be working with.)

I do have stats from every round I played. Individual stats for my opponents are only associated with names (instead of numbers) if my mother knew it though.

And thanks to Auburn for hosting the tournament. I had a great time, and I really enjoyed the question set.

Yeah I have sufficient data from IMSA A's matches to construct our statistics.

I kept score, but I didn't differentiate between bonuses and bouncebacks, so my account would be rather sketchy.

Uhh I don't have very much, unfortunately. Just tossup info, and only Auburn's:

#6 v. Belvidere North A
Abid 5-1
Alex 1-1
Lloyd 5-0
Filip 1-0
Jacob 0-0

#7 v. Loyola
Abid 2-0
Alex 0-0
Lloyd 8-2
Filip 1-0
Jacob 0-0

#8 v. Macomb
Abid 6-0
Alex 1-0
Lloyd 5-0
Filip 3-1
Jacob 0-0

#9 v. IMSA A
Abid 2-0
Alex 1-0
Lloyd 4-0
Filip 0-0
Jacob 2-0

#10 v. IMSA A
Abid 4-2
Alex 0-0
Lloyd 7-2
Filip 1-0
Jacob 0-0

#11 v. IMSA A
Abid 5-2
Alex 0-0
Lloyd 6-0
Filip 1-0
Jacob 0-0

I'm not sure why the playoff toss-up and bonus data didn't get put in the stats correctly, since the morning stats were correct and the same people were entering the information. I didn't know about the problem until just now (I went to bed before seeing the stats posted here). I have the score sheets, so we'll get the missing information added, but it may be a day or two.

I want to thank everyone - players. coaches, moderators, scorekeepers, and other helpers - for making it a good experience for all.

The tournament is certified platinum by PACE, so the top 5 teams - Auburn A, IMSA A, Loyola, Belvidere North and Macomb - have qualified for PACE NSC.

jonah wrote:Stats: prelims playoffs overall

Unfortunately, all the playoff rounds are missing bonus data, and all the playoff rounds except the finals are missing tossup data — that is, rounds 6–9 have only match scores entered. I have asked Ms. Greene via email what will be done, if anything, to rectify this.

...also, I'd like to congratulate Auburn for hearing nine hundred thousand bonuses in their game against IMSA B. That's quite an accomplishment.

EDIT: And to whichever moderator read 1.3 million bonuses to Tristan against IMSA A, my sympathies are with you.

cornfused wrote:...also, I'd like to congratulate Auburn for hearing nine hundred thousand bonuses in their game against IMSA B. That's quite an accomplishment.

EDIT: And to whichever moderator read 1.3 million bonuses to Tristan against IMSA A, my sympathies are with you.

Yeah...the playoff (and resultingly, overall) stats are pretty borked right now, though as far as I know all the scores and records themselves are correct. I imagine once we have the correct bonus information in there, everything else will be correct. Or at least reasonable.

I kept our stats only, though they occasionally differ from what we have in the morning. (Such as - Greg had no negs, Anand had 9 tossups in round 1, etc.)
I also gave them to Stankevitz, so I would have to retrieve them Monday if needed.

More often then not, errors that don't affect the score occur when a scorekeeper (not usually a player keeping score) attributes a tossup or neg to the wrong person. Not that big of a deal, but I would trust a player's attributing tossups to the right person more than a scorekeeper.

So should I post them?

Coach G wrote:I have the score sheets, so we'll get the missing information added, but it may be a day or two.

Any update on this? I'd love to have those data to assist with NTV seeding.

Corrected playoff and overall stats are now available.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but it looks like overall stats double-count carryover games.

whitesoxfan wrote:Sorry to burst your bubble, but it looks like overall stats double-count carryover games.

My bubble is fine, and I think this is fixed now.

Ah, 3 negs/game overall and 4 negs/game in the playoffs....

Not sure how we even managed to win 9 games playing like that...

sssssssskkkk wrote:Ah, 3 negs/game overall and 4 negs/game in the playoffs....

Not sure how we even managed to win 9 games playing like that...

Is this an error?

Edit: In the statistics, not your gameplay, I mean.

If you remove the finals games and the Belvidere North game that was actually played in the morning, we have 20 negs in 4 games.

jonah wrote:

sssssssskkkk wrote:Ah, 3 negs/game overall and 4 negs/game in the playoffs....

Not sure how we even managed to win 9 games playing like that...

Is this an error?

Edit: In the statistics, not your gameplay, I mean.

No, it's not an error in statistics. I was just amused.

For anyone wishing to compare the Auburn HFT stats with those from other HFT sites, please note that the first nine rounds were played on packets 1-9, but that the two finals matches between Auburn and IMSA were played on packets 14 and 15, which were more difficult than the others. Both teams had lower bonus points averages in those two rounds than in the first nine, which lowered their bonus points per game stat for the day.