Penn State Invitational (University Park, PA, 4/13/13)

[Jeslimak]

Penn State Quiz Bowl is pleased to announce the Penn State Invitational, an NAQT tournament planned for Saturday, April 13th, 2013.

Date and Location
April 13th, 2013
At the Penn State University Park campus, likely at the Willard Building located on Pollock Road.

Format
The Penn State Invitational is an NAQT tournament using IS-122 as its question set. Information about round format is available at http://naqt.com/rules.html

We will be using untimed halves, to ensure that we make it through each packet of questions. Rounds will usually last around half an hour. (This is subject to change if many teams sign up and time constraints become an issue.) More information about the exact format of the tournament will be released closer to the date of the tournament.

Pricing
Base fee: $75
Additional teams: $50
Buzzer Discount: $10 for each fully functioning system, maximum of 2 systems

All teams must pay on the day of the tournament. Teams who do not pay on the day of the tournament will be charged a $25 penalty and will have two weeks to pay their total amount before we start mailing letters to your school administration about it. We can accept personal checks, or checks from school, school district, or Quiz Bowl club funds.

Teams and Substitutes
Teams may have a minimum of one player and no maximum number of players. Only 4 players may compete at a time on one team, with any number of substitutions occurring at the half.

Registration
To register, or request additional information about the tournament as it becomes available, please email me, John Slimak, at jes5771 AT psu.edu.

[nurgles_herald]

I'd like to thank all of the teams that came, and I'd like to thank the coaches for their patience considering most of the tournament was organized by our underclassmen. We did an interesting combination of Swiss followed by double elimination which, in my opinion, worked almost exactly as I had imagined, and significantly more matches were down to the wire than one might expect out of a round robin. We will likely modify our tournament structure for ease-of-use, but I believe this will be the basic framework for Penn State tournaments in the future.

Congratulations to Winchester for their victory, and excellent work by everyone who turned out! Personal stats and the like will be posted as soon as Zydney has the time (we would've posted on Saturday, but the forum appeared to be out).

[pennstateqb]

Here are the individual stats for both the prelims and the finals. The full score report has been sent to NAQT, so it should become part of NAQT's database before long.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I'd like to thank all of the teams that came, and I'd like to thank the coaches for their patience considering most of the tournament was organized by our underclassmen. We did an interesting combination of Swiss followed by double elimination which, in my opinion, worked almost exactly as I had imagined, and significantly more matches were down to the wire than one might expect out of a round robin. We will likely modify our tournament structure for ease-of-use, but I believe this will be the basic framework for Penn State tournaments in the future.

How did it work, and how many games were offered?

[Whiter Hydra]

I'd like to thank all of the teams that came, and I'd like to thank the coaches for their patience considering most of the tournament was organized by our underclassmen. We did an interesting combination of Swiss followed by double elimination which, in my opinion, worked almost exactly as I had imagined, and significantly more matches were down to the wire than one might expect out of a round robin. We will likely modify our tournament structure for ease-of-use, but I believe this will be the basic framework for Penn State tournaments in the future.

How did it work, and how many games were offered?

Just going from the individual stats, it looks like there were four prelim games, and then five or six in the playoffs.

[dollmi]

In the future, could you please advertise this tournament format to teams? This was advertised as a more traditional format with round robin/bracketing, and this format came as a surprise to us.

Our teams really would have preferred the traditional round robin. With 6 out of 10 teams that are probably going to HSNCT, there were plenty of stats available. With only 10 teams, everyone could have played each other. When our B team was told to play the same team for the 4th time, it was just too much. I'm glad that issue was resolved, but they never got to play the one team they really wanted to. We also could have finished at least an hour earlier. Waiting for the next match after each round only makes the tournament run over.

[nurgles_herald]

While I can appreciate this, I would remind you that Mannheim A got absolutely destroyed in their first match-up against State College A, while they managed to beat State College A in the other two matches they played (thus likely would've been relegated to 3rd place at best). While I understand that round robin is traditional, there's a very good reason they don't do it at Nationals- not only is it lazy, it's not a good match for quizbowl. There is a decent degree of variance when it comes to evenly matched teams, and only by allowing teams of approximately the same skill level to clash several times do we get a better idea of which team is actually "better".

With timed rounds we could have easily made a 4:30 end time, though I wasn't sure about the quality of our moderators (specifically, how much better some of our moderators were than others, as a lot of our kids were freshmen). In the future we will likely use timed rounds to keep things hopping, but having attended... far too many tournaments than is healthy, I was happy with our approximate end time of 5:30 or whatever it ended up being. I've been at many tournaments that ended at 6:00, and a few that ended later (I remember a tournament at Princeton that ran until 8:30 or something; that was brutal, to say the least).

Thank you for your response, however, and we will take this under advisement for the future. We will very likely be implementing 30-minute timed rounds in the future (although we are losing one of our most experienced moderators this year), which should shave off a few minutes here and there, but I will do my best to avoid a round-robin tournament. They are a plague to be avoided whenever possible, and are only remotely useful at the beginning of the year when trying to figure out approximately how good new players are.

~~~~

How did it work, and how many games were offered?

Just going from the individual stats, it looks like there were four prelim games, and then five or six in the playoffs.

With a 10 team field, swiss required a little bit of finesse to pull off. First, we seeded teams based upon their performance at previous NAQT or NAQT-like events this year. Then, for the first round, we paired 1 against 6, 2 against 7, and so on, so as not to advantage the #1 seeded team too much in the ppg department (as our seeding was well-researched and close to what we had at the end of the Swiss, but still ultimately arbitrary).

There on out, we followed three rules: 1.) that a team would never play against a team they played last round, 2.) that, when playing across records (as we had 10 teams, this was likely to happen a lot), the lowest ppg with the "better" record would play the highest ppg with the "worse" record, 3.) that, when playing within the same record, the team with the highest ppg would play the team with the lowest ppg. The swiss rounds ended with a bang- four of the five games played in the last round of swiss were *insanely* close. I was very pleased with our swiss pairing, to say the least.

The double elimination was a little trickier. With only 10 teams, you can't really have a consolation bracket, so any team suffering two loses in the second half of the day was simply ineligible to win. We followed *basically* the same rules as we had in the first half of the day, except that round 1 matches were 1-10, 2-9, and so on, except that we had to switch State College B and Greater Valley for round 1 (they had virtually identical ppg and identical records, and if we hadn't switched them Greater Valley would've played against the same opponent two rounds in a row). Starting around round 7 we started looking at how many times teams had played each other throughout the day as some teams appeared to be getting tired of sweet rematches. The final round was an advantaged final between Winchester and Mannheim A; Winchester won in their first round, thus dodging a second round. In retrospect, I wish that I had modified our cross-record pairing scheme for the double elimination to ensure that the "right" teams got eliminated, but Winchester, Mannheim A and State College A ended up almost exactly where I had expected, so I think our tournament was very good at skill-determination.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

While I can appreciate this, I would remind you that Mannheim A got absolutely destroyed in their first match-up against State College A, while they managed to beat State College A in the other two matches they played (thus likely would've been relegated to 3rd place at best). While I understand that round robin is traditional, there's a very good reason they don't do it at Nationals- not only is it lazy, it's not a good match for quizbowl. There is a decent degree of variance when it comes to evenly matched teams, and only by allowing teams of approximately the same skill level to clash several times do we get a better idea of which team is actually "better".

I will do my best to avoid a round-robin tournament. They are a plague to be avoided whenever possible, and are only remotely useful at the beginning of the year when trying to figure out approximately how good new players are.

What the hell did I just read?

[Auks Ran Ova]

While I understand that round robin is traditional, there's a very good reason they don't do it at Nationals- not only is it lazy, it's not a good match for quizbowl.

You seem to have spelled "because a full round robin is wildly impractical with 60+, let alone 200+, teams" wrong, and also it looks like you got some other incomprehensible gibberish in there too. Might want to make sure your keyboard is working properly.

(also, protip, the smaller of the two national tournaments does in fact do multiple bracketed round robins)

[nurgles_herald]

Quizbowl is fantastic at skill-testing between mismatched teams- the better team will basically win 100% of the time. This is not the case with closely matched teams. I distinctly remember State College A and Maggie Walker A playing something like 4 times at NAQT nationals over several days in 2006 or 2007. It was a tremendous experience and I think served well to demonstrate that Maggie Walker was the better of the two teams, but only one match would have been pretty sad (State College A beat Maggie Walker at least one of those times, but again, this was a million years ago). If the fact that Mannheim A ended up beating State College A in 2 out of 3 matches but getting absolutely demolished (seriously, it was like 500 to 100 or something) in their first match doesn't help to convince you of this, I don't know what would. There is variance in quizbowl when playing with evenly matched (or close to evenly matched) teams, and having close matches repeated multiple times is the best way to ensure that the "right" team wins.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

What are you even talking about? You clearly have no idea how anything works and I would beg you to stop imposing your own half baked theories about the game on unsuspecting teams in your area when, you know, teams from that sparsely active region should be getting as much exposure to normal quizbowl practices as possible.

[nurgles_herald]

If you are trying to make the argument that there is no variance in quizbowl- that things like player reaction time or the precise knowledge accessed in each packet is exactly the same in each game- I think you have some explaining to do. I've bothered to stop watching Game of Thrones for like five minutes to access the results of the 2006 NAQT HSNCT and it basically confirms what I've said- that State College A lost twice to Maggie Walker, though we beat them on Day 2 to go on to fight Richard Montgomery (who won in an advantaged final, though they lost the first game). I have no idea why you're being so defensive- in baseball, teams play each other about a million times each season to make sure that the "better" team is better ranked. Though I concede that the comparison is not perfect, I feel it is still apt. By allowing for or, even, encouraging rematches, we help to reduce the chance that a low percentaged event (like, say, a *slightly* weaker team beating a slightly better team) has screwed everything up.

EDIT: I understand that the implication that there is variance in things can send some people into a rage. As I stated earlier, variance is really only a factor in close matches. A significantly better team often devours the souls of a worse team in quizbowl, but swiss never "accidentally" puts a worse team in a much higher spot than it should be, and round robin can very easily put a team one spot higher than it should be (swiss does a good- albeit imperfect- job of eliminating this).

[Auroni]

Yes, there's variance between two teams that are of similar skill and ability and over the course of ten thousand games, maybe one will win 6000 times and the other will win 4000. Maybe over the course of one million games, the other team will take the lead. That's why we have the round robin in the first place! It's there so that two teams can play exactly the same schedule and prove that they have the determination to not drop a game to the less-good, but still tough third to sixth place teams and be capable of beating the team they're similar in skill to, and then they can rightly be crowned the winners.

In fact, if you do a multi-stage bracketed round robin within playoff groups, then your team will be playing teams similar to it in skill depending on how it did in the prelims! I have no idea what on earth you're smoking.

[nurgles_herald]

All of this ad hominem is pretty immature, guys. I don't see what the problem is with swiss; it accomplishes the goal of reducing the chance of a slightly worse team being ranked higher than a slightly better team without requiring people play gazillions of round robin brackets day in and day out. I suppose we may simply disagree on the fundamental purpose of a tournament- I am presupposing that the point of a day tournament is to maximize the chance that the rankings best represent the approximate skill level of the teams over the variety of your schedule (and accomplish this in a timely fashion). I can easily accept an alternative theory to tournaments- that a tournament, being a congregation of teams from a wide geographic area, should emphasize the number of different teams that you play against over the validity of the results.

It has been my experience that, in my close to a decade in quizbowl, I have learned the most and been most fond of the games that came down to the wire. Playing perfunctory rounds where one side has literally no chance of winning is a depressing experience for both teams (or, at least, it is for me; maybe you guys like being a part of 400-80 games more than I do, which is obviously subjective so totally cool).

As this wasn't a national tournament (or even a state tournament), fidelity of results was probably less important than diversity of the field, but we had three teams (Winchester, Mannheim A, and State College A) that, based upon their previous results, had what appeared to be close to an equal chance of winning. That, combined with the facts that there is some variance in quizbowl, that I have learned the most in close matches, and that if folks wanted a rematch they couldn't easily hook up for a pick-up game, served to convince me that something other than round robin was appropriate for our field and also totally awesome.

Then again, I wasn't the one paying money to attend. Perhaps people like clashing with a bunch of different teams, regardless of match quality, more than I do. This discussion has convinced me of the necessity of at least consulting with teams as to the format of our tournaments, so I appreciate everyone's input.

But for real, be civil, people. If you have some reason to disagree with what I am saying and can back it up with evidence, I welcome that wholeheartedly. If you simply want to be nasty to someone on the internet for no good reason, take it out of my thread. In fact, I think it would do the quizbowl community some good if you took it out of hsquizbowl altogether. There are plenty of places where people can congregate to be irrationally nasty, hiding behind the relative anonymity of the internet.

EDIT: Oh man, looking back at these old HSNCT results reminds me of some absolutely hilarious stuff that has happened in quizbowl history. Like, for instance, TJ B grinding TJ A to a pulp (455-185) in the third round of playoffs in 2007. TJ A went on to come in third, of course, but that's still pretty funny to look at.

User was banned for 24 hours for telling people not to discuss quizbowl on the quizbowl board, toneposting, etc. --the mgmt

[Frater Taciturnus]

Then again, I wasn't the one paying money to attend.

The complaint that started this whole discussion was when one of the teams that paid you money to play this tournament said that you had misrepresented what the format for the tournament would be and that it was bad!

[dollmi]

The two best teams in the tournament would still get to play each other again in the finals. That is the purpose of a final at the end of the round robin. State College beat both Township and Winchester Thurston the first time, but in this format they never got a chance to play Winchester Thurston when it counted. The morning rounds did not carry over to the afternoon, so was this really fair to State College A?

As a coach, my priority is not just the experience of my A team. I brought 3 teams to the tournament to give all of my players the best experience possible. We had freshmen through seniors competing. I bring the underclassmen to give them the chance to improve. I want them to play the best teams, even if they won’t win. Our C team wasn't expecting to beat either Winchester Thurston or State College A. But should they be given the opportunity to lose to them in a field of just ten teams? Absolutely. Our B team specifically wanted to play State College B, and that never happened with this format. I think that would have been a much better match than our B team playing State College A and C multiple times.

If the three best teams in this tournament were Winchester Thurston, Manheim Township A, and State College A, this format failed. According to the stats that are on NAQT’s site, State College A ended up 4th. State College B ended up 3rd instead.

Please do not blame any of the problems of the time frame of the day on the moderators. Every moderator that I heard was fine. If any of them would like to moderate for our tournaments, we’d be happy to have the extra help.

If we knew in advance that this format was not what was advertised, we would have reconsidered our attendance. We might have come if we couldn’t find the IS set anywhere else, but we would have looked elsewhere.

Pennsylvania has a lot of very active quiz bowl teams, but they aren’t playing good quiz bowl. We need help with that endeavor. To run a tournament this way only gives teams the wrong impression. While most of the teams were experienced quiz bowl teams, there was one team that we only knew from Penn Manor’s Tournament in November. This was their first pyramidal quiz bowl tournament. I don’t want them to get the wrong impression of good quiz bowl from a tournament like this.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Thank you Mrs. Doll. Not only do I agree with her that this is a format that is needlessly complex, and that your arguments against the standard pool format are lacking*, but what really made my jaw drop is how hilariously bad your customer service was. If a coach is complaining to you about a bad format that wasn't advertised, the proper response is not to start rambling on in public about how their team got "smashed" by your alma mater. Grow up dude.

*This is fundamentally where you are wrong:

I suppose we may simply disagree on the fundamental purpose of a tournament- I am presupposing that the point of a day tournament is to maximize the chance that the rankings best represent the approximate skill level of the teams over the variety of your schedule (and accomplish this in a timely fashion). I can easily accept an alternative theory to tournaments- that a tournament, being a congregation of teams from a wide geographic area, should emphasize the number of different teams that you play against over the validity of the results.

A) I LOVE LOVE LOVE how you frame the argument like your side is already inherently more right by saying one option is to best represent the skills of teams, and other prefers other things over the "validity" of the results. Talk about an insane bias based on nothing.
B) You are so wrong! I don't even want to get into Swiss pairing, but double elimination playoffs don't remotely gradate among teams. The only reliable placements in a double elimination bracket are really the top 2 teams. Everybody else just kind of goes home whenever they lose and have no way to account for playing top teams. On the other hand, a pooled playoff means every one of the top teams plays every other top team and they are then ranked together, and then the VERY top teams play each other again if they need to, potentially twice. There is NO way that that is a worse format for ranking the relative competitiveness of top teams at a tournament against each other, and this is simply indisputable.

[AKKOLADE]

In alternate universe where I'm not up against finals, I'm explaining how Walker's arguments are bad. This may happen later this week if Dees/et al somehow don't.