The Quizbowl Resource Center

FIELD UPDATE:
HIll valley HS (Isaac's crew)
Caesar Rodney (2)
Gonzaga
St Anslems
Whitman (2)
Churchill
Hammond
Thomas Jefferson (2, potentially a third to follow)
Blair
Georgetown Day (2)
Howard
Walter Johnson
Detroit Catholic Central

Feel free to continue registering, we welcome you with open arms.

chatt_r wrote:FIELD UPDATE:
Detroit Catholic Central

Wait, what?

Wow, this is impressive.

I distinctly recall that they went last year, too.

Yeah, they did.
I'm not sure if they are driving down here, but I think they deserve the driving discount.

TJ is only bringing two teams; there is no longer any possibility for a third. I'm sure this tournament will be well-run and I very much look forward to playing. See you all on Saturday.

chatt_r wrote:FIELD UPDATE:
HIll valley HS (Isaac's crew)
Caesar Rodney (2)
Gonzaga
St Anslems
Whitman (2)
Churchill
Hammond
Thomas Jefferson (2, potentially a third to follow)
Blair
Georgetown Day (2)
Howard
Walter Johnson
Detroit Catholic Central

Feel free to continue registering, we welcome you with open arms.

This is turning out to be an excellent field. I'm really looking forward to this tournament. Again, if you need any last minute help, feel free to ask.

Second place and on seems pretty wide open. That being said, GDS has to be a heavy heavy favorite if Matt is going to be there.

wexs883198215 wrote:Second place and on seems pretty wide open. That being said, GDS has to be a heavy heavy favorite if Matt is going to be there.

It will certainly be an interesting day.

wexs883198215 wrote:Second place and on seems pretty wide open. That being said, GDS has to be a heavy heavy favorite if Matt is going to be there.

But hey, no pressure or anything!

Prediction! GDS first, St. Anselm's(!) second, DCC third, TJ fourth. I base this on pure speculation and completely ridiculous assumptions and illogical guesses. CR will lose several matches that we thought we should have won and manage something like eighth.

Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS wrote:Prediction! GDS first, St. Anselm's(!) second, DCC third, TJ fourth. I base this on pure speculation and completely ridiculous assumptions and illogical guesses. CR will lose several matches that we thought we should have won and manage something like eighth.

Thanks for the confidence.

I agree with "GDS first, St. Anslem's second", unless DCC manages to suprise us all. The one thing that's certain is that a bunch of people will have improved over the summer quite a bit, but that goes without saying. Also, Trey, I think you guys may do quite well depending on how WJ is. They're probably the biggest wildcard.

Haha. Both Matts will have pretty big roles in how it shakes out for sure.

Glad to be the wildcard. I'm pretty curious as to see what we can do against teams that Daichi beat singlehandedly with regularity. Hopefully we won't embarrass ourselves too much.

So, is the format and bracketing pretty much finalized? 17 teams, if I've counted correctly, seems like a hard number to work with.

I would like to be able to go over details with my team at practice tomorrow.

So... what's the final field and bracket?

I heard from Raynell that DCC and Howard dropped and Langley is now in, bringing the field to 16 teams.

Sorry for stealing your thunder, RM, but it was getting kind of late.

Since we had teams registering/withdrawing up until about an hour ago, no field/ definite bracket could be set. Unfortunately, DCC and Howard are now unable to come.
FIELD:
HIll valley HS (Isaac's crew)
Caesar Rodney (2)
Gonzaga
St Anslems
Whitman (2)
Churchill
Hammond
Thomas Jefferson (2)
Blair
Georgetown Day (2)
Walter Johnson
Langley High School

Bracket goes like this:
1. 2 groups of 8, round robin
2. Top FOUR finishers in prelim groups go onto 2 groups of 4. Remaining teams make 2 groups of 4 in the consolation bracket. Round robin
3. Top TWO finishers in each bracket move to the single-elimination semi-finals. (In both main and consolation)
4. Semis, finals, winner.

Feel free to write with any questions, and we'll see you there.

Could you tell us how the brackets are divided up?

chatt_r wrote:Bracket goes like this:
1. 2 groups of 8, round robin
2. Top FOUR finishers in prelim groups go onto 2 groups of 4. Remaining teams make 2 groups of 4 in the consolation bracket. Round robin
3. Top TWO finishers in each bracket move to the single-elimination semi-finals. (In both main and consolation)
4. Semis, finals, winner.

Wouldn't it give more games to teams if you rebracketed into a top bracket of 8 and a bottom bracket of 8, and just have teams play those in the bracket they haven't played yet? That way you get a full top 8 round robin to work with, everyone plays 11 games (up to 13 for the top two teams), and you don't have to use single-elim.

Yeah, I told you privately that you should not use single elimination because there are fairer ways of determining a champion, and no high quality tournaments in your area use that format, and I am very disappointed that you didn't listen to me.

Is the estimated end time still set at 4:30? If not, what is it now?

The tournament should be over by 4, 4:30 at the latest.
We're sticking with single elimination.

chatt_r wrote:The tournament should be over by 4, 4:30 at the latest.
We're sticking with single elimination.

Wow, really? Apparently nobody at RM has ever studied Santayana...

Why not just run a 4-team round robin for the top 4 teams? Any teams that would probably be in the top 4 are also probably quite willing to end at 5:30 instead of 4:30.

While I agree that these suggestions are sound, doesn't it seem a bit too late for them to change things?

I realize that these suggestions had come up before, but if they didn't take them then, I don't see any likelihood that they'll change everything at 10PM the night before everything.

Raj, do you remember how we were all orginally happy with you because you were willing to listen to the outside world for advice? That was a really really good thing. Shutting down now and refusing to listen to both your field and people who have extensive experience running tournaments that are considered very successful when we are giving you suggestions on how to make your tournament fairer than it currently is in a similar number of games is one of the worst possible times you could change your mind on listening to us. This was one of the flaws in your tournament last year, and there is absolutely no reason to try to emulate something that was bad about your event last year.
And KuoKai, it is not too late. The only time for it to be too late is when they announce the schedule in the morning. If the problem is that you already printed out schedules, then just reprint them. Laziness is no excuse to make your tournament worse.

wexs883198215 wrote:While I agree that these suggestions are sound, doesn't it seem a bit too late for them to change things?

I realize that these suggestions had come up before, but if they didn't take them then, I don't see any likelihood that they'll change everything at 10PM the night before everything.

As someone who has had to re-do a schedule a number of times literally less than 8 hours before the tournament, I hold that such changes are feasible.

Looking at the field, I predict that 3-4 teams will skip town after lunch, so you're going to have to come up with new schedules over lunch anyhow unless you have contingency schedules in the vault.

You wouldn't even need to really change anything anyway - running the final four as a round robin rather than single-elimination would add just one round to the tournament, and only four teams would need to stay for it - all of those teams would want to, I assure you. I guess it could potentially be more rounds than that if you wanted to make things fair and do advantaged finals as needed, but you could avoid that by tweaking the first set of playoff brackets in a manner similar to what other people suggested.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:Yeah, I told you privately that you should not use single elimination because there are fairer ways of determining a champion, and no high quality tournaments in your area use that format, and I am very disappointed that you didn't listen to me.

And now you've destroyed any benefit that was achieved by having your discussions in private. What's the point of telling someone something in private if you're basically telling them "do what I say or I'll out you later." You may as well do the whole thing in public in that case. Have you considered that the playoff structure may have been a compromise designed to either allow more games to be played or make sure the tournament finishes on time? People have reasons for choosing to accept or reject the advice they're given.

I don't mean to imply here that such discussions should occur in public. In fact, most of what occurs from these discussions here on the board is that things become rather contentious. Charlie, there's little question that your suggestions are in general good for the tournament type RM is attempting to host and in keeping with what would be desired from the teams in attendance. It is, however, a bit late to be changing things after the specifics have been announced, especially so the night before the tournament. As much as I think your suggestions will improve things, the teams also have a right to experience the tournament that was promised. While I doubt I'd get upset about last-minute changes, those types of things are important to some teams and coaches. What do you say to someone who says "you advertised -x-, and now that I've driven some distance with a large number of students in tow, you tell me I'm getting -y- instead. I don't find this acceptable?" I posit that to put teams/coaches in such a position indicates a significant lack of respect for their rights to make an informed decision about whether the tournament is worth attending.

Similar to what I've posted in the thread about hosts weighing their options in advance regarding date selection, hosts need to decide on format prior to announcing the tournament. They need to consider what teams they're looking to attract, what those teams might expect, the type of tournament they themselves wish to construct, and their own time limitations. Once they've weighed options and advice, they should be able to make an announcement accurately describing how the event will occur.

Yes, I suppose all of the people who signed up for this tournament and drove a long distance to it based on their excitement over the chance to play a weird single-elimination format announced 12 hours before the tournament began have every right to be upset over...something. What do the unicorns think?

Yo dude, I got privately asked to critique last year's format for what I presume is the intention to make this year's event better, and did just that, including a request that they do not continue tacking a stupid single elimination bracket on the end of their tournament because nobody reputable wants it. Even based on your silly argument that we should cater to our audience, which apparently is how you justify doing things like running tournaments one one-line questions, the audience for this tournament seems to be a bunch of teams that don't want single elimination, making this a bad venue to run it. Anyway, I have every right to express disappointment that someone would ask me for input, and when I make a good faith attempt to help them, they don't listen.

Howard, I would like to rebut a few things in your post.

compromise designed to either allow more games to be played or make sure the tournament finishes on time?

Removing the single-elimination and replacing it with a round-robin would only add one more game, which the teams likely to be playing the round-robin in question would also likely to be okay with. Of course, there may be external constraints(for all I know, the building is being taken over by the Association of Students for The Formation of Associations of Students at 5 sharp), but the existence of these constraints is unknown.

It is, however, a bit late to be changing things after the specifics have been announced, especially so the night before the tournament.

Those specifics were themselves posted the night before. Furthermore, the change propsed to remove the single-elimination is trivial.

"you advertised -x-, and now that I've driven some distance with a large number of students in tow, you tell me I'm getting -y- instead. I don't find this acceptable?"

Under these circumstances, most team's plans have already been made. Furthermore, I have trouble imagining a coach for who the decision to attend a tournament is predicated on there being semifinals and finals. I'll also add that the proposed change would involve 4 teams and several teams/members therof who are likely to be in those 4 have expressed their preference for round-robins over singile-elimination.

hosts need to decide on format prior to announcing the tournament.

Ideally, this would be possible. However, as you doubtless know from having run tournaments, hosts may not know how many teams they have to work with until a few days before the tournament. Not all fields fill, after all.

hosts need to decide on format prior to announcing the tournament

Really John, I don't see where you're coming from here. I have never decided on a format before I announced it - I'm not sure that I even could do so responsibly, not knowing the number of teams I'd get. Even with the presumed logic of your post, I don't see this making sense, since you'd need to know your field before you knew what kind of format they'd supposedly want.

I certainly think that you can (and should) make basic assumptions about your format before you host, or even before you decide you want to host. I design my formats out of the assumption that teams want to play as many games of meaningful quizbowl as possible while still finishing at a fairly reasonable time in the early evening, and that teams expect a tournament that fairly determines a champion. I can't see why these assumptions wouldn't be true for any quizbowl tournament anywhere - understand I'm not even talking about question preferences, just format. I guess there are teams out there that don't want a champion to be fairly determined, and only want their best chance to win an upset game, but surely you can agree that such an attitude is contemptible and shouldn't define an event. As far as single elimination goes, I consider that to be incompatible with the "fairly determining a champion" criteria. But even if I didn't care about that and only took into account the preferences of the effected teams, I've never seen a tournament where the top 8 teams preferred single elimination over fairer formats (certainly not in our area). Back when I was playing I saw some tournaments where some of those coaches preferred that, but I distinctly remember talking with their players about how they disagreed, and the coaches being primarily concerned with wrapping up earlier.

As to the whole "I drove X miles for such and such an event," the only part of this tournament that is single elimination is for the final 4 teams. I don't know how you can soundly make the argument that people signed up for this event because of that, especially when the format went up tonight. If we're talking about an event ending later, that's one thing (but, we're not - in fact, we are likely talking about it ending earlier because of eliminating multiple re bracketing).

I guess you could generalize your argument enough that it would make sense, but in this case I don't know where you're coming from. Just because it would be irresponsible to say "this tournament will consist of quizbowl matches" in the announcement and have people show up for a long day of dwarf tossing doesn't mean that I'm doing something wrong when I point out how this tournament could still be much improved (especially when the TD wisely encourages people to submit their feedback)!

The tournament is not over yet. GDS is currently undefeated, no word on any other teams or the playoff structure.

GDS went into an advantaged final with St. Anselms.

TJ beat WJ for 3rd.

The playoff structure consisted of the top 4 in each bracket playing the top 4 of the other bracket, and the 2 best overall records went into the finals. So, they didn't use single elimination after all.

GDS went undefeated and St. Anselms had one loss to GDS. TJ (losses to GDS, St. Anselms, and Blair) and WJ (GDS, St. Anselms, and TJ) had 3 losses.

Here are the results.
The tournament ran late because the RM building service people was AWOL (even after assuring us that they would be at the school by 8).
GDS A won with a perfect 12-0 record, St. Anselms won second (losing twice to GDS A), TJ A 3rd and WJ at 4th.
Hammond didn't show up, so they were replaced by an RM scab team- The opposing team essentially got a bye. (Hence the 10-0 games).
Luckily that statistical manipulation did not affect the advancement of any teams because the recoreds worked out, and it did not affect individual standings.
We'd like to thank all the teams that came, and would like to give a shout out to Mr. C for helping us moderate.

Other than being locked out, this went very well. I think almost every team did about as well as expected. I'll post something more detailed later, though.

Thanks to the moderators, who were pretty good for the most part. There was one guy who was sick and had to read with a cough drop in his mouth, which was kind of bizarre. Playing 12 rounds and finishing by 6:30 wasn't that bad considering we got locked out for an hour.

Congrats to GDS, St. Anselms, TJ, and all of the other teams that played really well.

By the way, Whitman A was in the consolation bracket, so they would not be 5th as the thing Raj posted says. The teams in the playoffs were GDS A, St. Anselms, TJ A, WJ, Blair, "Hill Valley", Caesar Rodney A, and TJ B.

This was a fun tournament. A few things:

1. Kuo-Kai is good at quizbowl.
2. NAQT improved, but there were way too many repeats.
3. Going 0 for two rounds against Matt Jackson isn't fun. Luckily, my teammates scored enough that we did okay.

I'm not sure what to think looking at the PPB. On one hand, Hoover and Hume-Fogg clearly outdid every team at this tournament in that regard. On the other, I'm not sure if that was due to those teams just being better, or due to the weird NAQT distro. I'll let wiser people than me decide.

I thoroughly enjoyed this tournament, and I felt it was a good way to open the season. Despite early ominous signs (Me and Matt getting lost on something called "Beall Avenue," not getting into the building until after 9:00, Hammond not showing), things ran pretty much without a hitch. I am glad the playoff structure did indeed get changed, and the tournaments ended at an understandable time, considering the morning mishaps.

Non-specific set critiques: I thought this set was pretty solid overall; it was certainly an improvement over some recent NAQT sets. One thing though: I thought "X, Y, both, or neither" bonuses had been eliminated from NAQT sets, along with "list five things for five points each, five point bonus for all of them," but that could be me misremembering something. I heard one of each type today. Bonuses were also a little wacky in other ways, but tossups were generally very solid. There wasn't too much transparency, and despite the occasional bad lead-in, I thought they were pretty fair.

Thanks to RM for hosting and congrats to GDS for beating us soundly twice to claim the championship.

Prof.Whoopie wrote:Non-specific set critiques: I thought this set was pretty solid overall; it was certainly an improvement over some recent NAQT sets. One thing though: I thought "X, Y, both, or neither" bonuses had been eliminated from NAQT sets, along with "list five things for five points each, five point bonus for all of them," but that could be me misremembering something. I heard one of each type today. Bonuses were also a little wacky in other ways, but tossups were generally very solid. There wasn't too much transparency, and despite the occasional bad lead-in, I thought they were pretty fair.

I'll go into detail when the set is open for discussion, but I'll just say I totally agree with you. There were some strange bonuses, a few weird tossups, and too many repeats, but on the whole the questions were pretty good. One more little reader nitpick: Way too many semicolons. They're really awkward to read aloud.

I'd just like to say that this was an extremely well-run tournament except for the fact that we were delayed for about 2 hours, but that was something out of RM's control. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting all of the people from RM who staffed, all of the readers were excellent, and everyone got to play quite a few rounds of decent NAQT. Congrats to GDS, St. Anselms, WJ, and everyone else.

Journey to the Planets wrote: Going 0 for two rounds against Matt Jackson isn't fun.

I don't know why you're singling me out...

At any rate, thanks to RM for running the tournament well, despite inevitable delays resulting from the building not opening.

Other comments:

-Blair surprised me at this tournament - they are definitely a team to watch out for in the region. I don't know if any of their people post here, but great job at any rate - you guys were sort of unknown before this tournament, but definitely proved yourselves to be strong contenders.

-Thanks also go out to Maggie Walker for allowing us and St. Anselm's to have a brief moment of pride before you utterly (and repeatedly) crush both of us. We eagerly await it.

-I was impressed with the overall quality of this set. IS-86 is a definite, measurable improvement over past revious IS-sets, with better, more academic questions. There was a small contingent of wonky bonuses, some repeats, and a bit of fixation on one particular country, but in this set the questions with issues were exceptions and weren't nearly as commonplace as before. I endorse the use of IS-sets for regular season tournaments if the quality remains at this level or improves.

RyuAqua wrote:

Journey to the Planets wrote: Going 0 for two rounds against Matt Jackson isn't fun.

I don't know why you're singling me out...

...Because you specifically kept getting the questions I expected to get?

Journey to the Planets wrote:

RyuAqua wrote:

Journey to the Planets wrote: Going 0 for two rounds against Matt Jackson isn't fun.

I don't know why you're singling me out...

...Because you specifically kept getting the questions I expected to get?

Was Matt Jackson being pretty darn good at quizbowl....unexpected???

wexs883198215 wrote:

Journey to the Planets wrote:

RyuAqua wrote:

Journey to the Planets wrote: Going 0 for two rounds against Matt Jackson isn't fun.

I don't know why you're singling me out...

...Because you specifically kept getting the questions I expected to get?

Was Matt Jackson being pretty darn good at quizbowl....unexpected???

Okay, so not "expected," but "usually get against other reasonably good teams".

Anyways, are individual stats going to be posted?

Journey to the Planets wrote:

wexs883198215 wrote:

Journey to the Planets wrote:

RyuAqua wrote:

Journey to the Planets wrote: Going 0 for two rounds against Matt Jackson isn't fun.

I don't know why you're singling me out...

...Because you specifically kept getting the questions I expected to get?

Was Matt Jackson being pretty darn good at quizbowl....unexpected???

Okay, so not "expected," but "usually get against other reasonably good teams".

Hey, maybe it's just me, but 7.92 points per game isn't exactly "pretty darn good" ...

Anyway, Kuo-Kai, individual stats are in the document that Raj attached to his results post.