DATE CHANGE: BARGE at Maryland (1/14/12)

[Smuttynose Island]

This tournament was won by a team consisting of Jonathan Magin, Arun Chonai, Raynell Cooper and Me. Harvard finished second, while I believe UVA took third and VCU with Matt Weiner took fourth. I'd like to thank Chris Ray for editing what I thought was a very fun set and I'd like to that Maryland for hosting.

[Cody]

Harvard and UVa are T-2 given that we don't have PPG. Jerry finished 5th.

[Magister Ludi]

Magin's team defeated Harvard plus Bruce in the de facto final 320-270. Overall, it was a pretty solid tournament, so thanks to Chris for editing the set and filling it with his singular sense of humor. Congrats to Daniel Hothem for winning his first tournament, even though the final was unfortunately decided by a buzzer race on the first clue of the penultimate tossup (even though I've been assured by the line length Nazis that buzzer races on the first line is an impossibility at open tournaments).

[DumbJaques]

TERP is going on right now, so full post later tonight, but stats can be found at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... all_games/.

[Magister Ludi]

Can you input the stats for the final two games of the rebracket?

[DumbJaques]

As mentioned earlier, Camazotz's Bat Mitzvah (Arun Chonai, Raynell Cooper, Daniel Hothem, Jonathan Magin) emerged from an imposing field to win the inaugural BARGE title, defeating a likewise impressive Harvard squad (Bruce Arthur, Ted Gioia, Stephen Liu, Dallas Simons) in final playoff match that effectively served as the tournament's finals. Based on ppg, UVA (Evan Adams, Matt Bollinger, Tommy Casalaspi, David Seal) was actually the runner-up, with VCU (Matt Weiner, Sean Smiley, Cody Voight) rounding out the top bracket.

A number of people helped make this set happen.* Thanks to Jeff Amoros, who copy-edited the set Friday night even though he was busy writing the sports for TERP. Thanks to Jeremy Eaton, who freelanced a few crucial tossups. Thanks to Andy Watkins, who generously offered to look through the science and ensure I hadn't told any heinous lies (somehow, I hadn't!). Special thanks to Eric Mukherjee, who helped advise me on science answerlines/clue placement and wrote a good deal of the Penn packet despite knowing he wouldn't be able to attend. Extra special thanks to Auroni Gupta, who actually freelanced an entire packet that I was able to break up and scatter throughout this set to fill in some gaps. You guys really helped me pull this off, and I'm extremely grateful - please let me know whenever the chance arises for me to return the favor.
*I very well may have forgotten someone here, so please do let me know so I can correct my oversight.

I also wanted to say how tremendously impressed I was with the teams at this tournament, and that I think it says some pretty great things about quizbowl that the first and second place teams at an open tournament featuring a number of the very best current and past players featured a total of four freshman between them. More than 2/3 of the players comprising the top bracket teams were undergrads, and of course 3 out of the 4 players on the winning squad were freshmen. It was a pretty cool thing to see.

I'm very happy to hear any feedback you have, or offer feedback for questions you submitted, so feel free to email me in either case. I'll be starting a thread later tonight - note that this tournament has mirrors the next two weekends, so the thread will be restricted and you should not mention answers or anything on the rest of the forums until then.

Congratulations to Arun, Daniel, Jonathan, and Ray, and thanks to everyone who attended this tournament.


EDIT: Oh, also, the logistics at this tournament were not great, and I apologize for that. I didn't have time to handle much of that, we had a couple teams drop out at the very last minute, and Maryland's tournament directing experience level took a big hit when SteveJon got seriously sick on Friday night. It's my responsibility for ensuring someone was in place to handle all that well before then, and I failed to do that, so that's on me. Crappy logistics are something I'm not at all interested in having return to Maryland events, so it's something we'll be sure to be diligent about as we continue to host this year.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

In the absence of a general discussion thread, I have a few general comments on the set, which on the whole I thought was a fine, enjoyable set with some flaws. (Feel free to move these there should such a thread appear.)

-I got the distinct feeling that people's positive attitude towards the set was inversely related to their skill/competence at science. I don't think I can comment very specifically, and even saying this might be too much, but some of the science was VERY quizbowl-buzzword-centric or otherwise ill-advised.

-I enjoy a sprinkling of Chris Ray whimsy from my Chris Ray tournaments, and I think this tournament did a good job of providing that for those who enjoy it without going overboard.

-My observation of biggest concern is that I'm really not sure that this set achieved the "Regionals+"-ish goals it sought to achieve. Chris promised an open "accessible to pretty much any college team," which, despite the set's other good qualities, is not what I saw here. I saw a hard tournament with a wider variation of difficulty than usual,and plenty of hard tossups on easy answers, though it had a statistical difficulty easier than Minnesota Open. I'd be uncomfortable telling teams that BARGE is regular-difficulty or even within the "regular-plus" range, though, and despite being a lesser gradation of hard, it was still hard and should be treated as such. (I do realize that a lot of this was due to the packets that got submitted - just looking at the discounts and added charges list, it must have been a scary load to deal with.)
I think that, as far as future editors are concerned, THUNDER II is pretty much the upper edge of what I could reasonably put within the "regular difficulty to regular difficulty-PLUS" range, and anything above that tournament's difficulty should use the designator "hard", even if that's qualified by "hard, with lots of accessible answers" or "hard, but still way easier than Minnesota Open, so bring your B team and they'll put up points against other B teams." Perhaps it doesn't work as well for marketing tournaments to use the word "hard," (perhaps you could say "post-regular" or something similarly euphemistic). Nonetheless, I think an editor creating an open which is truly for everyone but the superest of superteams has to restrict difficulty even more than BARGE did if regular circuit teams are to attend and get points in a way that they don't at most open events.

-Whatever your opinion on nine- or ten-line tossups (and there were too many for my liking at this event, whose stacking with hard clues made the tournament feel harder), I think it's fair to say that this tournament had too many three-line bonus parts. Rarely does a tournament of any difficulty need any bonus parts longer than two or 2.5 lines, and especially in mid-level matches where teams are hearing most of each tossup and a lot of the bonuses, it can drag some rooms behind schedule to stuff lots of bonus parts chock-full of everything worth saying.

[Susan]

I split the discussion of buzzer races to a new thread in the discussion section.