The Quizbowl Resource Center

Yale will be hosting a mirror of the Illinois Fall Tournament on Saturday, October 6, 2012. This tournament is a housewrite by members of the UIUC quizbowl team, and as such, packet submission is not required for this event. Matt Jackson will be the tournament director, but I will be handling registrations.

Location:
This event will be held in William L. Harkness Hall (WLH), located at 100 Wall Street, New Haven, CT. Many Yale parking lots within 2-3 blocks of WLH are open to the public on weekends for free, including Lots 51, 77, 78, and 78W as indicated on this map. Street parking is also generally available, as is garage parking in the Grove Street and Audubon Court garages as indicated on this map.

People arriving at New Haven Union Station can either take a taxi to campus (this will cost about $8; call 203-777-7777 if there are no cabs in sight), walk to campus (it's a bit over a mile), or ride the Yale Shuttle, which departs Union Station at approximately 40 minutes after the hour, every hour. If you take the Shuttle, you should disembark after approximately 20 minutes at Broadway and York, and then walk north on York St to Wall St and east to WLH. For further information about transportation logistics, contact me at <[email protected]>.

Time:
We plan to start the tournament at 9:00 am (UPDATE: 9:30 am, owing to Metro North schedules and so forth). Please arrive at least 15 minutes early for registration and pre-tournament announcements. There will be Yale quizbowl people milling around WLH starting at 8:30 at the latest. In the event that you find yourself physically unable to arrive on time (for reasons of public transportation schedules or whatnot), please let me know.

Registering for this tournament:
In order to register for this tournament, you must email me at <[email protected]>. In your email, please include 1.) the number of teams you will be bringing; 2.) any discounts you plan to qualify for; 3.) an email address to which I should direct tournament-related correspondence; and 4.) a phone number at which your team can be contacted on the day of the tournament. You can revise this information as necessary by sending me further emails. New registrations will be accepted until noon on Friday, October 5.

Eligibility:
This tournament is a standard closed-eligibility tournament, in the sense that all participants must play on a team with other players enrolled at their educational institution (middle school, high school, or college). Essentially, we will be following ACF eligibility rules, as described in section C of the Official ACF Rules. Contact me at <[email protected]> if you are unsure about your eligibility for this tournament.

Fee schedule:
Base fee: $120 per team.
Buzzer discount*: -$5 per buzzer system that has at least eight working buzzers
Moderator discount**: -$10 per competent, English-speaking moderator
Travel discount: -$10 per 180 miles traveled one way according to Google Maps
Minimum fee per team: $80
UPDATE: All teams from schools that are new to quizbowl (i.e. have not played a quizbowl tournament in the past 4 years) will pay only the minimum per-team fee of $80. If you think your school is "new" to quizbowl despite having played a quizbowl tournament in the past 4 years, let me know and we'll see what we can do.

* we have at most two working buzzer systems and as such are very much in need of working buzzer systems. Nobody likes playing slapbowl, so if you have a buzzer system, please bring it.
** we have enough moderators to run this tournament, but any outside moderators will be very much appreciated nonetheless.

If this fee schedule would cause financial hardship for your team, please contact me and we'll work something out.

NOTE: If you plan to pay for this tournament by check, the check must be made out to "Y. Student Academic Competitions". Do not make checks payable to "Yale Student Academic Competitions".

Other matters:
If you have other questions or concerns about this tournament, post here or contact me at <[email protected]>.

Field: 18/20 (capped due to the number of game rooms available to us); 12 buzzers, 3 non-Yale moderators
Yale house (1, 2 buzzers)
Columbia (1, 1 buzzer)
UConn (2, 1 buzzer)
Stony Brook (1, 1 buzzer)
Williams (1, 1 buzzer)
Dartmouth (3)
"University of Hamden" (1)
City College of New York (1)
Brown (1, 1 moderator)
RPI (1, 1 buzzer)
Penn (2, 1 buzzer, 1 Eric)
NYU (2, 1 buzzer, 1 Mirza)
Harvard (1, 3 buzzers)

Interested teams:
Stony Brook (1 more)
MIT (some)
UMass? (1)

Stony Brook will be there. I'll figure out about how many teams we can expect to bring before sending an e-mail.

An unofficial contingent of students from Quinnipiac who are in no way actually representing the school may be interested. Details to follow.

Just an update: I would say an unaffiliated team from my school will be there with 70-80% certainty even if it is only two people. Is there any sort of discount for 'being shorthanded or a new team?

Habitat_Against_Humanity wrote:Just an update: I would say an unaffiliated team from my school will be there with 70-80% certainty even if it is only two people. Is there any sort of discount for 'being shorthanded or a new team?

OP wrote:UPDATE: All teams from schools that are new to quizbowl (i.e. have not played a quizbowl tournament in the past 4 years) will pay only the minimum per-team fee of $80. If you think your school is "new" to quizbowl despite having played a quizbowl tournament in the past 4 years, let me know and we'll see what we can do.

RPI will have 1-2 teams and a buzzer system.

Dartmouth will likely have two teams. If our new buzzer system arrives in time, we will bring it.

Now that Dartmouth has emailed me to register two teams, the field for this tournament is half full. New England quizbowlers who have not yet registered should do so sooner rather than later to be assured of a spot in the field.

Five days left to register, and no word from many possible competitors - Harvard, are you coming? Wellesley? NYU?

I think NYU is sending some number of teams, but I'm probably the wrong person to talk to about this

As noted in the original post, the start time of this tournament has been officially moved to 9:30 am (from 9:00 am) in order to accomodate public transportation schedules.

Please note that we are doing this to accomodate teams who do not have control over their own travel schedules. We do not intend to accomodate teams who are late for non-reasons like oversleeping or stopping for coffee or not knowing how to operate a parking brake or "but quizbowl tournaments never start on time anyway", and will start the tournament without you.

Incidentally - depending on the values of "some", "??", and "?", it is possible that we will not have room for all interested teams. Register! (and also bring buzzer systems if you can, pretty please.)

RPI will have one team and one buzzer system. My colleague, Qi Wang, will be mailing you with his information to complete registration.

Sorry for the delay- NYU will be sending (or, rather, would like to, if there's room) two teams with one buzzer system and one moderator. I believe our president has also sent an e-mail to actually register.

With the registration of a second UPenn team, the field for this tournament is full, pending any drops. If you would like to be placed on a waitlist for this tournament, let me know.

Since Columbia has reduced from 2 teams to 1, and we've been unable to scare up a second house team, there are now two open spots in the field. Please let me know by noon on Friday if you'd like to register.

Is there any info on the tournament format for tomorrow?

I'll be sending out an email a bit later today with format information and so forth; as of now, it seems likely that we'll have 2 brackets of 9 rebracketed into 3 brackets of 6, plus finals.

Somebody from each school that is attending this tournament should have received an email from me just now, with some logistical information and so forth. If you are registered for this tournament and did not receive an email from me, please contact me immediately.

Stats from the tournament will be available approximately live at (http://srivatsa.org/staaaats/ift2012) once the tournament is underway. As usual, the bracket names are Matt Jackson's fault. Stats will be migrated to the DB after the tournament is over.

EDIT (9:47am): The tournament is now underway with 18 teams. We will have 2 brackets of 9, followed by a rebracket into 3 brackets of 6, and then finals if necessary.

EDIT (11:02am): The tournament is rolling along slowly, with round 2 just having finished.

EDIT (12:47pm): We're on lunch break; stats are updated through round 5.

EDIT (2:34pm): Round 8 is underway. I have received word from the esteemed John Lawrence that the bracket name "Sesame Seed Hegel" is in fact his fault, and not Matt Jackson's.

This tournament ended. The Yale house team cleared the field, with Columbia and Penn A tied for second.

The top individual scorers were Nolan Esser (88 PPG), Yogesh Raut (74 PPG), Saajid Moyen (73 PPG), Daniel Brach-Neufeld (72 PPG), and Aidan Mehigan (59 PPG).

Complete stats are available at (http://srivatsa.org/staaaats/ift2012/i2 ... dings.html). Thanks to everyone who attended, and we hope to see you around the region in the future.

ALSO: We found two black coats (one North Face and one Champion) in room 006 (the readers in that room were Spencer Weinreich and Daniel Lee). If these belong to you, please contact me.

EDIT (8:53pm): The final order of finish was as follows:
---
1. Yale (5-0)
2. Columbia (3-2)
=2. Penn A (3-2)
4. Dartmouth A (2-3)
=4. Brown (2-3)
6. Penn B (0-5)
---
7. RPI (4-1)
8. Harvard (3-2)
=8. Williams (3-2)
10. NYU A (2-3)
=10. Stony Brook (2-3)
12. University of Hamden (1-4)
---
13. UConn A (4-1)
=13. Dartmouth B (4-1)
15. UConn B (3-2)
16. NYU B (2-3)
=16. City College of NY (2-3)
18. Dartmouth C (0-5)
---
(the records in parentheses refer to the team's record against other teams in the same playoff bracket)

Addendum: the playoff bracket names are Spencer Weinreich's fault.