The Quizbowl Resource Center

Brown Quiz Bowl is pleased announce that Early Fall Tournament 2: Rataplan Ghost Rides an Ambulance in World War I, otherwise known as EFT 2, will be held at Brown University on Saturday, September 29th, 2007. It will be a standard mACF academic tournament, and it will be easier than last year's rendition as we're aiming for a difficulty much closer to that of a normal ACF Fall tournament. We are really hoping to attract newer players, particularly those just coming from high school, so a concentrated effort is being made to keep the difficulty appropriate. It will be written by me (Dennis Jang), Eric Mukherjee, and Jerry Vinokurov, so no packets will be expected from anyone.

I realize it's a bit early to announce this, but if you would like to register any teams, you should contact me at dennis_jang AT brown DOT edu with the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers.

Fee schedule:
Base fee: $100
Buzzer discount: -$5 each
Staff discount: -$10 each
Travel discount: -$10 for every 200 miles traveled
Minimum fee: $60

Lastly, we're looking for anyone who'd like to mirror this in other regions, e.g. Midwest, West coast, etc., so if you're interested in doing so, please email me, and we can work something out.

Dennis wrote:Minimum fee: -$60

I plan on flying a team out from China so you can give me $60. Kthx.

Changed. Thanks.

Guess I should mention that Vanderbilt has an agreement in principle to mirror this event on October 6. More details on that eventually.

^^Ditto.

The full official announcement won't come until I reserve rooms, which will be in July probably.

Wall of Shawarma wrote:^^Ditto.

The full official announcement won't come until I reserve rooms, which will be in July probably.

Maryland will almost certanly send teams to this mirror, although it'd help us out if it was not on the 29th, as that is the day before our fall high shcool tournament.

ikillkenny wrote:

Wall of Shawarma wrote:^^Ditto.

The full official announcement won't come until I reserve rooms, which will be in July probably.

Maryland will almost certanly send teams to this mirror, although it'd help us out if it was not on the 29th, as that is the day before our fall high shcool tournament.

Yeah I meant everything vandyhawk said, so we'll have ours on October 6th as well (the Family Weekend football game against [Edit: Towson, my mistake] is on the 29th for us). That's awesome that you guys can come though. I know you had the past EFT mirror site, so I hope we didn't step on your toes or anything by hosting.


Tentative clever acronym for our site: Hieronymous BOSCH Appreciation Day - Ballin Outrageous Shiznet the College Hosts

Wall of Shawarma wrote:

ikillkenny wrote:

Wall of Shawarma wrote:^^Ditto.

The full official announcement won't come until I reserve rooms, which will be in July probably.

Maryland will almost certanly send teams to this mirror, although it'd help us out if it was not on the 29th, as that is the day before our fall high shcool tournament.

I know you had the past EFT mirror site, so I hope we didn't step on your toes or anything by hosting.

Nah, no worries there. Contrary to popular opinion we do in fact enjoy competing in tournaments and not just hosting them.

Just bumping this back up--as teams start letting me know if they can come, I'll begin posting field updates.

Teams who have said they will come thus far (updates will be made on this post):

Harvard (3?)
Rutgers-New Brunswick (1)
Brandeis (1-2)
Amherst (1-2)
MIT (3)
Yale (1)
Columbia (1-2)
Dartmouth (1-2)
Princeton (1)
House Teams (2?)

Still looking for more; email me if you're interested in coming.

Note: Due to the rather large field (which is great), it appears that we too may be short a few moderators. If any teams are able to bring any staffers, please let me know as soon as possible.

Field update:

Harvard (3?)
Rutgers-NB (1)
Brandeis (1-2)
Amherst (1-2)
MIT (3)
Yale (1-2)
Columbia (3)
Dartmouth (1-2)
Princeton (1)
Williams (1-2)
Brown (2-3)

I heard Jason Keller played this NOVICE tournament, confirm/deny?

DumbJaques wrote:I heard Jason Keller played this NOVICE tournament, confirm/deny?

Confirm.

Sorry, but I don't actually see "novice" or anything explicitly dealing with age/experience in the announcement other then that they are hoping to attract some new players. I know that Bruce Arthur also played.

DeisEvan wrote:

DumbJaques wrote:I heard Jason Keller played this NOVICE tournament, confirm/deny?

Confirm.

Young, dumb and full of com...placency?

Jason Keller not only played, but won -- not that there's anything wrong with that. EFT is no more of a novice tournament than, say, ACF Fall.

DumbJaques wrote:I heard Jason Keller played this NOVICE tournament, confirm/deny?

If it was like last year's tournament, most answers were well-known, but the tournament had challenging leadins and great pyramidality. Who wouldn't want to play in a tournament like that? It's comparable to ACF Fall, which Yaphe played at a couple years ago. I don't think anybody complained then, although I'm not sure if you're complaining now. In general, I don't understand the meaning behind your post.

I just think it's a little ridiculous that Jason Keller decided to crash a tournament which almost exclusively featured players with less than two years of experience. As I recall, when Yaphe played fall, everyone else did too - the standard issue of Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, etc. etc. That's probably going to happen at ACF fall again this year, as it should. But EFT, particularly this EFT site, did not feature the corresponding field strength, or anything close to the corresponding grad student participation, and that's why I think it's gratuitous. I mean, come on. . . Jason's teammates reportedly kept apologizing for his presence - and not in the normal way.

I'm not really complaining, but I hope that the next time Jason wants to go after a tournament filled with players with less than two years of college experience, he'll hit the one I'm attending.

DumbJaques wrote:I just think it's a little ridiculous that Jason Keller decided to crash a tournament which almost exclusively featured players with less than two years of experience. As I recall, when Yaphe played fall, everyone else did too - the standard issue of Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, etc. etc. That's probably going to happen at ACF fall again this year, as it should. But EFT, particularly this EFT site, did not feature the corresponding field strength, or anything close to the corresponding grad student participation, and that's why I think it's gratuitous. I mean, come on. . . Jason's teammates reportedly kept apologizing for his presence - and not in the normal way.

I'm not really complaining, but I hope that the next time Jason wants to go after a tournament filled with players with less than two years of college experience, he'll hit the one I'm attending.

Keller was closely matched by the other top teams at the tournament. Harvard B beat him once and lost to him a second time very narrowly. Harvard A lost by more, but kept it competitive until the end of the game. And I'm not sure what happened between Rutgers and Princeton A, but I'm sure it was far from a cakewalk.

EFT is not a NOVICE tournament. When UCLA switched TWAIN-College Division over from IS sets to EFT mirrors, we expanded the eligibility requirements. We ended up with a mix of everything from well-established veteran grad students to teams of freshmen playing their first-ever collegiate tournament. I would expect such a distribution at any such tournament.

I don't pretend to put words in the mouth of anyone involved with either this year's or last year's EFT, but I thought the primary purpose of EFT was to expose new players to the reality of the college circuit without them coming away with the idea that college quizbowl is impossible. Specifically, that includes extremely accessible questions (so that even a match between two novice teams will have ideally >75% tossup conversion and >10 ppb; thus, teams come away not feeling like the questions were impossible), good pyramidality (so they have a baseline of a "good" tournament to compare other tournaments to), and not babying them by putting them in their own "novice" division. Suggesting that EFT become a de facto novice tournament is, in my mind, a step backward from that philosophy. If the writers of the tournament later decide it would be best to limit eligibility, fine. But bashing someone for playing in a tournament he was perfectly eligible to attend (regardless of the overall field strength) is wrong.

But bashing someone for playing in a tournament he was perfectly eligible to attend (regardless of the overall field strength) is wrong.

Yeah, you're right about that. I'm pretty much of the opinion that restricting people from tournaments is not such a great idea. I think I was somewhat mistaken about the nature of EFT this year (perhaps this had something to do with my teammate suggesting Brown had essentially told him it was meant as a novice set). If it really wasn't intended as a novice tournament, that's cool. I stand by my futile wish that Rutgers would have come to our site instead.

Chris Ray just lost.

At life.

cvdwightw wrote:EFT is not a NOVICE tournament...I thought the primary purpose of EFT was to expose new players to the reality of the college circuit without them coming away with the idea that college quizbowl is impossible. Specifically, that includes extremely accessible questions (so that even a match between two novice teams will have ideally >75% tossup conversion and >10 ppb; thus, teams come away not feeling like the questions were impossible), good pyramidality (so they have a baseline of a "good" tournament to compare other tournaments to), and not babying them by putting them in their own "novice" division.

FIFTEEEEEEEEEN.

PS. Stats and etc. coming soon.

I apologize for the late posting for statistics, but they'll be compiled and put up soon. Rutgers did indeed win, followed by Harvard B (pending Bruce's challenge), then I believe Harvard A, then Princeton A. Stats were kept through the first 9 rounds.

It would be silly to pretend that EFT is not written with primarily new players in mind. That said, anyone is welcome to play, and I hope that this set was educational for everyone who played on it.

I just wanted to add that while we ask you to refrain from discussing the questions until the mirrors are completed, you can send us all comments if you played on or heard the set. We're going to clean up some typos and at a couple of errors that seeped in before next week's mirrors so if you saw any, feel free to email us.

grapesmoker wrote:I just wanted to add that while we ask you to refrain from discussing the questions until the mirrors are completed, you can send us all comments if you played on or heard the set. We're going to clean up some typos and at a couple of errors that seeped in before next week's mirrors so if you saw any, feel free to email us.

Email Address = ?

Also is there a webpage with stats from this yet?

Morton's Fork wrote: Email Address = ?

I can be reached at [email protected]; Dennis and Eric are at [email protected] and [email protected].

Also is there a webpage with stats from this yet?

I think Dennis is still compiling stats. We'll try to have them up by the end of the week.

Stats have been compiled, and they should be up relatively soon. Just a synopsis--

Individual Places:
1. Jason (Grad) from Rutgers
2. Julia (Junior) from Harvard A
3. Ted (Frosh) from Harvard B
4. Andrew (Senior) from Yale A
5. Randall (Junior) from Dartmouth A
6. Anyeong (Grad) from Princeton A

Top Frosh/Sophs:
3. Ted (Frosh) from Harvard B
7. Lisa (Frosh) from Brown A
11. Leon (Soph) from MIT A
13. Orion (Soph) from MIT A
15. Aaron (Frosh) from Brown B
18. Richard (Soph) from Yale B
21. Yi (Soph) from Harvard A

Silly me, I'll include some numbers:

Individual Places:
1. Jason (Grad) from Rutgers - 66.67 PPG
2. Julia (Junior) from Harvard A - 64.67 PPG
3. Ted (Frosh) from Harvard B - 61.25 PPG
4. Andrew (Senior) from Yale A - 58.33 PPG
5. Randall (Junior) from Dartmouth A - 53.33 PPG
6. Anyeong (Grad) from Princeton A - 48.33 PPG

Top Frosh/Sophs:
3. Ted (Frosh) from Harvard B - 61.25 PPG
7. Lisa (Frosh) from Brown A - 46.11 PPG
11. Leon (Soph) from MIT A - 38.33 PPG
13. Orion (Soph) from MIT A - 34.44 PPG
15. Aaron (Frosh) from Brown B - 32.22 PPG
18. Richard (Soph) from Yale B - 29.38 PPG
21. Yi (Soph) from Harvard A - 27.33 PPG

Props to Princeton A and their player names.

Apparently I'm still very good at negging.