Announcement: Illinois Open 2007: Spite of the Long Knives

[Summoned Skull]

The University of Illinois Academic Buzzer team is pleased to announce the latest incarnation of IO, Spite of the Long Knives. The tournament will be held on November 10th at the "scenic" campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Packet distribution is the following:

5/5 Literature

5/5 History

5/5 Science

3/3 RMP

3/3 Fine Arts

2/2 Social Sciences

1/1 Geography

1/1 Your Choice (Popular culture, Current Events, more of any of the above, or anything else)

Cost: $120.

Packet discount schedule:

Before September 22nd: $40

Before September 29th: $20

Before October 6th: $0

Before October 13th: -$20, i.e., a penalty of $20

Before October 20th: -$40, i.e., a penalty of $40

No packet sent in: Unless special arrangements are made with either of the coordinating editors, teams may not play.

Registrations go to Mike Sorice, at [email protected]. Packets go to Trygve Meade, at [email protected].

Questions are to be between 5 and 8 lines long. The difficulty should be at ACF Regionals level. If one must err from the difficulty, please do so towards easier. For formatting, please follow the guidelines on the ACF website. Freelance packets are definitely welcome. Anyone who freelances gets a copy of the set. If a school is interested in mirroring, they can contact Trygve Meade at [email protected], or myself at [email protected].

[millionwaves]

There's some information that I thoughtlessly forgot to ask James to include in the original announcement; my public apologies to him. Please note the following:

When writing questions, please follow Mike's rather excellent principles from last year, specifically:

(I) Write questions with unambiguous, well-defined answers and without "filler," i.e. sequences of information or non-information that do not directly imply a single answer or set of equivalent, explicitly acceptable answers.
(II) Vary your questions and answers in each discipline over sub-discipline, time period, and region where applicable.
(III) Write questions of reasonable length. Specifically, tossups of more than eight lines or less than three are unacceptable; bonus parts of more than four lines are unacceptable; bonuses requiring six prompts under any circumstances (e.g. 10-5; 15-10-5) are unacceptable, and bonuses requiring five prompts should be used very sparingly, if at all.
(IV) Use clues and answers that are academically relevant to the greatest extent possible.

Also, please format your packets in the same manner outlined last year. For your convenience:

Microsoft Word files with 1â€

[suds1000]

For those of us who will inevitably be exhorted to provide freelance playoff packets, exactly how hard should they be?

Choices include:
1. Less "Impossible" (somewhere between ACF Regionals and Nationals difficulty, but tending toward Regionals)
2. Somewhat "Impossible" (somewhere between ACF Regionals and Nationals difficulty, but tending toward Nationals)
3. "Impossible" (ACF Nationals difficulty -- because ACF Nationals, like ACF as a whole, is impossible)
4. Impossibly "Impossible" (Master's level difficulty, i.e. harder than ACF Nationals)

[No Rules Westbrook]

I vote 3, though I wouldn't mind 4.

[millionwaves]

1. Less "Impossible" (somewhere between ACF Regionals and Nationals difficulty, but tending toward Regionals)

This sounds about right for a playoff packet, although if it strays somewhat into choice 2 territory, that probably would be ok. (And would you please e-mail me to let me know if you're writing one as soon as possible at [email protected]? Thank you.)
The preliminary packets should be at least as difficult as ACF Regionals, but no harder than choice 1.

Thanking you in advance for any freelanced packets that may arise from your pen,
Trygve Meade

[millionwaves]

A bump and a field update:

These are teams that have confirmed to me that they are coming so far:

University of Chicago (2 or 3)
University of Minnesota (1) (Thanks for the early packet!)
Jerry Vinokurov/Jonathan Magin/?/?
Ryan Westbrook/Matt Lafer/?/?
Team Chicago Locals (Thanks for the packet!)

We'll most likely have the traditional house team as well. Also, if you want to come as a free agent, please e-mail me at [email protected], and we'll try to hook you up with a team.

Trygve Meade

[millionwaves]

Field updated.

[MLafer]

Can someone please explain the schedule of tournaments for next weekend? I've not even heard whether Westbrook or Hart's tournaments are even going to happen, much less what time they are happening.

[millionwaves]

Schedule of tournaments for the weekend:

Saturday morning: Illinois Open

Saturday evening: Hart Literature Singles/Doubles/Quads/Octets/whatever (actually, what is this going to be?)

Sunday morning: Westbrook Doubles

[Captain Sinico]

Congratulations to Another Victim of the Manocentric Maleocracy (Magin, Mukhergee, Vinokurov, Weiner) for the impressive performance of going undefeated en route to victory in The Illinois Open 2007: Spite of the Long Knives. The top scorer was Seth Teitler of Chicago Random Street Corner with about 80 points per game. A more detailed summary with full stats will be posted shortly.

MaS

[millionwaves]

Stats, including the playoff rounds, can be found here:

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/tmeade2/www/i ... dings.html

[Captain Sinico]

Hi everyone,

Congratulations to Another Victim of the Manocentric Maleocracy (Jon Magin, Eric Mukherjee, Jerry Vinokurov, Matt Weiner), who won The Illinois Open 2007: Spite of the Long Knives at the University of Illinois last weekend in convincing fashion, going undefeated. The top scorer (initial round robin-only) was Seth Teitler of Chicago Random Street Corner with 78 1/3 Pts./Gm; he was followed by Matt Lafer (sorry for screwing that up at the time; you're welcome to any book off my shelf) of Lafer/Westbrook with 55 and Jerry Vinokurov of AVMM with 51 2/3. Seth was very un-Seth in taking the neg prize with 15 (full-tournament), for which he was branded with a decaying copy of The Scarlet Letter. Full results are available here; results from the initial round robin only here.

We held a full round robin among 7 teams, at the end of which teams were partitioned by record into brackets of four and three (an exhibition team was added to fill the lower bracket) and played a secondary round robin of three games. At the end of all that, AVMM stood undefeated several games clear of the field and was therefore declared the winner. The two finals packets were then played 40/40-style by two drafted teams, 7-on-6; this was won by "Chalkboard" on the final question.

I'd like to thank all the teams that came and I hope everyone had a great time. I'd like especially and profusely to thank all the organizers and writers of the secondary events that continue to make this weekend what it is: Andrew Hart, Dave Letzler, Ted Gioia, Dennis Jang, Chris Borglum, Chris Ray, Eric Kwartler, Quentin Roper, and Rob Carson for Literature Subject Tournament; Ryan Westbrook for The Experiment: Return to Lord Weary's Castle; and Matt Weiner for ACF Pyramid. I'd like to thank our staff of Greg Baboukis, Steven Canning, Micah Hodosh, Trygve Meade, James Sanner, and especially our statskeeper, Donald Taylor. Special thanks to our house teamers, Brandon Cheney, Miles Ford, Chang Meng, and Jeet Raut and, of course, to special guest Tom Phillips (great to see you again, man.)

Please contact me or post in this thread with any issues, questions, corrections, etc.

Hoping to see you next year,
MaS
Tournament Directior, The Illinois Open 2007: Spite of the Long Knives
University of Illinois Academic Buzzer Team

[trphilli]

Stats, including the playoff rounds, can be found here:

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/tmeade2/www/i ... dings.html

Hey, I want credit for my three wins. Your missing a couple games in there somehow, not all of the teams have nine games in the stats.

[dtaylor4]

If others find any major issues with the stats, I will take care of them in a week, as the score sheets are sitting on the shelf of my room, which I won't see for a week.