The Quizbowl Resource Center

The University of Illinois Academic Buzzer Team is pleased to announce the 2008 Matt Cvijanovich Memorial Novice Tournament, to be held March 8th, 2008 at the "impressive" Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. This tournament is held to honor the memory of Matthew Cvijanovich, a man whom I honestly regret not having the privilege to have known.

This event will be packet submission. I will serve as the head editor, with assistance from James Sanner and probably other people as well. Mike Sorice has graciously agreed to return as Tournament Director. To register, please e-mail him at [email protected].

This event is open to players in their first and second years of collegiate competition, and each team must consist of players who all attend the same school. These are the only restrictions; no restrictions will be made on the basis of year in school, age, presumed skill level, etc.

Each match will consist of 20 tossups with accompanying bonuses, divided into two un-timed halves; ties will be broken by sudden death overtime tossups. The tournament will consist of some form of round robin (which form exactly as dictated by the field size) followed by a playoff to decide the tournament champion.

Again, this tournament is packet-submission. If you do not submit a packet, or you do not submit a packet until after the deadline without notifying me well in advance and obtaining my approval, I will charge you a flat fee of OVER $9000 to play. Please note that the fee last year was infinity dollars for a similar situation, so we may have significantly reduced our fees.

Packets submitted by schools sending multiple teams must be blind to the non-author teams. Assistance in writing from experienced team members is encouraged but writing on behalf of novices is strongly discouraged as we would like this event to promote the practice of writing questions among younger players.

The difficulty of this year's MCMNT will be a little easier than last year's. It should be roughly that of ACF Fall. I will be pleased to send out copies of last year's set in order to assist teams with question writing, provided that the team has registered for the tournament.

When writing your packet, please follow this distribution (tossups/bonuses)

History 4/4
Science 4/4 (no science biography, please - put that in "other academic" if you must write it)
Literature 4/4
Religion/Mythology/Philosophy 3/3
Fine Arts 3/3
Social Science/Geography 2/2 (at least 1 geography question, but no more than 2 total geography questions)
Other Academic 3/3 (questions from any of the above areas, but no more than 2 from any one of them)
Pop Culture/sports 2/2 (no more than 1/1 sports)
Current Events 1/1 (please avoid "story-of-the-moment" questions)

Please also follow these guidelines:

- Absolutely no spelling, calculation, "FAQTP," or ordering/multiple choice questions.
- Though there is no ceiling on the number of questions about real people, please attempt to focus on creations and the like. When writing questions on real people, please focus on their academic contributions, rather than on biographical details.
- Please be diverse across sub-field, time period, geographical location, etc. within each distribution category.
- All tossups are worth 10 pts and should be no shorter than 3 lines, nor longer than 6 lines; all bonuses should be worth a total of 30 pts.
- No bonuses potentially requiring six prompts (e.g. "FFPE," 10-5,
15-10-5, 5-5-5-5-5-5, etc.) Bonuses potentially requiring five prompts must be used sparingly, if at all.
- Packets disregarding these guidelines may be returned as unacceptable.

Please submit packets to [email protected]. I will be happy to accept packets in any file format that Microsoft Office 2007 can read and edit, although I prefer .doc, .docx, or .rtf.

See you in March,

Trygve Meade

millionwaves wrote: Cost Structure:

Packet submitted by February 1st: $60.
Packet submitted by February 8th: $80.
Packet not submitted by February 8th/not submitted at all: $1000.

I'm hoping you mean $100. Just making sure...

EDIT: Ok, I'm sorry, I didn't read the first couple of lines....

This would be a good tournament for us, as a fledgling program, to go to, but that's the first day of our spring break.

millionwaves wrote:There is a $30 fee for any team that registers but then cancels or fails to show for non-emergency reasons without notifying me via email 2 days in advance.

Good luck with that.

Yeah, seriously. I don't mean to pick on you for this, Trygve, since you're hardly the only person to propose a rule like this, but no-show fees always strike me as silly and terribly hard to enforce (in my experience, the people who back out of tournaments with little or no notice are not the people you're going to be able to get to pay you back).

Anyway, what's the big deal? When I ran tournaments (back in the day, I say as I wave my cane), I would, in addition to making up schedules for the planned number of teams (n), make up a schedule for n-1 (and n-2 and n+1, if things were looking particularly up-in-the-air), just in case there was some sort of last-minute issue. (Less anal-retentive people can just look up a different round robin schedule online.) Alternatively, you can always reshuffle house teams if you're fielding any. What I'm trying to say is that I think it's relatively easy to deal with last-minute changes in the field, and the most you should do to teams who back out on you is mock them.

Kit Cloudkicker wrote:

millionwaves wrote:There is a $30 fee for any team that registers but then cancels or fails to show for non-emergency reasons without notifying me via email 2 days in advance.

Good luck with that.

I've collected such fees before, though usually from teams being canceled from a school that's still coming with a lower number (they just tell me it'll be lower really late). NAQT lets Sectional hosts charge cancellation fees: "Hosts may charge teams that withdraw within 72 hours of the beginning of the tournament a cancellation fee of up to $40." I think at GMU sectionals last year Dr. Chuck either had the policy of enforcing cancellation fees or came close to doing so (confirm/deny?), so it's not without precedent. Really I see no reason why a team can't tell you they're canceling on the Wednesday (or earlier) before a tournament; it's pretty inconvenient afterwards regardless of whether you can change the schedule. If you print schedules, place food orders, and make other logistical decisions the Friday or Thursday before a tournament, it's much easier if you're charging cancellation fees and thus discouraging teams from pulling out really late. Usually if you charge said fee only 1-2 at most will pull out after the deadline.

Edit: Plus I mean, who doesn't like free money?

Given that this tournament has used this rule for the past 6 times it's been run, I'd say that no, it's not without precedent.

MaS

Hi, all.

As we get a little closer to this tournament, I'd like to remind everyone that we're still looking for mirrors. I've had some interest from the Northeast and from the lower Mid-Atlantic region, but we're still very much interested in more hosts. If this sounds appealing, please e-mail me at trygvemeade (at) gmail.com.

Trevkeeper wrote:This would be a good tournament for us, as a fledgling program, to go to, but that's the first day of our spring break.

Same here, but last year even though that was a problem we managed to field a full team. It was actually kind of helpful because our grad student who's rarely available was able to come then because it was spring break.

Yeah, we've actually had good success over the years going to stuff the last day of school before break. People are usually free and, if you plan in advance, it's often easier to get home (or wherever) on Sunday, rather than Saturday, when everyone else is trying to leave. Try it out!

MaS

Bumping because new information is available regarding this tournament.

We're now officially mirroring this tournament in the following locations:

Harvard (same day)

UNC (one week before)

Also, it's going to be the (edit: Saturday. Sorry Chris!) event for Chris Ray's high school thing.

Please send teams to those mirrors if you're in the area.

Also, we've got some confirmed plans to mirror it at St. Olaf the week before.

Sunday event

Saturday, actually, not that it matters.

Hi,

I'd like to remind everyone that the first deadline for packets is coming up very soon; Friday, to be exact.

Also, I'm going to go ahead and add another packet deadline. You can submit a packet on February 15th for a base fee of $100.

If you're interested, please e-mail Mike to register at [email protected].

Hi everyone,
Here's a field update:
Chicago, 1 or more teams
Cleveland State, 1 team?
IIT, 1 team?
Indiana, 1 team?
Michigan, 1 or 2 teams
Northwestern, 1 team
Rock Valley, 1 team?
Truman State, 1 team?

If you're a representative of a team with a question mark, I'd appreciate it if you'd get in contact with me as soon as possible and clear up your status. I've heard vague rumors that other teams might want to come, etc. If that's true, please e-mail me and register.

Thanks,
MaS

Yeah, we're sending one team, and the packet is nearly finished.

Lawrence is in, and as per my e-mail, packet writing commences tomorrow.

Now that my packet is in, I begin to wonder: field update?

I was hoping to have the field finalized before posting again, but here's the current field:

Northwestern, 1 team
IIT, 1 team
Cleveland State, 1 team
Chicago, 1 or more teams
Michigan, 1 team
Indiana, 1 team
Truman State, 1 team?
Lawrence, 1 team
(House teams as necessary.)

Expect an e-mail this weekend about logistics.

MaS

The short:

Lawrence defeated Indiana 245-200 in game 1 of an advantaged final to win. Chicago got 3rd, followed by Northwestern.

Stats will be up within a day or two.

Just a reminder to wait another week before discussing particular questions from this tournament since Harvard's mirror is still to come.

Stats.

Hey,

It's now ok to discuss this tournament. You can do that here.