The Quizbowl Resource Center

Gunpei Yokoi Memorial Open

This is the official announcement for the Gunpei Yokoi Memorial Open, to be held following the VCU Open on Saturday, August 16th at VCU (and potentially mirror sites if they are interested). This tournament will be written by me, Mike Bentley, with probably some contributions on the meta from Chris Carter.

QUESTIONS:

The tournament will consist of approximately 100 tossups, divided into five different 20 tossup rounds. There will be no bonuses, but there probably will be powers and maybe even super powers. Ideally there will be between 8-16 people interested in this tournament so we can divide up into 4 teams and play a round robin followed by a final of some sort.

The distribution of the tournament will be as follows:
25% Meta (i.e. tossups on things relating to Quizbowl)
25% European History
25% Visual Fine Arts (i.e. painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, film)
25% Videogames

It is likely that the sub-distribution in these categories will be more balanced to fit my interests than to fit an ideal spectrum of the genre, but I will at least make an attempt to provide some sort of uniformity.

There will be some answers at this tournament that will be quite difficult, and some that will be pretty easy to get on the giveaway.

PRICING:

The tournament will be $5 per person. If you don’t pay, you don’t play (this tournament is about making money). If for some reason you need to pay by check, make them out to “Michael Bentley”.

REGISTRATION:

To register for this tournament, please make a post in this thread. If you are unable to do that for some reason, you can e-mail me at [email protected]. Note that the current plan is to assign teams by a draft, so no need to worry about forming them at the moment. I will probably come up with a ranking of the top four potential players playing in this tournament and then open it up for discussion so that we can have captains.

MISC:

We hypothetically get kicked out of the building the VCU Open is being held at around 7 PM on Saturday. If this actually happens, we will run the tournament outside on SVBZ’s if possible, or will attempt to relocate to another open building or restaurant if it’s raining or something.

If you are interested in staffing this tournament, let me know. Currently I only plan on having four teams, so we’ll only need two staffers, one of which should be me. But there is a slight possibility I may not be able to actually attend the tournament, so the more staff on reserve the better.

Video games and European History?! I'll play. Count me in.

I want to play this.

I'm tentatively in, depending on how other events of the day go.

count me in

I'll play.

I'm up for this.

I'm in, fo sho. Hopefully I can make up on the meta what I don't get on the video games.

You know I'm down.

Assuming that I am there, which seems likely at this point, I want to play this.

I'd like to play this.

If we're there, I'll play this.

MaS

I'll play this, but I won't get much except for arts.

I am able to attend VCU Open <=> I will play in this tournament.

I'll play despite these being four of the things I suck the most at.

I will partake in this

Count me in!

Field update (current for 8/15/08):

Playing (28):
Jeremy Eaton
Evan Silberman
George Berry
Andy Watkins
Shantanu Jha
Guy Tabachnick
David Seal
Ted Gioia
Will Butler
Carsten Gehring
Steve Feldman
Matt Weiner
Dan Goff
Katy Peters
Brice Russ
Bernadette Spencer
Brendan Byrne
Andrew Hart
Henry Gorman
Andrew Lim
Chris White
Hannah Kirsch
Jerry Vinokurov
Trevor Davis
Jonathan Magin
Chris Ray
Keith Jamieson
Leonard Change

Staffing (4ish):
Mike Bentley
Gaurav Kandlikar
Gautam Kandlikar
Chris Carter

It looks like it's likely there will be more than 16 people interested in this tournament, so my plan to have teams of 4 with a round robin followed by a final probably isn't going to work. Instead, we'll probably either put people on teams of 5 players, or divide up into 8 teams with bracket play followed by a cross-bracket final. If time allows I may attempt to write another 20 tossups so there is some more flexibility, but I will focus on getting the rest of the original 100 finished and edited.

By the way, just so no one gets the wrong impression, there will be portions of this tournament which will be very difficult (i.e. some of the questions are probably in the upper half of Gaddis difficulty). While I'm trying to not include anything that would be unanswerably hard, I'm not guaranteeing that there will be some gaps between things I consider hard but gettable and things that people actually know. But like the Gaddis tournament, I plan on including a few questions on the "1" difficulty scale, much like how there were tossups on Kim Jong Il or Raft of the Medusa at Gaddis alongside that White Russian general no one but Bruce and Charles had ever heard of.

With that said, if you're relatively tuned into the quizbowl circuit, the meta will probably have easier answer selection than the rest of the tournament.

Oh yeah, I want to play this also, if possible.

Assuming that we have adequate transportation, there are about 6 other non-Trevor Minnesotans who would like to sign up.

GoffmanProphecies wrote:I'm tentatively in, depending on how other events of the day go.

Change me from tentative to definite.

Since it now looks like I'll be coming for sure, I'd love to actually play this if possible - though I'm certainly happy to staff as needed also.

I'd like to get in on this if possible, though the only thing I'll be doing during the arts and history half is learning.

Since Katy wants to play, we should definitely have her play for a break.

I will be happy to moderate if need be.

Gautam

Further clarification on subject matter: The visual arts distribution will be on Western art from the early Renaissance onwards.

In regards to the format, I think I've settled on 8 teams, divided into 2 brackets, playing a round robin followed by a cross-bracket finals game. I will hopefully have 10 questions available for a mini-match if we need to play off any ties for first in a bracket (further ties will be resolved by total powers and super powers). FYI regular matches will be 24-25 questions in length.

It looks like somewhere between 20-30 people are interested in playing in this tournament, so that means we can have teams of 2-4 people, depending on the final numbers we get. In the event there is a huge surge in people interested in playing in this tournament and we get over 32 people, I can't guarantee room for everyone unless there are 4 buzzers that have more than 8 working slots on them. Assuming Maryland brings both Knots it's likely there probably will be enough systems like that, but in order to ensure that you have a slot in this tournament, you should sign up ASAP.

By next week I'll try to come up with my preliminary list of rankings for the top 8 or so players so we can decide draft order (this list will be open for discussion).

I remember reading my Nintendo Power when I was a kid and crying when I found out Gunpei Yokoi died...it was so depressing. What an amazing pioneer in the video game industry. I was wondering if you're gonna have some kind of tribute to him at the tourney...

I might be interested in playing this, depending on how some Saturday night plans play out. Put me down as "maybe," I guess?

I want to play in this, Mike.

Minnesotans coming to VCU include: Brendan, Gautam, Gaurav, Carsten, Trevor, and me. We might have one more in our car. Chris Carter and Bernadette are coming independent of us, too. I don't know how many of us are going to play this (I am!) but I'd guess quite a few.

I would like to sign up to play in this tournament. I am currently listed as one of the 6 other Minnesota people under the maybe category.

theMoMA wrote:Minnesotans coming to VCU include: Brendan, Gautam, Gaurav, Carsten, Trevor, and me. We might have one more in our car. Chris Carter and Bernadette are coming independent of us, too. I don't know how many of us are going to play this (I am!) but I'd guess quite a few.

I won't be playing, but I can help staff this.

Gaurav

I will be playing this for sure.

Hey I think tonight in the chat I'll post my rankings of the top few people and open it up for discussion. I will then post the draft order.

Ok, here are the rankins that I came up with along with some help from the chat. Some of these may not be accurate, because I haven't seen some people play. By the way, I broke ties based on a subjective feeling of who would be better on the questions. Feel free to comment on any ratings you think are inaccurate.

Players:
Jeremy Eaton - 1M / 2H / 2A / 5V = 10
Evan Silberman - 4M / 2H / 3A / 4V = 13
George Berry - 3M / 2H / 1A / 2V = 8
Andy Watkins - I have no idea
Shantanu Jha - 2M / 4H / 3A / 3V = 12
Guy Tabachnick - 4M / 3H / 3A / 2V = 12
David Seal - 3M / 2H / 1A / 2V? = 8
Ted Gioia - 2M / 3H / 5A / 1V = 11
Will Butler - 2M / 3H / 3A / 1V = 9
Carsten Gehring - 2M / 2.5H / 2A / 2V = 8.5
Steve Feldman - 3M / 2H / 1A / 2V = 8
Dan Goff - 3M / 2H / 2A / 3V = 10
Katy Peters - 2M / 2H / 2A? / 1V = 7
Brice Russ - 2M / 1H / 1A / 3V = 7
Mike Sorice - 4M / 4H / 4A / 3.5V = 15.5
Jerry Vinokurov - 4M / 5H / 5A / 3V = 17
Andrew Hart - 4M / 3H / 3A / 2V = 12
Trevor Davis - 2M / 3H / 2A / 3V = 10
Brendan Byrne - 2M / 5H / 4A / 1V = 12
Jonathan Magin? - 4M / 4H / 5A / 1V = 14
Chris Ray? - 4M / 5H / 4A / 2V = 15
Bernadette Spencer - 3M / 2H / 2A / 1V = 8
Henry Gorman - 2M / 3H / 2A / 3V = 9
Andrew Lim - 1M / 3H / 2A / 2.5V = 8.5
Matt Weiner - 5M / 5H / 4A / 3V = 17
Eric Mukherjee - 4M / 4H / 3A / 4V = 15
Chris White = ???

Ranking:
1) Matt Weiner (17)
2) Jerry Vinokurov (17)
3) Mike Sorice (15.5)
4) Eric Mukherjee (15)
5) Chris Ray (15)
6) Jonathan Magin (14)
7) Evan Silberman (13)
8) Brendan Byrne (12)
9) Andrew Hart (12)
10) Shantanu Jha (12)
11) Ted Gioia (11)
12) Guy Tabachnick (11)

Now that I've decided that Sunday morning Amtrak is my best option going home, I can commit to this.

If I get even a single question, it'll be a miracle.

Mike, I think you should have me tenth on that list.

I think my knowledge of video games is being highly overstated in these rankings.

theMoMA wrote:Mike, I think you should have me tenth on that list.

Whoops, fixed.

Also, please let me know if you're on the maybe list for playing or staffing and have confirmed whether you'll be there or not. If you are definitely staffing, please e-mail me at [email protected] so I can send you the packets so we don't have to waste time doing that on Saturday.

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:Also, please let me know if you're on the maybe list for playing or staffing and have confirmed whether you'll be there or not.

I'm definitely playing.

I won't be there, sorry.

MaS

Ok, so I am probably going to play this. Count me as officially in. Keith Jamieson and Leonard Change are probably also going to play, if there's room.

I'm going to go ahead and voice that I am absurdly overrated on pretty much every category. I presume my '4' rating in meta is derived from the almost certainly high percentage of questions that are sure to involve me in some significant way, but as I really don't ever visit the chatroom or read the wiki or anything that's probably not accurate. My ratings in history and arts are probably similarly inflated, likely by more than a point. Ranking me ahead of Jonathan Magin in pretty much any conceivable tournament that doesn't use a 50% Asian history distribution is not a great plan, in my opinion.

DumbJaques wrote:Ok, so I am probably going to play this. Count me as officially in. Keith Jamieson and Leonard Change are probably also going to play, if there's room.

Are Keith and Leonard still playing in this tournament? You seemed to indicate in the other thread that free agents were needed for the Maryland team, so does that indiciate they are not going?

Free agents are needed for the other team (that is, the one you are playing on). It's my understanding that team currently has two people for most of Saturday and three people for Sunday. Email me if that's not right.

So we have 28 people signed up now if my calculations are correct. If you're still on the fence for some reason, it's a good idea to sign up soon so that you're within the first 32 players, and are thus guaranteed a spot.

Also, we could probably use at least one other staffer for this tournament. If you're interested let me know.

Ill be in to play.

Quick results: Jonathan Magin's team beat Ted Gioia's team in the final. I have the stats done and the packets ready, but the world's worst Internet at the Day's Inn is preventing me from uploading them. Hopefully I'll have them to post tomorrow.

Anyways, thanks to Bruce Arthur and Chris Carter for their contributions to the tournament, plus everyone who helped read and keep score in the tournament. I hope people had fun playing this. I'll post some comments about it tomorrow.

Ok, the internet is working enough now to post stats.

http://doc-ent.com/quizbowl/gunpei%20fi ... dings.html

And the packets:

http://www.doc-ent.com/quizbowl/gunpei.zip

You know, I'd been wondering for a while whether Ted was related to Dana. And now I know (and feel slightly better about him beating me to lit. tossups).