ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Aren't you playing, Mike?

I mean, they'd still be great, of course...
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Cheynem wrote:So, Andy, do you officially want freelance 5/5's? I can send you some, depending on what categories you would especially need (especially if it's history).
I officially can say that no question that you write will be undesired; I can confirm that they will go to some good use.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Cheynem »

Whoops--thanks, Greg, for reminding me that I'm a moron. Yeah, I'm playing this.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Mike - submit 'em anyway. I can work the schedule so you avoid two packets if I have to.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Cheynem »

Thanks.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mike Bentley »

I can get you guys some more questions. I'll send what I have tomorrow.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

<3
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Apparently we have, like, a lot of packets if all the packets actually come in. There is zero guarantee that this happens, and moreover it's better to have more questions earlier to deal with the contingency that a couple packets that need major work come in the night before. So continued freelancing is appreciated, but my fears that were all going to die were not, apparently, accurate.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Andy - if you end up having extra, if you could use Mike Cheyne's questions last, that would be a huge help to me.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mike Bentley »

So how does the packet situation look? Do you still need freelance questions?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

I would ask Ted at this point; up to a point, our need for questions was obvious, while at this point it's not so certain. I know we're fine in the subjects over which I have primary control, but I haven't heard from Ted recently about how his component is going. While erring on the side of having more tossups to use as replacements/ fill in gaps/ whatever is a positive thing, we've already seen a fantastic outpouring of support from everyone else and the last thing I want to do is be demanding. Email Ted at [email protected] and he'll let you know if there are any specific needs.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

With nine teams in the field, I'm open to recommendations about format. Since a double round robin would require sixteen plus two packets, which is in the far reaches of possibility, I'm inclined to opt for a single round robin (which would provide eight rounds, nine with a house team, which is pretty feasible at this point). Would we want playoffs and then a final? That sounds like a fine idea; options include brackets of 5 (requiring five rounds plus two, for fifteen in all), four top and five bottom (dropping the house team, requiring five rounds total, but would require a nasty delay so that people can watch the final).

Alternatively, we have three house teams playing like doubles, we make two brackets of six, do a five round round robin, rebracket into two of six, do another five rounds, and then finals. This works out neatly but requires a lot of us. If anyone feels like bringing alternates...

Also, again--recommendations are more than welcome.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

The last time I went to 9 team college tournament was CO 2007. The format they used there was a full round robin prelim, and then they split it into pools of the top 4 teams and bottom 5 teams and ran another set of round robins. This would end up in the top pool finishing before the bottom pool, but you could just the finals on the packets that the bottom bracket is still hearing.
Last edited by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) on Sun Nov 30, 2008 6:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Matt Weiner »

If you add a house team to the entire tournament, you then have a 10 team field with submitted packets requiring byes, and thus it would take you 11 rounds to give everyone nine games and complete the round-robin. I think you would do better with just the nine teams. For playoffs, if you really have the wherewithal to add three house teams, then you can create brackets of six and play five games, or you can just add one house team and play brackets of five (four games + bye, or cross-bracket exhibition, for each team). The latter scenario is a lot more simple and only gives one less game; under it, you would be playing a total schedule of 14 rounds, in which everyone would play 12 meaningful games, 1 exhibition game, and 1 bye. You would need 17 packets (14 rounds + 2 finals + tiebreaker) for that.

If you absolutely cannot provide 17 packets, then your options are either to eliminate rounds by breaking ties on PPG and/or only having a final (of one game) if there is an outright tie at the end of the day, or to break it down further into playoff brackets of three, under which you would have a total pre-finals schedule of 12 rounds, with everyone playing 10, requiring 15 packets. I advise against this, since 10 games is not a lot, and playoff brackets of three are pretty much begging for a three-way tie at 8-2 to happen. Overall, the best course of action would be to try to get at least 16 packets together, and preferably 17, so you can cover most of the likely outcomes under the 9-round-RR + playoff-breackets-of-five format.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Matt Weiner »

Oh, I should add: if you have 5 or fewer packets written by the field at your site, there is a way to do a 10-team round robin in only 10 rounds. It doesn't work if you need to use more packets by participating teams. Let me know if you want to hear more about this, should it fit into your ultimate plans.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by setht »

everyday847 wrote:With nine teams in the field, I'm open to recommendations about format. Since a double round robin would require sixteen plus two packets, which is in the far reaches of possibility, I'm inclined to opt for a single round robin (which would provide eight rounds, nine with a house team, which is pretty feasible at this point). Would we want playoffs and then a final? That sounds like a fine idea; options include brackets of 5 (requiring five rounds plus two, for fifteen in all), four top and five bottom (dropping the house team, requiring five rounds total, but would require a nasty delay so that people can watch the final).

Alternatively, we have three house teams playing like doubles, we make two brackets of six, do a five round round robin, rebracket into two of six, do another five rounds, and then finals. This works out neatly but requires a lot of us. If anyone feels like bringing alternates...

Also, again--recommendations are more than welcome.
Looks like Charlie and Matt already said most or all of what I'm about to say; oh well.

A double round robin takes 18 packets, plus whatever you want for finals.

A single round-robin with no house team takes 9 rounds and gives everyone 8 games; a single round-robin with a house team takes 9 rounds and gives everyone 9 games but you can't use any packets submitted by teams in your field, which I'm guessing would be a problem (also a problem for your later scheme of adding 3 house teams to get 2 brackets of 6)--I count 6 packets listed as coming from the field.

I think your best bet is probably a single round-robin with no house team for 9 rounds, then splitting top 4/bottom 6 (adding in the house team) for playoffs: the top plays 3 rounds on blind packets followed by up to 2 rounds of finals, the bottom plays 5 rounds on the same blind packets (including the 2 finals packets). If the finals packets are going to be noticeably harder than the other playoff packets this will be a little strange for the lower bracket, but I think it's better than adding more byes than you need. This does mean the lower bracket teams won't get to watch the finals of the top bracket, I guess; do people really care about that?

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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mike Bentley »

If I was playing in this tournament I would probably opt for a format that used less than 17 packets. Unless I'm missing something, it would mean that the majority of the 17 packets would have been edited within a week of the tournament, which is an extremely short amount of time to edit a tournament. I think finding a format with like 14 rounds would be more feasible for producing a quality tournament.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by setht »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:If I was playing in this tournament I would probably opt for a format that used less than 17 packets. Unless I'm missing something, it would mean that the majority of the 17 packets would have been edited within a week of the tournament, which is an extremely short amount of time to edit a tournament. I think finding a format with like 14 rounds would be more feasible for producing a quality tournament.
I agree with Mike here. The format Charlie and I proposed uses 14 packets (15 with a tiebreaker packet, I guess). If you wind up with more than 15 good packets you can try to come up with another format that squeezes in more meaningful games, or you can just let interested teams stay on and scrimmage afterward or something. The one hitch in the format Charlie and I proposed is that the top 4 teams get 11 meaningful games plus finals; presumably teams 3 and 4 can scrimmage during any finals that might take place if they want, and all four teams can scrimmage if there are no finals. I think doing this and producing a strong packet set without killing yourselves will probably work out better than going for 17 packets or whatever you'd need for a reasonable increase in the schedule.

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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

setht wrote:I agree with Mike here. The format Charlie and I proposed uses 14 packets (15 with a tiebreaker packet, I guess). If you wind up with more than 15 good packets you can try to come up with another format that squeezes in more meaningful games, or you can just let interested teams stay on and scrimmage afterward or something. The one hitch in the format Charlie and I proposed is that the top 4 teams get 11 meaningful games plus finals; presumably teams 3 and 4 can scrimmage during any finals that might take place if they want, and all four teams can scrimmage if there are no finals. I think doing this and producing a strong packet set without killing yourselves will probably work out better than going for 17 packets or whatever you'd need for a reasonable increase in the schedule.
Yeah, I think this is a pretty good format. (I'd proposed the bottom playoff bracket having 5 teams, but that's silly; keep the house team and it's obviously better.) I was mostly working on a model where everyone would want to watch finals, but that's mostly a high school thing.

I think that sticking with fourteen packets isn't a bad idea simply because we currently have seven submissions and have five editors packets essentially done. The seven submissions are obviously in different stages of "edited," but even if they were all at a quality I'd peg at pretty acceptable, I'd be more comfortable having the freedom to cut and merge some.

That said, if all our submissions from here on out are golden and we choose the fourteen packet schedule, we may find ourselves with the night before the tournament to ourselves, and that's obviously inappropriate.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

If Brown happens to be sending more than one team (something I'm not clear on, for whatever reason) and Hunter HS comes, then one house team would provide twelve, which is a whole lot nicer.

EDIT: hahaha packet submission right
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by setht »

everyday847 wrote:If Brown happens to be sending more than one team (something I'm not clear on, for whatever reason) and Hunter HS comes, then one house team would provide twelve, which is a whole lot nicer.
You'll still want an odd number of teams for the initial RR so you can use field-submitted packets. If you get 11 teams, I think you should do one full RR, then split into 4/4/3 (maybe add a house team to the bottom bracket to avoid more byes), then finals. This takes 14 packets plus finals (plus tiebreaker, if possible).

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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Magister Ludi »

Thanks to everyone who was able to commit to writing a few freelance questions. We will definitely have 15 packets and will probably reach the ideal number of 17 now that Jonathan has volunteered to write a half packet.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

I need a total of three buzzers to come to this tournament. Four would be ideal.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Not That Kind of Christian!! »

We've got one.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

HKirsch wrote:We've got one.
You are now officially paying less than half as much for one team than some teams at this tournament. Fine work.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Hey, we're going to try to start as soon after nine as possible. I don't know what people's transportation situations are, but we'll be there ready to take your money from 8:45am on. We won't start the tournament without you unless our schedule has a bye and can be easily rearranged to accommodate, which is very possible!

Also, we probably only need a total of four buzzers now, and two have been volunteered, so we can be okay with our two.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by grapesmoker »

Brown will bring a buzzer system.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Yep, that was in the two.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by alkrav112 »

Hey, just wanted to make sure you got the completed packet we sent you last night. Let me know if there were any problems.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Ah, yes, we did. We'll let you know.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Matt Weiner would like you all to note that he submitted a freelance packet for a tournament more than 24 hours before that tournament would happen. He would like you further to note that the sun is still, in fact, up.

Expect the breaking of the sixth seal shortly.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Also, y'all might want directions. I will post a slightly edited version of an email I sent Chicago last night about directions!

The tournament will be in Sever Hall. First step: you are probably on Mass Ave or south of Mass Ave (for example, if you find yourself getting off the T at the Harvard stop, you'll want to follow the sign to the exit that says "Harvard," not "Church Street," for convenience, and then you're pretty much on Mass Ave). Follow the wall to the north until you find a gate to go in.

This is where it gets hard, because I once (not trying to be snarky) described Sever as "the red building." I'll describe the large-scale structure: "Harvard Yard" is actually two large "yards." Sever is on the east side of the "yard" further to the east. If you keep on facing north, you'll be in the correct "yard" if you see a big-ass church. Then--there are three buildings to the east: Emerson, Sever, and Robinson. Sever will be the biggest and reddest.

I think the below link works for outsiders, and it's the best map out there.
http://map.harvard.edu/level3.cfm?mapna ... B&series=W
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Live update: as of the lunch break, Brown is undefeated and Chicago A has one loss (to Brown).
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by ... and the chaos of Mexican modernity »

What was the score of Brown v Chicago?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

I'd just like to note a couple of things:

Brown cleared the field via one victory in prelims and one in playoffs over Chicago. That said, Yetman/Kennedy gave them a run for their money in one later round. Overall, some sweet matches.

Note that two mirrors are taking place tomorrow night. Consequently, do not discuss these questions until results are posted from Alabama and Lawrence tomorrow.

The set did not satisfy our expectations, to be honest, and we're (obviously) to blame for that. The obvious issues seem best handled within the club, and unless given a pressing reason to do otherwise, I expect that that's the last I'll say publically about it. One unfortunate issue involved the mysterious appearance of some unedited science in various packets, which would have done little to enhance the team's reputations are writers (as will become hilariously evident, once I can talk specifics). Seeing as I have slept somewhere around ten hours this week, I don't suppose an all-nighter of fixing those problems, or as many as I can, will kill me any more than I've already hurt myself.

In the meantime, please email me at [email protected] with any feedback about the tournament. I honestly welcome any and all criticism, delivered in any form, from fatherly advice to hateful and bitter invective. No tournament is ever run perfectly, but this one had a non-negligible number of miscues, and at this point the greatest sin I can commit is not collecting data to help make sure that next year's T-Party is ten times as good.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

everyday847 wrote:Note that two mirrors are taking place tomorrow night. Consequently, do not discuss these questions until results are posted from Alabama and Lawrence tomorrow.
Can't do that until we get the questions, Andy - the mirror is tomorrow, not tomorrow night, so... um... send 'em.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

everyday847 wrote:Seeing as I have slept somewhere around ten hours this week, I don't suppose an all-nighter of fixing those problems, or as many as I can, will kill me any more than I've already hurt myself.
Upon a closer reading, it appears that you're going to be working more on the set tonight. If you could get me the questions by, say, 6 AM central time (7 for you,) that would be great.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by byoung »

Stats:
Prelims, Playoffs, Combined
(links updated)

Any corrections, including player or team names (in particular Chicago's full team names), welcomed at byoung/at/fas/dot/harvard/dot/edu.
Last edited by byoung on Sun Dec 07, 2008 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mike Bentley »

byoung wrote:Stats:
Prelims, Playoffs

Any corrections, including player or team names (in particular Chicago's full team names), welcomed at byoung/at/fas/dot/harvard/dot/edu.
Any particular reason you don't have combined playoff and prelims stats?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Susan »

I believe that, in loving tribute to Ryan Westbrook, the teams were called "Chicago Players Who Are Cool For No Reason", "Chicago Players Who Are Cool For Some Reason", and "Chicago Players Who Are Cool For Every Reason".
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by grapesmoker »

byoung wrote:Stats:
Prelims, Playoffs

Any corrections, including player or team names (in particular Chicago's full team names), welcomed at byoung/at/fas/dot/harvard/dot/edu.
I'm getting "Page not Found" errors for both links.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by byoung »

Thanks, Susan.

Mike, you're right, of course. Here are updated links:
Prelims, Playoffs, Combined
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by grapesmoker »

To begin, I want to publicly apologize on behalf of myself and my teammates for how late our packet was. I won't bother with excuses but I do want to thank Harvard for being understanding.

With regard to the tournament itself, I want to say that I thought this was a really good regular difficulty tournament and I enjoyed it very much. I think Andy is being unnecessarily hard on himself, possibly due to some comments I made between rounds about some science questions; while I will note the issues I had with these questions once the set is clear for discussion, those issues are not major ones, and the vast majority of this set was very good. Harvard also did a good job with their scheduling, although I guess lunch might have been a little shorter (and this would have saved me the $50 I spent in that interim at the Harvard bookstore); in general, everything ran pretty smoothly. Thanks to Harvard for doing a really great job on this tournament.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

grapesmoker wrote:Harvard also did a good job with their scheduling, although I guess lunch might have been a little shorter (and this would have saved me the $50 I spent in that interim at the Harvard bookstore); in general, everything ran pretty smoothly. Thanks to Harvard for doing a really great job on this tournament.
That means a lot, Jerry. (Especially because this had the potential to have all the comedy that a college tournament edited by people whose previous editing experience ranged between zero and three high school tournaments might entail, anything reasonably close to a "good job" makes me happy.) That said, I still should avoid hosing Jerry, for his health and mine.

To comment on logistics, I was tied up with writing all day so I wasn't able to be an actual, er, tournament director, so I was unable to catch one silly scheduling gaffe: the 1 and 2 seeds played each other in the first round of the playoffs. While this isn't much of a big deal if
1) there are other teams very likely to beat the 1 and 2 seeds
2) the 1 and 2 seeds are even
neither was really the case, Yetman/Kennedy's almost-upset notwithstanding. So the Brown-Chicago showdown was finished with four rounds left to play, and it was almost certain that there wouldn't subsequently be a final between them. That's not "wrong" in the sense that it doesn't produce a less fair result, but it's not the ideal way to run a tournament.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by grapesmoker »

everyday847 wrote: To comment on logistics, I was tied up with writing all day so I wasn't able to be an actual, er, tournament director, so I was unable to catch one silly scheduling gaffe: the 1 and 2 seeds played each other in the first round of the playoffs. While this isn't much of a big deal if
1) there are other teams very likely to beat the 1 and 2 seeds
2) the 1 and 2 seeds are even
neither was really the case, Yetman/Kennedy's almost-upset notwithstanding. So the Brown-Chicago showdown was finished with four rounds left to play, and it was almost certain that there wouldn't subsequently be a final between them. That's not "wrong" in the sense that it doesn't produce a less fair result, but it's not the ideal way to run a tournament.
That worked out quite well for us, since right after the Chicago game I looked at my stats and concluded that I needed to start negging at a rate of about 5 per game for the rest of the tournament to maintain my reputation. Good thing we weren't playing Chicago during any of those rounds.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by cvdwightw »

The West Coast packet was submitted as only 18/20 by us, of which 9/11 was by me, and I don't know how much was used/cut. I want to thank the Harvard people for being understanding, helping out with finishing the packet, and dealing with the lateness of it. Since it was apparently the second-most-difficult packet out there, if people have any complaints about insane difficulty, or otherwise poor answer selection/pyramidality, feel free to email me (dpwynne at gmail dot com).

Looking at the round report, all the average PPG are within 50, and all the average TUPts/TUH and BOPts/BOH are within 4. This strikes me as a remarkably consistent-difficulty tournament, and the editors are to be commended, especially given the lateness of several submissions.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

grapesmoker wrote:That worked out quite well for us, since right after the Chicago game I looked at my stats and concluded that I needed to start negging at a rate of about 5 per game for the rest of the tournament to maintain my reputation. Good thing we weren't playing Chicago during any of those rounds.
see what i have to work with
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by grapesmoker »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
grapesmoker wrote:That worked out quite well for us, since right after the Chicago game I looked at my stats and concluded that I needed to start negging at a rate of about 5 per game for the rest of the tournament to maintain my reputation. Good thing we weren't playing Chicago during any of those rounds.
see what i have to work with
Hey, if I don't make you guys work hard for that win, how are you going to learn?
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by No Rules Westbrook »

Jerry's right, negging is all about the encouragement of learning. Too many times, you have those third and fourth players thinking they can just skate to an easy win on the back of someone like Jerry - every now and then, you have to keep them alert by negging 7 times or so in a round, so that they have to eke out that win on the 20th tossup. They won't thank you now, they'll just whimper about your negging, but they'll understand when Aaron Rosenberg wins Nats on the last tossup.

And, I appreciate the nod in the Chicago team names.
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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Harvard T-Party - 12/6/08

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

No Rules Westbrook wrote:Jerry's right, negging is all about the encouragement of learning. Too many times, you have those third and fourth players thinking they can just skate to an easy win on the back of someone like Jerry - every now and then, you have to keep them alert by negging 7 times or so in a round, so that they have to eke out that win on the 20th tossup. They won't thank you now, they'll just whimper about your negging, but they'll understand when Aaron Rosenberg wins Nats on the last tossup.
Or each of the last six? tossups, as in the Yetman/Kennedy game. Jerry just likes to keep things exciting.
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