How long should a tournament run?

[Sargon]

We've all been there. It' 9:30 at night, you're exhausted, having been up since 6:30, and the quizbowl tournament is somehow still not over. In fact, after a morning peppered with lopsided matches you are now probably playing the most challenging and important matches you will play that day, and all you want to do is sleep, or at least eat dinner. Now, certainly things happen, that one slow reader can't be replaced, etc. . ., and that is not my concern here. The question is how long should a perfectly run, ideal quizbowl tournament run? Current practice seems to work on the implicit theory that more quizbowl is always better, but as I endeavored to illustrate, there may be a point where that ceases to be true. My open question to the forum is (a) How long should an ideal tournament last? (b) Is there some way to structure a tournament that moves some of the more competitive matches earlier in the day, when teams have not been worn down as much? (c) Should a dinner break or other scheduled breaks aside from lunch be included in the tournament?

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

The ideal length of a tournament should probably be measured in rounds and matches, not time.

Tomes have been written on this forum about ways to make tournaments run faster. TDs, moderators, and players each have their role to play in this process.

I think a dinner break is one of the gravest errors that a TD could make. People almost never return from them on time. Gaddis I is, I think, the classic example of a tournament that was ruined because of dinner break.

[Frauny Von Smiley]

From my (limited) experience, I think that after a certain point, tournaments just skid to a halt unless if the matches that are being played are still significant in some way. Of course, it all depends on the schools, since serious or teams trying to improve will probably stay focused. As long as people are still having fun and things are running smoothly, I don't see why tournament time would be a huge problem.

[Coelacanth]

(a) How long should an ideal tournament last? (b) Is there some way to structure a tournament that moves some of the more competitive matches earlier in the day, when teams have not been worn down as much? (c) Should a dinner break or other scheduled breaks aside from lunch be included in the tournament?

(a) It should last as long as advertised. If the pre-tournament announcement promises (say) "a 12-team round-robin with advantaged final; we should be finished by 7pm", then it's a problem if you're still playing round 10 at 8:30.

(b) I don't know of a good way of doing this. How do you know a priori which matches will be competitive or important?

(c) My personal opinion is that if you need to schedule a dinner break, your format is too long. But then I'm old and don't have the quizbowl stamina of my youth. Dinner breaks are problematic for two other reasons. You're likely to have different rooms running on different timing by the time you get to that late in the day, so some teams will get 75 minutes for dinner and some will get 35. Also, Saturday between 5 and 7 is probably the least-conducive time for getting teams fed in a timely fashion.

I would say you should start with a realistic schedule. Realistic means you will not start on time, some teams will exceed the allotted lunch break, and rounds will take 5-10 minutes longer to play on average than you think they should. If, accounting for all of that, your schedule takes you past 7pm, then you should either re-think your format or schedule a dinner break. Just my opinion; YMMV.

[Mechanical Beasts]

(b) I don't know of a good way of doing this. How do you know a priori which matches will be competitive or important?

If you're doing bracketed playoffs, don't have the one seed play the two seed first. I have done this, making the last two rounds of T-Party '08 about Brown defending what was a likely victory already.

[Cheynem]

If you know in advance you'll need a dinner break, you can also suggest just ordering pizza/sandwiches/Chinese and having teams pay you. It may not be the most convenient, but it prevents the inevitable goof up of teams wandering off and slowly returning. Barring a horrifically long day due to various reasons, I would only recommend a dinner break between the tournament and a side event and even then a very quick one. But as I explained in another thread, I am an ugly American, so I eat quickly with little discrimination. I even ate Dominos pizza once.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Yeah, I think it might be a very good idea for people to think ahead and warn participants that it might be in their best interests to order a pizza to pick up between rounds and then eat during the last games of a tournament if things are running really late. I think being forced to wait for everyone to come back from a dinner break would be infinitely less convenient than people eating dinner during games.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I don't want to condone the concept of a dinner break, even obliquely, but ordering pizzas or other food for lunch is certainly one way to reduce lunchbreak-related delays during tournaments.

But we're not all Mike Cheyne. I have met more picky eaters via quizbowl than via any other activity I participate in. So you are going to have to deal with people who refuse to eat pizza, who refuse to eat certain kinds of pizza, etc.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Yeah folks, man up and start eating normal food like the rest of the world and quizbowl will be a better activity.

[Cheynem]

Another, more healthful and cost-saving solution, would be to pack your own lunch. The one thing tricky here is that some lunches might require forms of refrigeration, which is not readily available at many tournament sites.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Another, more healthful and cost-saving solution, would be to pack your own lunch. The one thing tricky here is that some lunches might require forms of refrigeration, which is not readily available at many tournament sites.

Or we could adopt my potluck proposal from the Paul Litvak "exit or voice" thread.

[Mike Bentley]

Another, more healthful and cost-saving solution, would be to pack your own lunch. The one thing tricky here is that some lunches might require forms of refrigeration, which is not readily available at many tournament sites.

I do this and it ends up saving a lot of time for me personally (plus I get my food coma out of the way 30 minutes before other people). I suggest other people do it as well.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Well, there is no "ideal tournament length" because it differs depending on the experience and personal tastes of the player (and what they want out of their "qb weekend" - a nice outing, tourism, or as much frigging qb as they can get for their money). That said, even the hardest core players are bound to not be playing their strongest at 11 PM after 15 matches, so deciding a match then is somewhat unfortunate. But, as Watkins intimated, you have to schedule the most important matches last (cause who wants to play meaningless matches after the important ones?), so there isn't a very handy solution. I think most everyone agrees that standard regular seasons tourneys are good being 11-12 round affairs, and that anything less is a bit iffy, but sometimes that just takes forever.

Dinner breaks are a just-plain-awful idea. People should just buy their favorite energy drink and chug if their ears are drooping around 7 PM.

[Not That Kind of Christian!!]

Dinner breaks are a just-plain-awful idea. People should just buy their favorite energy drink and chug if their ears are drooping around 7 PM.

Better idea: TDs should make an effort to be efficient enough and construct a schedule such that teams are out by dinnertime, and teams should make an effort to be punctual enough to get their peers out by dinnertime.

[bmcke]

If the tournament starts at 10am, I usually wish I weren't playing quizbowl by about 4pm.
(I know it's not the standard, but probably more people than just me feel this way.)

[lil135]

We were first timers at UIC and we had a small turnout probably (Division I had seven teams and Division II had 8). We did a double round robin, but we had breakfast waiting at 8am during registration, box lunches ready for after the 7th match and snacks waiting at 4pm. But we also had the luxury of the 7 match rooms being next to each other and the eating area in the same hall way. We started at 9:20 and finshed around 6pm. But we did have the luxury of a decent budget and very close quarters for the entire event. Otherwise we could not have pulled it off...

[at your pleasure]

We were first timers at UIC and we had a small turnout probably (Division I had seven teams and Division II had 8). We did a double round robin, but we had breakfast waiting at 8am during registration, box lunches ready for after the 7th match and snacks waiting at 4pm. But we also had the luxury of the 7 match rooms being next to each other and the eating area in the same hall way. We started at 9:20 and finished around 6pm. But we did have the luxury of a decent budget and very close quarters for the entire event. Otherwise we could not have pulled it off...

Er, you should probably enable a signature with your name and affiliation attached. Just go to user control panel, and from there to profile,and there's an edit signature tab in there.

User was banned for 24 hours for flagrant backseat moderating --the mgmt

[manary]

9am-6pm and then I start sleeping