The World As It Is - Online Mirror - Sun, 1/24/21

[Mike Bentley]

This post is for the main online mirror of The World As It Is, the Modern World tournament I'm writing. This will be an open mirror. There may be other mirrors of this tournament but this is the main event.

The tournament will take place on Sunday, January 24th, 2021. The tournament will start at 10 AM Eastern time.

As a reminder, this is a tossup/bonus event. There are 11 total packets. Plan for a long day of quizbowl.

A team formation sheet can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Teams aren't officially registered until they email me at [email protected] with their roster.

The entry fee will be $25 per person. This is slightly higher than some online tournaments, but it will be used to (a) pay moderators and (b) donate my proceedings to PACE.

If you're interested in staffing, please sign up on the sheet above. We'll pay $50 per staffer.

Tournament will be held over Discord. Cameras for players are mandatory.

[Mike Bentley]

I'll keep the poll open for two more days. My preferred date right now is Sunday, January 24th since that gives me a bit more time to polish the set over the early January dates. But if holding it on a Sunday is going to be an issue for you, make sure to vote your preferences in the poll.

[Mike Bentley]

Confirming the tournament will take place on SUNDAY, January 24th. I've increased the field cap to 12 teams and will probably expand again to 16 if there's interest / enough staff.

[Mike Bentley]

Looks like there's a lot of interest in this tournament. I'd like to be able to expand the field to 20 teams (in which case we'd likely do two brackets followed by a top-2 from each bracket single elim playoffs) but we'll need more staff to do so. If you're interested, add your name to the above sign-up sheet.

And a quick heads up about some of the categories: Expect them to be more fluid than in a standard tournament. There will also be some questions on topics from before 1989 but which have relevance today.

[Mike Bentley]

I'm going to increase the staff compensation to $75 on the hope it will convince a few more people to sign up to staff. To compensate, I'm also raising the entry fee per playing by $5 to now be $30 per person. There looks to be enough interest for 24 teams. I don't see the field expanding beyond that. If we can't find enough staff to get to 24 or there is interest beyond that, I may explore setting up a second mirror in late February or early March.

[Mike Bentley]

Quick update: We got a new influx of staffers so I'm officially expanding to 24 teams. I don't expect to move beyond this limit unless there's a huge demand to go to 27 or 28.

[Mike Bentley]

With about 1.5 weeks until the tournament, there's still some open spots for teams. I'll start assigning free agents on to teams by next Wednesday, so form now.

I'm also imposing the following restriction on any teams forming: If you're forming from people currently signed up on the free agent list (see below), you can only form a 3 person team right now. This is guarantee that we get 24 teams rather than 21, 22, or 23. I will remove this restriction if more free agents sign up. Furthermore, any teams that attract people other than the list below are free to add a 4th player:

Amol Patil
Anderson Wang
Casey Bindas
Emmett Laurie
Felix Wang
Karsten Rynearson
Michael Zhuang
Neil Vinjamuri
George Tagtmeier

Email me if you have questions about this.

[Mike Bentley]

Change of heart, I'm instead setting a field cap of 22 teams. There will be a prelim of 7 games, with some teams having one of those games be a cross-bracket game that mostly won't count.

Top 2 teams from each bracket will advance to top bracket. They'll play 4 cross-bracket games for a total of 11 games. There will be a final if the top two teams are exactly tied in record. (Only games that count are games against teams in top bracket. If teams played in a cross-bracket prelim game, this will be used to break ties for entry into the final. Otherwise PPG will be used to break ties.)

There are two options for the teams not in the top bracket. One involves playing cross-bracket games against teams at your same seed. i.e. the teams ranked 3rd will play the two other teams ranked 3rd. They'll also have one exhibition match against a team ranked 4th. This means all non-top teams play 10 games (1 or 2 of those being exhibition matches).

The other option is for the 16 teams not in the top bracket to play a single-elim playoff. This will make a shorter day for the bottom teams and up to one additional round for the top two teams of these 16 teams. I think I prefer this format.

I'm going to send out a poll tomorrow. In the meantime, if you have a better idea for a 22 team schedule that doesn't take 11 rounds for teams please let me know.

[Mike Bentley]

Free agents have been assigned to teams. As of today, there's still one open spot for any late joiners.

[Mike Bentley]

Team contacts should have received a logistics mail earlier this week, including a link to the Discord server. Let me know if you need me to forward it to you. If you haven't already joined the server, please do so today so that I can get roles assigned prior to tomorrow morning.

[Mike Bentley]

Congrats to Bloc Jébécois for clearing the field and winning the tournament. Thanks to everyone who helped make the tournament happen.

Stats are here: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/6815/

I mentioned in the other thread I was going to release the set soon, but I guess I'll wait a few more days in case any remaining mirror requests come in (I probably won't organize one myself). I'll also be reading the remaining 2ish packets later this week on the same Discord server we used. Look for details soon.

For now you can discuss the tournament in the feedback channel on the Discord.

[Mike Bentley]

I'll be reading the remaining two packets to the top two teams at 8 PM EST tomorrow. Nick will be reading those packets to everyone else in a separate channel at the same time.