Penn Bowl at Virginia Tech Fall 2021- October 30th, 2021

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Liah
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Penn Bowl at Virginia Tech Fall 2021- October 30th, 2021

Post by Liah »

We are pleased to announce the Penn Bowl 2021 (Penn Bowl XXIX) Mirror at Virginia Tech (PBVT) for the Fall semester of 2021. This in-person Lower Mid-Atlantic mirror will be hosted at Virginia Tech on Saturday, October 30, 2021. Registration will begin at 8:00 am. The opening meeting will be held at 8:45 am and gameplay will begin at 9:00 am.

Location
The tournament will take place in McBryde Hall (225 Stanger St., Blacksburg, VA, 24060) on Virginia Tech’s campus. A map of campus can be found here: https://vt.edu/content/dam/vt_edu/maps- ... july21.pdf

Questions
This tournament will be written by a team of writers from Penn. The team of editors consists of Taylor Harvey (Am. Lit + film in Other Arts), Margaret Tebbe (Brit. + Euro Lit), Jordan Brownstein (World Lit + Phil.), Emmett Laurie (Am. + World Hist.), Tracy Mirkin (Euro + Other Hist.), Jonathen Settle (Physics), Paul Lee (Chem.), Shan Kothari (Bio. + Other Sci.), Michael Yue (Music + auditory Other Arts), Aseem Keyal (Painting + visual Other Arts), NourEddine Hijazi (Belief), Harris Bunker (SS), and Nitin Rao (CE/Geo/Trash/Misc.). Nitin Rao will head-edit. There will be 15 packets of power-marked questions not longer than 7.25 lines (including bolding for power). The target difficulty is roughly the same as past Penn Bowls, though they have introduced a difficulty-marking system this cycle to improve consistency in meeting that difficulty.

The distribution we are using is as follows:
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 European, 1/1 Other, 1/1 World)
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Other)
3/3 Arts (1/1 Music, 1/1 Painting, 1/1 Other)
2/2 Belief (encompassing religion and myth)
1/1 Philosophy
1/1 Social Science
1/1 Geography, CE, Trash, and Miscellaneous

Each packet will also have a tiebreaker tossup from literature, history, or science.

Fees
We will use the following fee structure:
Base fee: $120 per team
Working buzzer discount (limit 3): $5 each
Approved moderator discount (limit 3): $15 each
New to quizbowl discount*: $20
Travel discount: $10 (per 200+ miles one way according to Google Maps)

*The "new to quizbowl" discount is intended for schools that did not send a team to any regular collegiate academic tournament (exclusively Novice tournaments do not count) since September 2020, and have no one on the team(s) claiming this discount who played those tournaments for another school.

If you have any questions about pricing and fees, please contact our Treasurer at [email protected].

Registration

Fill out our registration form with all relevant information https://forms.gle/pDunJuTwuuVdnD6b6.

If you have trouble accessing the Google Form, please email me (Liah Strouth - [email protected]) with the following information:
- Team/School Name
- Number of Teams
- Roster for Each Team (first and last names, please)
- Number of Buzzers
- Number and Names of Staffers
- Any Other Discounts


Team Field and Size
The field cap is 16 teams, after which teams will be placed on a waitlist. Please register by October 24th, 2021. Only four people can play at a time, and if a school wishes to field more than six players, they must enter an additional team.

Method of Payment

All teams must pay by the day of the tournament. We prefer to accept payment in person right before the tournament starts. Teams who do not pay by the day of the tournament will be charged a $25 penalty and will have two weeks to pay their total amount before we start mailing letters to your school administration about it.

We can accept cash, personal checks, or checks from school, school district, or quizbowl club funds. We have no ability to process purchase orders or credit cards, but we will accept Venmo (send payment to @VTACO). Bringing forms of payment outside of those listed as acceptable will be considered nonpayment and subject you to the $25 late payment penalty.

All checks must be made out to "Academic Competition Organization", “Academic Competition Organization at Virginia Tech”, or “ACOVT”.
If you bring a check not made out to those options and have no other method of paying for the tournament, you will be subject to the $25 late payment penalty. If you require a pre-tournament invoice or W9 in order to have a check cut, let us know early enough ([email protected]) for your school to process the payment. We can generally send you an invoice the same day.

Please direct any general questions about the tournament to our tournament director Liah Strouth at [email protected].

Field Update:

Liberty University
ETSU
UNC
UVA
Duke

There are nine teams registered (since the number is important to some people.) Due to a lack of interested organization members (and their skill level), it is highly unlikely that there will be a house team. Additionally, information will be sent out around 6 pm today, 10/29/2021
Last edited by Liah on Fri Oct 29, 2021 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Liah Strouth
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Re: Penn Bowl at Virginia Tech Fall 2021- October 30th, 2021

Post by Arabidopsis failiana »

Assuming there are only 5 teams registered, will there be a house team in order to have a 6 team schedule?
Mark Bailey
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Re: Penn Bowl at Virginia Tech Fall 2021- October 30th, 2021

Post by henrygoff »

Arabidopsis failiana wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 5:51 pm Assuming there are only 5 teams registered, will there be a house team in order to have a 6 team schedule?
UNC is bringing 3 teams, and I assume Liberty is bringing multiple teams as well; it would be nice if the OP included the exact amount of teams registered to confirm this.(I'm with you in the hope that Tech will have a house team if that amount proves to be odd.)
Henry Goff
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Re: Penn Bowl at Virginia Tech Fall 2021- October 30th, 2021

Post by Arabidopsis failiana »

I'm posting here so others can weigh in because the schedule in the email was not clearly defined. For a 9-team schedule that has more than 8 games for most teams, it seems like any schedule would have to be the 9-round round robin followed by dividing into some sort of brackets. Dividing into 5/4 would cause the top bracket to have 14 rounds and probably take a very long time; 3/3/3 would be okay and would give teams 10 games in 12 rounds. I sort of feel like something like 4/3/2 might be better than that because it reduces the number of byes for most teams. The top 4 teams would get 11 games in 12 rounds, the next 3 would get 10 games in 12 rounds, and the bottom 2 could play off twice for 10 games in 11 rounds. The winner would be decided by overall record, with a final only being necessary if two teams finished with the same record (since the top 2 teams would have already played each other twice). Or I suppose there could be a regular advantaged final anyway if the top 2 teams finished one game apart in the standings.

I'm not a schedule-building expert (nor am I playing this tournament), so others can give their suggestions as well.
Mark Bailey
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Re: Penn Bowl at Virginia Tech Fall 2021- October 30th, 2021

Post by Whiter Hydra »

Liah wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:30 pmThere are nine teams registered (since the number is important to some people.)
Yes, the composition of the field and number of teams each school is bringing is commonly provided information. It also affords schools the opportunity to split a team to allow for a more even field size.
Arabidopsis failiana wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 10:00 pm I'm posting here so others can weigh in because the schedule in the email was not clearly defined. For a 9-team schedule that has more than 8 games for most teams, it seems like any schedule would have to be the 9-round round robin followed by dividing into some sort of brackets. Dividing into 5/4 would cause the top bracket to have 14 rounds and probably take a very long time; 3/3/3 would be okay and would give teams 10 games in 12 rounds. I sort of feel like something like 4/3/2 might be better than that because it reduces the number of byes for most teams. The top 4 teams would get 11 games in 12 rounds, the next 3 would get 10 games in 12 rounds, and the bottom 2 could play off twice for 10 games in 11 rounds. The winner would be decided by overall record, with a final only being necessary if two teams finished with the same record (since the top 2 teams would have already played each other twice). Or I suppose there could be a regular advantaged final anyway if the top 2 teams finished one game apart in the standings.

I'm not a schedule-building expert (nor am I playing this tournament), so others can give their suggestions as well.
I don't know what ended up happening, but for what it's worth, ACF suggests a 9-team RR split into a 3/3/3 playoff format.
Harry White
TJHSST '09, Virginia Tech '13

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