Fake TRASHionals at VCU - Saturday, March 21, 2009

[Matt Weiner]

This is the formal announcement for Fake TRASHionals, to be held at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond on Saturday, March 21. See also the announcements for The Experiment II, also occurring at VCU on Saturday, March 21, and FICHTE 2, occurring at VCU on Sunday, March 22.

The tournament is currently being written, entirely by myself. It will be playtested and otherwise edited by members of the VCU team, both for proofreading purposes and to provide third-party verification that the tournament is coming along on time. The difficulty will be similar to that of recent TRASHionals (that is, it will be somewhat harder than exemplary normal trash tournaments like the Yaphe et al Chicago tournaments or the Mike Bentley tournaments, but I will also be making sure it's not completely outside the realm of enjoyable difficulty for the casual team). The distribution for the regulation 20/20 of each packet will be as follows:

Sports 4/4
Movies 4/4
TV 4/4
Music 4/4
Comic books and strips 1/1
Video Games 1/1
Other 2/2

Subdistributions will be in line with what you expect from one of those Bentley tournaments that I aspire to emulate, or from what my previous posts on the subject of trash distributions might indicate. I.e., things that are not actually popular with collegiate quizbowl players such as hockey, board games, Top 40 music, or old TV shows, will be de-emphasized in favor of things in the trash category that collegiate quizbowl players actually know, such as baseball/football/basketball, TV shows of the past 6 years, video games, and rock and rap music. This is not to say that niche categories or old things will be excluded entirely, just that you should plan on seeing less of them at this tournament than at a tournament like Ann B. Davis or Trashmasters.

FEES:
Base fee $120 per team
Buzzers: -$10 each (no limit)
Staffers: -$20 each (no limit)
Each person who plays at this tournament and stays to staff at Fake ICT on Sunday will get $25 off their trash entry fee (up to all 4 members of your team may take this discount)
Any person on your team who was affected by my fucking out on 2007 Chicago trash: Team's fee reduced by the percentage of your roster made up of such people (e.g., if you are a team of 3 people and 1 of them attempted to attend 2007 Chicago trash, your team's fee will be calculated based on all other factors, then reduced by 33%; if your entire team is composed of people who were so affected, your fee is reduced by 100% and you play for free)
Minimum fee: $0

To get a discount, buzzers must actually work for the purpose of a normal quizbowl game; that is, they must have eight working activators, a working control box, and either a working power cord or a fresh battery, as applicable.

ELIGIBILITY: This is an entirely open tournament; both the question difficulty level and the competition are intended to allow teams to prepare for the rigors of playing the actual TRASHionals. Any team whatsoever of 1 to 4 people may play, regardless of whether the people involved go to the same school (or any school).

REGISTRATION: To register, post in this thread or mail me at [email protected] with the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers you want to bring, and an email address where you can be contacted with details.

LOCATION/DIRECTIONS: The entire tournament will take place in the Hibbs Building on our Monroe Park campus (aka "Academic Campus"). The nominal address of the building is "900 Park Ave, Richmond VA" if you need to put something into your map software of choice, but be aware that Hibbs does not actually face the street, so you will have to park and then walk to the area where the building is in order to find it. I suggest printing out the appropriate campus maps and bringing them along--note that Hibbs is directly across from the Cabell Library, which will probably be easier for you to find if you have not been to the VCU campus before.

PARKING: On Saturdays, parking on the street is free and available in most places around the campus; the best place to park for access to Hibbs is on one of the residential streets such as Park Avenue, Floyd Avenue, or West Avenue that branch off Harrison Street to the west near the Hibbs/library area. If you cannot find a space in that area, then you should use the parking deck at Harrison and Broad, which is about three blocks north of the tournament building and will charge you somewhere between $0 and $5 to park all day on a Saturday.

TIMES: Registration will run from 8:30 to 8:45 AM, with the goal of starting Round 1 as soon as possible after 8:45. Please be in room 440 of Hibbs by 8:45 or risk forfeiting your first game.

FORMAT: Games will use the ACF rules. For all practical purposes, these are exactly the same as the TRASH rules, except there are no lames. As I believe that lames encourage poor bonus writing and are not compatible with certain modern question styles, they will not be used at this tournament. The tournament itself will offer somewhere in the neighborhood of 11-13 games, depending on exact field size, and will conclude with some sort of championship finals series unless one team clears the field or playoff bracket (as applicable depending on exact format) by 2+ games.

PAYMENT: Financial arrangements will be handled by Quizbowl at VCU president Andrew Alexander. All teams must pay on Saturday morning, in one of two forms: cash, or a personal or institutional check made out to Andrew Alexander. Do not bring checks made out to Matt Weiner, to VCU, to "quizbowl," or so forth. We can't do anything with them. Unless you have made a specific arrangement with me or Andrew, you must pay your full registration fee at or before the tournament. If you need an invoice ahead of time so that your sponsor can cut a check, let me know. Otherwise, all teams will receive invoices at the tournament.

MIRRORS: This tournament is scheduled to be mirrored at Illinois and Tulsa. If you want to mirror it somewhere else, just let me know and we'll discuss the arrangements.

--Matt Weiner, tournament director, Fake TRASHionals
[email protected]

[Matt Weiner]

Field:

Maryland (1-2)
David Seal, seeking free agents (1)
Ex-NYU (1)
Dan Goff et al (1)

[InvadErGII]

Who's the contact person for the Illinois mirror of this?

[Demonic Leftovers]

So Chicago is just me so I guess I'm a free agent.

[Matt Weiner]

Hey everyone: Due to low registration at every site of this tournament, I have decided, in consultation with the mirror hosts, to postpone the tournament. The set will be available for hosting sometime in April or May, as works best for each region. Look for individual announcements from VCU, Berkeley, Tulsa, and Illinois as to when that is at each place.

Additional hosts looking for a late-season trash tournament should contact me. I will also be toning down the difficulty from the originally announced "TRASHionals level" since this may take place after TRASHionals in some areas, so it will be more like a regular trash tournament.

Fake ICT is still on at its originally announced date for VCU and elsewhere, having seen much more interest from teams.

[Mike Bentley]

In that case, we are interesting in mirroring it around April 25th at Washington if this is possible.

[DumbJaques]

Hey Matt, will be running the Experiment II on Sunday after Fake ICT given the postponement?

[Matt Weiner]

Hey Matt, will be running the Experiment II on Sunday after Fake ICT given the postponement?

It will still be on Saturday evening. More details on why and how you can save money shortly.

[OntarioQuizzer]

Matt:

Being that this tournament will now be run later, would you be interested in having a Southern Ontario mirror of this tournament?