Ben Cooper Memorial Tournament @ GDS (3/13/10)

[wilsonmathteacher]

Yeah, it'd be two evenly-matched playoff brackets, with cross-bracket placement games to determine 1st through 12th places after the five playoff rounds.

Will there also be a consolation bracket in some format so that the teams that do not finish 1-12 get some afternoon games as well? I assume so, but you know what they say about assuming.

[btressler]

After meeting with the team today, I think I only have enough students for 5 teams. Please drop us back one.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

That makes 28. With that number, we're thinking of doing 4 brackets of 7; each team would get six prelim games and one bye.

For playoffs, we could break to two brackets of four for playoffs, giving each team three playoff games (for a total of nine) and a cross-bracket game (for a total of ten). We'd like to get each team another game, but I'm having trouble figuring out a way in which this could be done.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

That makes 28. With that number, we're thinking of doing 4 brackets of 7; each team would get six prelim games and one bye.

For playoffs, we could break to two brackets of four for playoffs, giving each team three playoff games (for a total of nine) and a cross-bracket game (for a total of ten). We'd like to get each team another game, but I'm having trouble figuring out a way in which this could be done.

You could set up rooms so that teams from different prelim brackets could scrimmage during their bye rounds.

[QOHS]

Is this taking place at the GDS on Davenport ST, or MacArthur Blvd?

[Adventure Temple Trail]

To clarify / reiterate, this is taking place at the High School building on 4200 Davenport Street, and not the Lower/Middle school building on MacArthur.

[Robbie Ram]

Is this taking place at the GDS on Davenport ST, or MacArthur Blvd?

Nevermind, I submitted before I saw Matt's response...

[QOHS]

Thanks. Busy day here at QO...didn't have time to scroll through the entire thread looking for that piece. We're looking foward to a great tournament tomorrow!

[Frater Taciturnus]

Apparently Gov A is playing Saint Anselm's in a unadvantaged winner take all final.

Playoff teams were: Gov, Anselm's, TJ A, Charter A, St Joseph's A, Hunter, Caesar Rodney, and Whitman.

A tiebreaker has occurred between TJ, St Joes and CR, with the winner playing Hunter for 3rd, second of 3 playing Whitman for 5th and 3rd playing Charter for 7th, though the results I do not know.

[at your pleasure]

Unless I misheard something, Gov won the final. CR and Whitman were 5th and 6th, respectively, no information about 3rd and 4th although it was presumably Hunter and TJ in an indeterminate order. Congrats to Gov and St. Anselm's and kudos to GDS. The set was mostly good, although there were a few annoyances. Is it cleared?

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Congrats to Gov, good job to GDS, and fun playing everyone else. What was this set's distribution? It seemed like there was a lot of math, even in addition to the usual four science tossups.

[Charley Pride]

Unless I misheard something, Gov won the final. CR and Whitman were 5th and 6th, respectively, no information about 3rd and 4th although it was presumably Hunter and TJ in an indeterminate order. Congrats to Gov and St. Anselm's and kudos to GDS. The set was mostly good, although there were a few annoyances. Is it cleared?

No, I'm hoping to take it for a May tournament. Sorry.

[Angry Babies in Love]

Congrats to Gov, good job to GDS, and fun playing everyone else. What was this set's distribution? It seemed like there was a lot of math, even in addition to the usual four science tossups.

Also I noticed more fine arts.
I personally really enjoyed this set. Nothing really stuck out as being bad, it was all very well-written in my opinion. And good job Gov for winning and GDS for efficiently hosting.

(edit--corrected something)

[sir negsalot]

Best homebrew ever. Stats?

[wexs883198215]

I liked the set a lot. Also, I actually loved the scoring prizes, which were awesome for once. The tournament was efficient and the readers were quite good for the most part.

I was kind of annoyed, however, by how Hunter and TJ (3rd and 4th place) were both in our bracket, while the 5th and 6th place were teams we had a winning record against for the year and we had simply not played 7th and 8th place.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

Congratulations to Maggie Walker A, which defeated St. Anselm's in the final 540-220 and went undefeated to win the 2010 Ben Cooper Memorial Tournament. Our top scorer, Matt Bollinger of St. Anselm's, scored 115.5 points over ten games.

A more complete list of finishes can be found below. Prelim records did not carry over to playoffs for final standings:
1st: Maggie Walker (4-0 playoffs, 10-0 overall)
2nd: St. Anselm's (3-1 playoffs, 9-1 overall)
3rd: Hunter (3-1 playoffs, 8-2 overall)
4th: TJ (1.5-3 playoffs, 7.5-3 overall, after half-packet tiebreaker with Caesar Rodney)
5th: Caesar Rodney (2.5-2 playoffs, 7.5-3.5 overall, after half-packet tiebreakers with St. Joe's and TJ)
6th: Whitman (2-2 playoffs, 6-4 overall)
7th: Charter A (1-3 playoffs, 7-3 overall)
8th: St. Joseph's A (0-4.5 playoffs, 6-4.5 overall, after half-packet tiebreaker with Caesar Rodney)

9: WJ
10: Quince Orchard
11: RM A
12: RM B
13: TJ B
14: Wilson
15: Robinson
16: St. Joseph's B
17: TJ C
18: Maggie Walker B
19: Charter B
20: RM C
21: Charter C
22: Charter D
23: Charter E

Left early and thus did not place, in order of prelim finish:
Centennial (3-3)
Sidwell (2-4)
Maret, Calvert Hall, Howard (0-6)

Compiled stats can be found at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings. Until I can figure out how to fix the busted team detail link, the team detail can be found at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... teamdetail. (The half-packet tiebreakers are not included, since for some reason I can't fathom the score wasn't kept.)
Stats specific to the prelims and playoffs will likely be available tomorrow.

To answer distribution questions: our distribution had 1/1 visual arts and 1/1 music per round, and had 4/4 science a round, of which 1/0 or 0/1 a round would always be math. I've wanted math theory to have a bigger place in quizbowl for a while now, and about 7/7 was written for thirteen rounds of this tournament.

As a first-time tournament director, I'd like to apologize for two things upfront: 1) the relative lack of randomization by distribution in packets, which became an issue in round 11 when half-packets were read, and 2) my mistake in trying to set up snaked brackets by PPB, in which I put St. Joseph's A and Maggie Walker A in the same playoffs bracket by screwing up the formula. My mistake; you both should have been in different brackets.
On a more positive note, I'd like to give thanks to Dr. Chuck, Hayden Hurst, Steven Young, Edward Powers, Michael Campana, Bill Tressler, and Mr. Chrzanowski for volunteering to staff. Special thanks go out to George Berry for being incredibly helpful to our statkeeper Daniel and to me, and to Bill Tressler and Charter's Academic Team website for having card system brackets easily available for consolation rounds.

No specific question discussion in this thread; e-mail me with specific issues at REDACTED.

[Angry Babies in Love]

RM A's last game is definitely a typo. We didn't get 0 ppb.

[pleasewalkforward]

Besides some randomization issues that can likely be easily fixed, this tournament was both well written and run. Thanks to the GDS quizbowl team for running this. On a side note, who is Paul Wasserman?

[wexs883198215]

Besides some randomization issues that can likely be easily fixed, this tournament was both well written and run. Thanks to the GDS quizbowl team for running this. On a side note, who is Paul Wasserman?

Not you because your name is Jacob..?

[mastaloo]

Thanks for running this tournament, the set was very enjoyable to play and the tournament was well-run (getting home at 8:30 is always great).

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Hey, this tournament was fun. I enjoyed reading to all the teams i got to see. And i am super super happy with how my kids did!!

I also liked the questions a lot. I have few complaints whatsoever (perhaps a couple when i have time to look at them). But i do have one piece of criticism: power marks. They were, in many cases, in bizarre and arbitrary points in questions, at times before words like "the" or "this" or immediately following an end of a sentence. Obviously this isn't the biggest concern for anybody to raise, but it does make me think that they were hastily done.

But, everything else about the set was really really cool, and one of the best we've heard all year. Aside from the minor power mark thing, it rivaled the HSAPQ sets in quality, clarity, and difficulty.

[Down and out in Quintana Roo]

Also, i think Brian might have been given Kuo-Kai's stats in the WJ game against Wilson, unless he really did somehow break out for 75 points that game.

[wexs883198215]

Also, i think Brian might have been given Kuo-Kai's stats in the WJ game against Wilson, unless he really did somehow break out for 75 points that game.

Yea that's right. All of WJ's other stats match with what I have.

[t-bar]

Whitman and Hunter have 29 TUH in their game against each other.

EDIT: Additionally, Siddharth Hariharan from TJ A should only have 4 games played. He was not there for our games against Howard or Walter Johnson.

[Edward Powers]

Just returned to New Jersey and I trust Alex from Charter can sympathize----getting home at 11:30 is even more fun.

In reality, my students had a great time and congratulate Matt and GDS on an excellent tournament. And thanks for the apology concerning being re-bracketed with Maggie Walker, but upon reflection there was no need. Sure, playing MWGS a 2nd time was daunting but also a great learning experience for my kids, and we also got to play TJ & CR two great matches (BTW---the three of us went 1-1 against each other to create the circle of death between us--so the 0-4.5 record attributed to us in the playoffs is clearly a statistical error which I hope is corrected when time allows).

And kudos to Maggie Walker---they surely are currently on another plateau, with few peers, but it was fun reading for them and watching them play---at times it seemed they powered every TU and then never missed a bonus question, and from an educator's point of view such excellence is a delight to behold, even though from a competitive point of view their excellence was tougher to deal with, since my kids were twice on the wrong end of MW thrashings.

And, finally, as a reader for the consolation brackets it is worth noting how competitive and well played many of those matches were, exemplified by the very entertaining final that I moderated between Walter Johnson and Quince Orchard---decided on the last question with WJ just holding off a game QO, 315-290. And just looking at the round by round scoring in all the playoffs, such drama seemed to be fairly common throughout the building, which suggests that the questions were excellently conceived and thus reasonably accessible---another reason to thank GDS and all those responsible for the question set.

Hope we are fortunate enough to see many of you at Nationals, and until then have continued success throughout the remainder of the season.