NAQT New York Sectional Sponsored by ACUI Region 2

[dave.eng]

NAQT New York Sectional Tournament
Sponsored by ACUI Region 2

Date:
Saturday February 5, 2011

Location:
SUNY New Paltz Student Union
1 Hawk Drive
New Paltz, NY 12561
Phone: (845) 257-3025
Fax: (845) 257-3695
http://www.newpaltz.edu/sub

Registration Information:
Opens: Monday December 27, 2010
Closes: Saturday January 26, 2011
Registration Link: http://www.naqt.com/registration/regist ... nt_id=3515
Minimum Teams: 6
Maximum Teams: 12
Cost: $120.00 per Team
Discounts:
$20 off registration per NEW Quiz Bowl Team*
$20 off registration per additional team from same institution**
$30 off registration for every team that contributes a moderator or scorekeeper for the tournament
$10 off registration for every team that contributes a FULLY FUNCTIONAL lockout system***
$5 off registration for every team that contributes a FULLY FUNCTIONAL game clock

Event Meals:
If you wish to purchase meals for your team ahead of time, please register on-line separately here:
http://member.acui.org/core/events/even ... g=11R02REC

Scheduling & Format:
Round Robin Format. Top four teams advance to finals.
First game at 10:00AM. Lunch between 12:30PM – 1:30PM. Games resume at 1:30PM. Preliminaries end at 4:30PM. Break from 4:30PM – 5:30PM. Final games 5:30PM – 6:30PM.

Advertised Here:
http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... =10932&e=0

Hotel Information:
Super 8 Motel of New Paltz NY‎
7 Terwilliger Lane
New Paltz, NY 12561
(845) 255-8865
http://www.super8newpaltz.com
$59 / Night. Ask for “ACUI” Rate.
Note: At least one (1) person in each room must be over 21.

Contact:
Dave Eng
Assistant Director of Student Activities
Hamilton College - Sadove Student Center
198 College Hill Road | Clinton, NY 13323
(315) 859-4516 (v) | [email protected]
(315) 859-4196 (f)

*Institution must not have participated in an NAQT sectional within the last two (2) years or twenty-four (24) months of this tournament.
**More than one organization per institution may register for this tournament at a reduced rate
***Lockout system must include a total of eight (8) working buzzers

[Important Bird Area]

Cost: $230.00 per Team
Discounts: $210.00 per NEW Quiz Bowl Team*

NAQT is aware that this does not conform to our hosting guidelines, and we have been in touch with the Region 2 staff to make sure that it is changed.

Edit: the budget above has been updated!

[Mechanical Beasts]

Cost: $230.00 per Team
Discounts: $210.00 per NEW Quiz Bowl Team*

NAQT is aware that this does not conform to our hosting guidelines, and we have been in touch with the Region 2 staff to make sure that it is changed.

Thank god!
EDIT: in addition to making sure that part is changed, if this organization really has zero buzzer systems (and plans to rent them somehow rather than buy), why don't you suggest that they allow teams to bring buzzers, too? I imagine you're probably already doing so, but you know.

[Ondes Martenot]

What does "All-Start Question Threshold: Minimum 120 questions heard" mean? Also, how can there be a maximum number of teams allowed to register, since this is the only event where teams can qualify for ICT?

[jonah]

What does "All-Start Question Threshold: Minimum 120 questions heard" mean?

I would venture to guess it means "All-Star...", i.e., you must have heard 120 questions in order to qualify for an individual scoring award.

[Important Bird Area]

"All-star" is correct.

Teams are of course allowed and encouraged to bring buzzers to every SCT site.

If the number of registered teams exceeds the field cap, additional teams will be directed to one of the other nearby SCT sites. (This is standard policy nationwide.)

[Charbroil]

Out of curiousity, is the number of teams the number for both DI & DII or just for one of the divisions?

[bmcke]

If the number of registered teams exceeds the field cap, additional teams will be directed to one of the other nearby SCT sites.

As a nearby SCT site, I have some concerns about this.

[MicroEStudent]

If the number of registered teams exceeds the field cap, additional teams will be directed to one of the other nearby SCT sites.

As a nearby SCT site, I have some concerns about this.

I'd have to think that Moravian College would take most (if any) overflow because it's a closer site for most of the teams that would be attending New Paltz, not to mention passport-type issues. We'd rather go up to Ottawa, but we'll be heading to Moravian because of those passport issues, and the fact that it's about an hour closer than New Paltz.

[DumbJaques]

Since NAQT has still not responded to my concerns about the Moravian staffing situation, I'm doubly concerned about having a large number of overflow squads because the New York area tournament is capping their field at 12 teams. This really is not a promising start - I mean, I have every confidence that NAQT is not going to let ACUI hosts go around charging people excess fees and whatnot, but the assurances we've gotten is that local hosts will be sufficiently aware of quizbowl norms that epic disasters of any sort will be averted. I'm not sure what to think when the host of a major SCT region doesn't seem to know the first thing about how tournaments work from a logistical standpoint, and it certainly makes me dubious that there was any kind of vetting process for choosing hosts (though I do understand a paucity of bids is at play here for a lot of areas).

[nobthehobbit]

Just wondering: has NAQT considered having a standard fee schedule?

[Charbroil]

Just wondering: has NAQT considered having a standard fee schedule?

http://www.naqt.com/sct/2011/host-requirements.html (specifically, the paragraphs halfway down)

[nobthehobbit]

Just wondering: has NAQT considered having a standard fee schedule?

http://www.naqt.com/sct/2011/host-requirements.html (specifically, the paragraphs halfway down)

Yes, I looked at that, but I meant something more along the lines of ACF: that is, a schedule under which attending teams know that bringing buzzers, staff, clocks, and so on will be beneficial financially (the staff part especially). Right now it's only optional for hosts to offer such discounts.

[Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill]

Since NAQT has still not responded to my concerns about the Moravian staffing situation, I'm doubly concerned about having a large number of overflow squads because the New York area tournament is capping their field at 12 teams. This really is not a promising start - I mean, I have every confidence that NAQT is not going to let ACUI hosts go around charging people excess fees and whatnot, but the assurances we've gotten is that local hosts will be sufficiently aware of quizbowl norms that epic disasters of any sort will be averted. I'm not sure what to think when the host of a major SCT region doesn't seem to know the first thing about how tournaments work from a logistical standpoint, and it certainly makes me dubious that there was any kind of vetting process for choosing hosts (though I do understand a paucity of bids is at play here for a lot of areas).

I think any host that believes that College Bowl still exists immediately nullifies this assurance.

[Important Bird Area]

Yes, I looked at that, but I meant something more along the lines of ACF: that is, a schedule under which attending teams know that bringing buzzers, staff, clocks, and so on will be beneficial financially (the staff part especially). Right now it's only optional for hosts to offer such discounts.

Yes, we are going to standardize these discounts nationwide starting in 2012.

[Important Bird Area]

Quick update to note that RPI will be helping to staff this tournament (and will receive an ICT autobid).

[marnold]

Cornell and Columbia played each other five times over the course of the tournament: Cornell won games 1 and 2; we won 3 and the two final games. Rumor is Cornell won d2 but that's unconfirmed. Logistically this tournament was at times just a mess. I'll point out specific problems later but Naqt should canonize Ahmad for his work keeping things from being a total disaster.

[Ondes Martenot]

So myself and my teammates Matt and Devin were three of the four readers in Division II. The fourth room featured mystery alternating reader who I believe was joined by mystery alternating scorekeeper. This somehow caused the rather unfortunate situation where the fourth room was somehow a round behind the other three rooms. I'm not sure how this happens at a timed tournament. I also heard one of the DI readers was getting through like 15 tossups a game, which probably isn't good.

[marnold]

Oh, you see, that room was being read by the fifth player from Columbia who was sitting out so when Div 1 lost a round into the ether after a team left and the schedule was reshuffled and one of the rooms played a game that was later stricken from the stats and replayed in the room the teams were arbitrarily sent to by the moderator who was keeping the new schedule hidden from everyone else who himself sort of caused the problem by being literally out to lunch at a bistro until 45 minutes after post-lunch rounds were supposed to begin all of which meant the Columbia reader for the Div 2 round was involved replaying this bizarre replacement game and finding a solution was hampered by Ahmad's scorekeeper's refusal to go read for Div 2 - you see, THAT meant the Div 2 room ended up behind a round.

I should note that very little of the mess is the fault of TD Dave Eng. He seemed to do a competent job, the New Paltz student services people were pretty great and the facilities were very nice. In fact, to my mind almost all problems are traceable to one dude who exploited Mr. Eng's one shortcoming of not really knowing who to listen to. If I ran NAQT, I would entirely purge SCTs of former CBI people who seem to insidiously insert themselves into every decision to steer it to the wrong result. Since that's not realistic because volunteers are needed, I wish NAQT would do a better job telling inexperienced TD's who to listen to when advice is given (which is to say people with circuit quizbowl experience either in the field or on staff) and who should not be listened to under any circumstances (viz. stupid, meddling buffoons who are slow, incompetent readers with bizarre, self-glorifying habits who have no understanding of the norms of modern quizbowl). The best evidence of this is the comparison between the UIC SCT last year that was run entirely by ACUI people which was delightful and efficient because the TD deferred to experienced players and the New Paltz SCT this year which was nearly run off the rails by a cretin.

[SnookerUSF]

Let me also echo M. Arnold's comments and commend Dave Eng for being preternaturally calm TDing his first NAQT sectionals, as well as the New Paltz Student Union Services staff for their helpfulness, hospitality and professional comportment. The New Paltz Student Union sushi did leave something to be desired.

Unfortunately, there was a rather injurious personality (who had likely good intentions) but brought with him the culture and habits of a tournament format which was in large part antithetical to the nature of today's collegiate quizbowl circuit. His mentality, one which sacrificed the common tenets of good NAQT (a proper schedule, quick and efficient reading, following the RULES!) for a presumed hierarchy [tournament official > common sense] was especially evident when he demanded that Columbia play Rochester for a 4th time, even though that would mean one additional match in the stats since it was intended to be a triple round robin and slow down the tournament even further because in his words "I don't care, that is what it says on the schedule that is who I will read for..." was really vexing. Moreover, not only did he commandeer the updated schedule from the overburdened Mr. Eng, so that there would be no chance to rectify any further issues, but in the morning he also demanded (I use this word often because that is only way to describe his communication style) to read in a room on the second floor so he ostensibly wouldn't have to take the stairs or elevator which forced another NAQT experienced moderator (Aaron Cohen) to read in Div II (though I am sure they benefited from his experience). Many of the issues were in fact exacerbated from Oneonta's forfeiture, but nonetheless it was an unnecessary struggle. The bistro debacle speaks for itself. Fortunately, the questions were really quite good.

[MicroEStudent]

I'd personally be interested in knowing who the big offender was, but knowing the former CBI people from this region, I can't say I'm surprised.

[marnold]

I think my previous post was slightly more hostile than it probably needed to be, so in the spirit of civility I will restrain myself from making jokes based on this

the big offender

and merely note his first name was Rick and I'm not sure of his last name.

[MicroEStudent]

I think my previous post was slightly more hostile than it probably needed to be, so in the spirit of civility I will restrain myself from making jokes based on this

the big offender

and merely note his first name was Rick and I'm not sure of his last name.

Oh yes. I remember him from the CBI days. He certainly didn't make those tournaments easier, either, and he got through only 12 CBI tossups in a round we played in.

I also agree 100% that non-reformed old CBI-ers should be purged.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Notably, for the future, DI players probably shouldn't read DII matches because questions converted from the DI set for DII, or vice versa, don't always end up in the same round--in fact, they very often do not. (I almost made the same mistake, but Katy Peters astutely noticed that Rotating Brown Person wasn't reading DI in my initial chart. Thanks, Katy, for preventing a fuckup!)

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Chad Kubicek told us at our site that they do in fact make the overlapping questions end up in the same rounds.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Chad Kubicek told us at our site that they do in fact make the overlapping questions end up in the same rounds.

Hm. That's a new feature then--it at least wasn't true in ICT '08 (questions mentioning Bourbaki were in two different rounds, as I recall).

[marnold]

NAQT can confirm when they see fit, but obviously if there had been lots of between round overlap we would have stopped and I'm a little annoyed you think otherwise.

[Mechanical Beasts]

NAQT can confirm when they see fit, but obviously if there had been lots of between round overlap we would have stopped and I'm a little annoyed you think otherwise.

Oh, I certainly don't think you kept on doing it out of some kind of active decision to be naughty! All I mean to say is that, given what I know [which I guess might be wrong] on my side, it's a risky proposition for the future. If that guarantee does exist now, it isn't.

[alexdz]

I was curious about this as well, and I took a brief glance at a couple of packets in between entering stats and TDing, and didn't notice any repeat questions that spanned multiple rounds. I can't say that there aren't any, but if there are they are few and far between.

[cvdwightw]

Chad Kubicek told us at our site that they do in fact make the overlapping questions end up in the same rounds.

Hm. That's a new feature then--it at least wasn't true in ICT '08 (questions mentioning Bourbaki were in two different rounds, as I recall).

I think NAQT instituted such a practice a year or two ago to preclude the possibility of a D1 team innocently mentioning a question to a D2 team during a break (or vice versa) and then having that same question show up in the other division later on.

[AKKOLADE]

NAQT can confirm when they see fit, but obviously if there had been lots of between round overlap we would have stopped and I'm a little annoyed you think otherwise.

Oh, I certainly don't think you kept on doing it out of some kind of active decision to be naughty! All I mean to say is that, given what I know [which I guess might be wrong] on my side, it's a risky proposition for the future. If that guarantee does exist now, it isn't.

Maybe you should make sure you're right before you say things.

[Important Bird Area]

I think NAQT instituted such a practice a year or two ago to preclude the possibility of a D1 team innocently mentioning a question to a D2 team during a break (or vice versa) and then having that same question show up in the other division later on.

Confirm this; we make sure converted questions are in parallel rounds so that we don't have to maintain a quarantine between the divisions over lunch.

[Matt Weiner]

There were several incidents of what I imagine was overlapping material in questions written separately, and not designated as "converted." However, the fact that DI may have a question on "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" and DII may later have a question on "Keynes" does not seem like a problem; you have no more basis to assume that the Keynes question will or will not come up in DII from knowing about DI, and there's nothing wrong with getting it because someone told you facts about the other question since they had no foreknowledge of the DII packets.

[geoneb]

Let me also echo M. Arnold's comments and commend Dave Eng for being preternaturally calm TDing his first NAQT sectionals, as well as the New Paltz Student Union Services staff for their helpfulness, hospitality and professional comportment. The New Paltz Student Union sushi did leave something to be desired.

Unfortunately, there was a rather injurious personality (who had likely good intentions) but brought with him the culture and habits of a tournament format which was in large part antithetical to the nature of today's collegiate quizbowl circuit. His mentality, one which sacrificed the common tenets of good NAQT (a proper schedule, quick and efficient reading, following the RULES!) for a presumed hierarchy [tournament official > common sense] was especially evident when he demanded that Columbia play Rochester for a 4th time, even though that would mean one additional match in the stats since it was intended to be a triple round robin and slow down the tournament even further because in his words "I don't care, that is what it says on the schedule that is who I will read for..." was really vexing. Moreover, not only did he commandeer the updated schedule from the overburdened Mr. Eng, so that there would be no chance to rectify any further issues, but in the morning he also demanded (I use this word often because that is only way to describe his communication style) to read in a room on the second floor so he ostensibly wouldn't have to take the stairs or elevator which forced another NAQT experienced moderator (Aaron Cohen) to read in Div II (though I am sure they benefited from his experience). Many of the issues were in fact exacerbated from Oneonta's forfeiture, but nonetheless it was an unnecessary struggle. The bistro debacle speaks for itself. Fortunately, the questions were really quite good.

Let me second what Ahmad wrote here, and also commend him for being an excellent reader as well. The individual in question (my teammates and I coined a rather derogatory nickname for him which I will not print here out of fairness) really ruined what would have been an otherwise excellent tournament--we were delayed by at least a half-hour because of his pigheadedness in insisting that we submit ourselves to the Columbia meat-grinder for a fourth time. (No offense to them--they just were really good)

The "bistro" incident which Ahmad refers to involved this reader as well. We were scheduled to play RPI in his room at 1:45, the first match after lunch. We arrived back on time (as did RPI) only to find ourselves waiting for at least 15-20 minutes for said reader to arrive. At this time we were informed that he would be at least another fifteen minutes because he was at a "bistro" still finishing lunch. Finally Ahmad took over (having already read Columbia-Cornell round 1) and got the round started. For someone who yelled at my team for staying to shake hands with Cornell after our first match with them because we were "holding up the next match" it was blatantly hypocritical and disrespectful of him to be late from returning from the lunch break.

With that all said everything else was fine about the tournament. Let me add my own props to Dave Eng as well for running this tournament--the mistakes were in no way his fault. It would have been a perfectly cromulent tournament had it not been for the one reader; I am glad to see that others largely share my view on him.

[Rothlover]

bbbbbbiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssstttttttrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooo!

I mean

SSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAAATTSSSSSSSS?????????

And, yes, Dave Eng was very nice and welcoming, and everything and more said thusfar about that moderator/interloper is true, and Ahmad should again be noted as the only reason D1 functioned at all.

[Important Bird Area]

We've received stats and they will be up on naqt.com shortly.