JS Mill Mirror in Orlando

[ValenciaQBowl]

Valencia (well, I) will be hosting a mirror of Chicago's JS Mill Open Tournament on Saturday, May 27. Note that this is a week later than Chicago is hosting, as this date better fits some of our expected attendees; also note that it's the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend if that affects your planning.

Unfortunately, we won't be hosting a mirror of Eric Kwartler's themed tournament, as we're less likely to be able to have folks around for two days.

One thing that will be different about this site will be a preponderance of CC players, which should be fun. They've been warned that the questions will challenge them, which is a good thing. Of course, they also get to play the part of cute baby seals passively awaiting clubbing by the few dinosaurs in our region.

More on fees and such later (I'll keep it as cheap as my mirroring responsibilities allow), but if you're interested, feel free to contact me at [email protected] .

[ValenciaQBowl]

The Mill Mirror in Orlando will be on Saturday, May 27, at Valencia CC's West Campus (1800 South Kirkman Road, Orlando, FL 32811). We'll have an opening meeting around 10 am in Building 7, Room 114, and play until whenever. The Chicago folks have set a generous $65 fee, to which I'm adding $5 to cover all-you-can-drink soda and water during the tournament.

Though the previous message emphasized the number of CC-level teams that will play, noted dinosaurs Seth Kendall and I will be playing solo, and rumor has it that future dinosaur Dan Passner will make an appearance. Presumably there will be strong players from FSU, UF, and USF also in attendance, so if you're in the South and want to hear some good questions, I encourage you to come play. The after party will likely include use of my trampoline, pool and hot tub (the latter to the potential creeping-out of Matt Weiner, I suppose). Contact me at the e-mail in the above message to let me know if you're interested.
--cborg

[geekjohnson]

Do you have a tenative team list yet Chris?

[ValenciaQBowl]

Here's an updated list (as of May 8) of who's playing in the Mill mirror in Orlando on May 27:

Me
Seth Kendall
Dan Passner (all of these are solo teams for now)
Valencia house team (with alumni)
Faulkner State CC (Alabama)
USF
UF with Chip
UF without Chip
Travis Vitello, Billy Beyer, Jay Sridhar, Guy ?
Auburn U Montgomery? (expressed interest/no confirmation)
Maybe some dudes from Southern Georgia (the area, that is)

That means there's still plenty of room, so please contact me at cborglum at valenciacc.edu if you want in. I'm handling registration details, but the inscrutable Boris Nguyen will be debuting as TD. Hope to see you there.

[ValenciaQBowl]

A final update on the Orlando Mill Mirror, after many convulsions to the field in the last week:

Me
Seth Kendall & UTC
The Infamous Chip
The Aristocats (Broward CC folk)
Travis Vitello and Billy Beyer
Ahmad the Magnificent and Rob the Somewhat-Less Magnificent of USF
Valencia Alums
Valencia Active
UF A
UF B

This means nine round-robin rounds and then probably two playoffs, after which any ties will be broken with a debate on the amount of influence wielded by AIPAC and other factions of the Israel lobby on American foreign policy moderated by Wilmer Valderrama. Results will be posted a day or two after the Red Stripe runs out.

[wd4gdz]

You can all stop holding your collective breath, as here are some results to the JS Mill mirror in Orlando.

1) Chris Borglum solo
2) USF
3) UTC with their great xylophone player
4) Chip Thomas and Friend

[ValenciaQBowl]

Thanks for the early update, Billy.

Official results:

I'm the Decider! (Borglum) 9-0 228.3 ppg
Le Ton Beau de Marot (USF) 8-1 213.9 ppg
Beat Kids! (Seth, Kilby, Jacob) 6-3 195.6 ppg
American Caliban (Chip & Luke)6-3 189.4 ppg
Questions Unlimited (UF) 5-4 143.9
Man-Bear-Pig (Beyer, Vitello, Melissa) 4-5 121.7
The Aristocrats (Broward-ish) 4-5 106.7
Champion Gators (UF) 2-7 46.1
Ramses (Ex-Valencians) 1-8 78.3
Hathshepsut (Valencians) 0-9 42.8

Individuals
Borglum 3 99 16 106.1
Seth 2 74 10 80.0
Chip 3 77 19 80.0
Doug (MBP) 0 52 2 56.67
Rob (USF) 3 41 4 48.83

A couple notes:

The a/c was barely working in our building on a 95-degree Orlando afternoon, which was miserable. Thus we all agreed to forget about playoffs; no one seemed to want to sit and sweat anymore at 5:30.

Three of my matches came down to the last toss-up, understandably those with the USF folks and the Chip Thomas team, more oddly the one with my recently finished Valencia players on "Ramses," whom I needed an overtime toss-up to beat. So I was fortunate in many games in what was a fun and competitive tournament.

Finally, "The Aristocrats" comprised the Sklaroff family. Samuel Sklaroff, who played for Broward CC the last three years and was high scorer on the CC-title-winning team at this year's ICT, brought his sisters and parents to play. Samuel's sister, Sarah, brought along a sound engineer because she's producing a story on Samuel for NPR's "This American Life." Samuel has Asperger's Syndrome, and the focus of the story will be on some conflicted decisions the family is considering regarding Samuel's next steps on finishing at Broward. So lots of matches and between-match discussions were recorded. Should lead to an interesting story.

My thanks to Andrew and the Chicago folks who wrote the questions and encouraged our tournament. Now that question discussion is fair game, I'll say first that in general the answer set was well selected in terms of difficulty--if you look at any set's 20 toss-up answers, they're very gettable by a broad cross-section of players. And I personally loved the toss-ups on "Kafka on the Shore" (one always loves tosses on books one's read in the last six weeks) and Skanderbeg; I am a firm supporter of expanding the canon of Albanian robber princes in the game. Again, good work by the writers.

If anybody wants the full stats, since I'm unlikely to post them anywhere, drop me an e-mail at cborglum at valenciacc.edu
--cborg

[MCDoug]

Slight correction...

"Man-bear-pig" was Kelli and me, "We'd rather be playing the questions at NAC" was Billy, Travis, and Melissa.

I also thought the tossups were very good and quite accessable to novice teams, although the bonuses were at times a bit harder as I suppose they should be for a tournament like this.

Thanks to all the people who helped out at Valencia yesterday. Kelli and I had a good time.

P.S. I still protest not getting the tossup on "sinking of the Maine" when I said the Maine and then was prompted and basically gave the entire last line of the tossup, although still neglecting the word "sinking". ;-)

[Bender Bending Fernandez]

P.S. I still protest not getting the tossup on "sinking of the Maine" when I said the Maine and then was prompted and basically gave the entire last line of the tossup, although still neglecting the word "sinking". ;-)

Who was reading that round? I got away with just "Maine".

[MCDoug]

I heard a few other rooms got by with saying just Maine too. I dont want to name people online, but I'll say he was wearing a USF hat and that should suffice. There's no hard feelings, but I'm going to give him a hard time about it next time I see him.

[Bender Bending Fernandez]

I heard a few other rooms got by with saying just Maine too. I dont want to name people online, but I'll say he was wearing a USF hat and that should suffice. There's no hard feelings, but I'm going to give him a hard time about it next time I see him.

I should have guessed. We have good-naturedly complained to this Unknown Person about his anal-retentive moderating and we're doing our best to break him of these habits.