Illinois Open Weekend Availability

[millionwaves]

Hello, all.

As IO has been announced, I think now is an appropriate time to ask this:

How much in the way of side events are people interested in attending (or, are able to attend) on the weekend of Illinois Open, that is to say, of November 10?

For instance, Ryan Westbrook has already committed to running an all-subject difficult doubles tournament if enough interest is generated. Also, last year, we hosted a TRASH Regionals site. There's also been some unconfirmed talk of a subject tournament, although I'd like to place emphasis on "unconfirmed." It'll really help us to plan what and how much we're going to do if we can get the general consensus on what people want.

Thanks,
Trygve Meade

[Sima Guang Hater]

a subject tournament

Sounds like fun (depending on the subject, I suppose). If I end up going, I'd certainly want to stay for some side events.

[Mr. Kwalter]

Before even considering side events I think we should know a little bit more about the tournament itself. After going to what turned out to be a very bad IO last year I would be hesitant to return regardless of side events if IO isn't going to improve.

[theMoMA]

Okay, I guess I should let a fraction of the cat out of the bag here. I am committed to writing a literature subject tournament for the Illinois Open weekend. However, this hinges upon availability of players on Friday or Sunday. If a worthwhile field is willing to come down early or stay late for the IO weekend, this tournament will happen.

Just so everyone has an idea of what this tournament will be like...CO lit crossed with Jerry's singles. So the answer difficulty will be higher than CO lit.

So I guess my question is twofold:
1- are you willing to play a lit tournament on Friday or Sunday of IO weekend?
2- if not, I'm looking for collaborators. [email protected] is my email address.

[Sima Guang Hater]

Okay, I guess I should let a fraction of the cat out of the bag here. I am committed to writing a literature subject tournament for the Illinois Open weekend. However, this hinges upon availability of players on Friday or Sunday. If a worthwhile field is willing to come down early or stay late for the IO weekend, this tournament will happen.

Just so everyone has an idea of what this tournament will be like...CO lit crossed with Jerry's singles. So the answer difficulty will be higher than CO lit.

So I guess my question is twofold:
1- are you willing to play a lit tournament on Friday or Sunday of IO weekend?
2- if not, I'm looking for collaborators. [email protected] is my email address.

Uh, I'd be willing to help read...

[setht]

I'm not sure who's going to come down from Chicago this year or exactly what they'll be interested in playing. I'm pretty sure most or all of our people will be able to make it to Urbana by, say, 7 pm on Friday, so a Friday evening event could work for us. I'm also guessing most or all of us will leave Saturday night or Sunday morning, so I don't think a Sunday event would work as well for us. If UIUC hosts TRASH Regionals on Sunday we might have some people stay for that, but presumably that would use up most of Sunday.

From our point of view, I think Saturday night is the best candidate for holding a second event, followed by Friday night. I think we could make it to IO and two extra events (or maybe three, with TRASH Regionals).

Speaking entirely for myself, I'd be happy to play a difficult doubles tournament and a difficult lit singles tournament, and I hope they help attract a large field for the weekend. However, I'm not sure there will be enough of a field for any Nationals-level events. I hope I'm wrong and lots of great teams show up at IO, but I rather suspect there won't be all that many people that can really handle Ryan's doubles set, or a lit singles event that's significantly harder than the CO lit singles. As people have noted, there were only 5 teams at IO last year; many of the strongest players from those teams will not be attending this year.

Jumping over to Eric's post on IO itself, I think he's right in that having multiple side events is nice, but the main thing is the main event. Getting more teams will help--I'm sure it didn't help matters last year that UIUC had to produce more than half the tournament from scratch. It will also help if people get their packets in in a timely fashion. I think the UIUC club can put together a good tournament if they get enough of a field and if the field does its part in submitting questions.

-Seth

[millionwaves]

Before even considering side events I think we should know a little bit more about the tournament itself. After going to what turned out to be a very bad IO last year I would be hesitant to return regardless of side events if IO isn't going to improve.

You raise a very legitimate concern, and since I'm taking a sort of large role in setting up our editing system, I suppose I'm qualified to address it.

I'm assuming that you'd like me to post our plans for improving Illinois Open this year.

We're going to do the following things:

- This year, Illinois Open will be edited by a team of at least eight people, including the very experienced Mike Sorice, as well as some other people people who are less experienced. Only one or two people (or more likely no people) will be editing a quizbowl event for the first time, although it may be their first time with a collegiate set. We feel that in this manner, newer editors will be able to do the brunt of the legwork, while working with people who have significantly more experience to make sure that the legwork is done correctly. This will allow us to strike a balance between experience and having enough people around to do the rather onerous amount of work necessary for a tournament to succeed, especially if the field doesn't turn out as highly as we hope it will.

- This year, a primary importance will be placed upon two principles:

The first is keeping IO to its stated difficulty level of ACF Regionals. There will be no bonus parts on Demonax, nor will there be a tossup on William Temple Franklin. We feel that this is of the utmost import.

The second is keeping the question quality exceptionally high, of course.

We feel that the way that we have the system set up makes the best use of our club's resources, and will allow us to produce an event well worth attending.

Seth sums up what I was going to post originally rather nicely. We feel that it's well within our means to make Illinois Open a high quality tournament, and that our system of editing will combine the expertise of our more experienced members with a solid core of young people that are willing to put in a lot of hard work to preserve IO's reputation. However, it'll help our cause immensely (like every packet submission tournament, of course) to have good packets from competent writers submitted at a reasonable time. We sincerely hope that if you choose to attend, you send us a quality packet at a reasonable time.

Best,
Trygve Meade

[DumbJaques]

Just so everyone has an idea of what this tournament will be like...CO lit crossed with Jerry's singles. So the answer difficulty will be higher than CO lit.

I don't really see a reason for this. CO lit singles were more than adequate for a field that included an amazing array of talent, even though we played it as doubles. What could possibly be gained by setting out to do a harder set other than alienating potential players and making the tournament, overall, less engaging?

[theMoMA]

I feel like I should address some difficulty speculation. I probably shouldn't have invoked Jerry's singles in this discussion, because this tournament is going to be reasonably close to how CO lit was. I do want to do some things to differentiate the tournaments because otherwise I feel it would be hard to escape the massive shadow of the CO tournament.

Basically, there will be a lot of difficulty overlap between CO lit and this set. Here's how I hope to set the difficulty distribution (per packet):

10: regionals difficulty (including fall-difficulty answers with regionals-level clues)
7: nationals difficulty (including regionals-level answers with nationals-level clues)
2: canon expansion (things that have been bonus parts before but not tossups)
1: ridiculous answers

Basically 17 out of 20 questions are going to be what you're used to from CO lit...solidly canonical answers with either regs or nats level clues. The rest will be a challenge, obviously.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Of course, I'd happily play any lit tournament.

Like Seth says, there's every reason to assume that a rising tide lifts all boats and that IO proper can be quite solid - more and better teams equals more and better packets, etc...and, either way, there would still be a couple other events. But, it is only a little over two months away...so it wouldn't hurt to get some concrete ideas of who's "in" pretty quickly here so people can plan for whatever's going to happen.

As for my event, I'd like to see 6 teams, with experience spread out...in fact, I'd be resistant to more teams than that and probably suggest that any extras just be added to existing teams. That seems about right and doable if almost all of the potential qb suspects show up.

[grapesmoker]

I will happily play at any side-event to IO; my preference for a side event is Saturday night, but I'll take Friday night if that won't work.

[theMoMA]

Alright, I'll make a second call to action for anyone wanting to contribute to lit singles. Right now I have a small-but-dedicated contingent of Rob Carson, Dave Letzler, and me. I'm about a fifth of the way through the set already, and it will be no stretch for me to complete it in time. But if there's anyone else out there who wants to contribute, it would be greatly appreciated.