2008 HSNCT Post Tourney Discussion - TJ Wins!

[First Chairman]

I know we did this before, so can someone set up a private password-protected forum for this?

[AKKOLADE]

There's no need for a separate forum; this will work just fine.

[First Chairman]

Ok... then if everyone's on her/his honor... why not.

[collbarbshock]

Podcasts up when?

[matt979]

TJ will play the holder of card 4 in round 8, but will be in the final regardless. If card 4 beats TJ, card 4 will play the winner of 2-3 to get into a non-advantaged final. If TJ wins, they will play an advantaged final against the winner of 2-3.

Incidentally, this is the clearest written explanation I've seen to date of how the cross-bracketed semi-final game works. Assuming Evan doesn't mind, I'd love for the 2009 NAQT HSNCT format explanation document to contain this sentence almost verbatim (obv. "the holder of card 1" rather than "TJ").

Conceptually this should be pretty straightforward, yet it's alarmingly easy to give a misleading (or needlessly complicated) explanation of it.

[matt979]

There were 38 6-4 teams. Disadvantaging in excess of half the playoff field seems extreme. With 176 teams in the field it was highly likely that more than 64 teams would have winning records, and the card system guaranteed that there would be a large number of 6-4 teams.

Incidentally, there could have been anywhere from 28-33 teams at 7-3 or better (that 33 is one more than 32 turns out to be very inconvenient), 31-41 teams at 6-4 on the nose, and a total of 64-69 teams. (30 + 38 = 68 was well in line with that expectation.) So 39% of the field made the playoffs, with 17% of the field experiencing a true double elimination playoff (by going 7-3 or better Saturday). For those who find this interesting, we used playoff brackets that would support up to 40 teams above and 44 teams below (relatively round numbers are useful to minimize the persistent odd numbers / staggered bye situations where it becomes impossible to say which card "ought to" get each particular bye), though the PDFs that got printed assumed at most 33 and 41.

Admittedly none of this really addresses the point, "Disadvantaging in excess of half the playoff field seems extreme."

There are other alternatives that work better.

1) Use pts/20TUH as a tie breaker. This would have severely disadvantaged (eliminated) 4 teams.

NAQT strongly discourages using any tie breaker other than further game play. (NAQTers strongly agree with the premise: "The whole idea of quizbowl tournaments is to play, so let them play.")

2) Have a play-in round to pare the field down to 64 teams. This would have impacted 8 teams and added 30 minutes to a two-day, 12- hour tournament.

The limiting factor here is the number of rounds of questions, rather than (or at least much more than) the number of game rooms. (Or the quality of those questions, if you assume a fixed amount of time available to write and edit everything.) If we'd added one more round of questions, we'd probably just use double-elim bracketing that supported up to 128 teams (or 96, or 80, whatever the cleanest round number was for the expected 64-69 range).

The whole idea of quizbowl tournaments is to play, so let them play. That's why so many team are included in the playoffs and why those teams that don't make the playoffs are encouraged to participate in ad hoc games during the playoffs. It's one thing to play a game and lose; it's quite another to be summarily branded with a loss without even getting to put your hand to the buzzer. Personally I'd like to see a play-in round simply because it involves more play, not less.

We did strongly consider a play-in round. It would have had to involve every* 6-4 team (since NAQT won't use tie-breaks for anything more consequential than seed), and the dilemma would have been whether to hold it after Round 14 Saturday or first thing Sunday morning. If the former, we'd have to be dead certain of which teams were 6-4 ASAP (and this year, sadly, that would not have been very soon); the latter might have been feasible (that is, compatible with a fair card system that was already worked out in time to print the appropriate cards) but I didn't spend any time on it given that we couldn't have guaranteed having enough HSNCT-caliber questions to do it this way.

*- Which becomes a problem if an odd # of teams are 6-4

The other obvious possibility would be that teams who go 6-4 and win the first playoff round continue in the winner's bracket. It's not immediately clear to me whether we could plot out in advance the card system for this. Meanwhile, some coaches would perceive that it was better to finish 6-4 than to finish 7-3 (if they strongly believed they would beat a fellow 6-4 team and just as strongly believed they would lose to, e.g., an 8-2 team). And this year, for example, even with no Round 1 ("Round 15") byes at all the winner's bracket entering Round 2 ("Round 16") would have been 34 strong -- I'm 99% sure our system breaks down (i.e. requires one more pack than was available) if more than 32 teams enter Round 2 unblemished.

BTW, which 6-4 team(s) advanced the farthest?

I expected to find this on NAQT's web site but had no luck. Various NAQTers who could help are in transit. Fingers crossed that tonight everything will be on the web (without server fatigue).

Matt Bruce
NAQT

[SnookerUSF]

Hello,

I just wanted to add my congratulations to TJ and Charter for their exquisite show in the finals. I had the opportunity to read for Charter the evening before, and on Saturday and they were very impressive. Second, congratulations to NAQT for putting on an extremely efficient tournament, regardless of what you might think of their tie-breaking predilections or policies in general, they have managed to coordinate thousands of people, some with notoriously "eccentric" personalities with a good deal of grace.

[Robbie Ram]

BTW, which 6-4 team(s) advanced the farthest?

#48 Kellenberg Memorial A finished T-10th (someone in the playoff results thread said T-11th... but I really thought it was 10th)
#31 Georgetown Day School finished T-17th
#32 Maggie Walker A finished T-17th
#38 J. W. Robinson Jr. Secondary finished T-17th
#47 Minnetonka High School A finished T-17th

FYI, the following teams were 7-3 on Saturday but did not finish in the top 20:
#18 Gonzaga College HS
#19 New Trier
#20 Walter Johnson
#22 Auburn
#23 Novi High School A
#27 Chaska
#28 Brindlee Mountain A
#30 St. John's (TX)

Also, #29 Russell HS (7-3) apparently only competed in the small-school tournament on Sunday and therefore wasn't in the top 20 overall.

It appears that all the 8-2 and 9-1 teams from Saturday finished in the top 20 of the tournament... although that seems to make a total of 26 teams who finished in the top 20 (!!!), so I must have counted wrong somewhere along the line (sorry). I'm sure the NAQT website will clear this up when/ if they get playoff results & stats posted.

[Red-necked Phalarope]

What happened in the Small School playoffs?

[Auks Ran Ova]

Apparently, Russell (KY) won, with Brindlee Mountain teams taking second and third.

[Joshua Rutsky]

So I know I'm probably saying the obvious here, but from my limited time on this forum it seems to me that there is no one consistent format that everyone approves of, or even that everyone agrees with. Every tournament has something imperfect--too much trash, too many computation questions, too much list-based focus, too much this, too little that....If you're a TD, you can't win. With 187 teams coming and many of them sporting students who will undoubtedly be among the best in the nation for next year's college class, how can ANY organization create something that would please everyone's taste?

From where I was sitting, I thought there were enough high-end physics questions to justify sponsorship from MIT, but my team was weak there, so I'm expecting those stood out a lot more to me than the others we were comfortable with. If I had a weak lit team, I'd probably be remembering the four or more lit questions per round. Whatever. In the end, I felt like the questions were broad enough and balanced enough to require a very well-rounded team to compete. They certainly didn't seem to hinder scoring machines like TJ from putting up massive power shows round after round. The tourney was well-run, with the few problems I saw adjudicated quickly or resolved with confidence and not confusion. We had fun. I'm glad we came. Hopefully, we'll qualify to come back again.

[Blackboard Monitor Vimes]

four or more lit questions per round.

Given that NAQT lumps RMP in with its lit distribution, this particular example seems extremely unlikely to me. I may, however, just have a bad memory. Lit, RMP, and art are my best subjects (in qb not school) and this part of the distribution annoys me to no end. I mean no hostility to the poster I'm quoting, rather I'm just taking an example that was given to bring up an issue I have with the distribution, as the discussion of the role of math calc and trash is already taking place. However, I do agree that there seemed to be a lot of physics in comparison to, say, biology. I don't know whether NAQT has sub-distributions within each large group, but it would appear from this lack of balance that they don't.

[collbarbshock]

Podcasts up when?

[Megalomaniacal Panda on Absinthe]

So I know I'm probably saying the obvious here, but from my limited time on this forum it seems to me that there is no one consistent format that everyone approves of, or even that everyone agrees with. Every tournament has something imperfect--too much trash, too many computation questions, too much list-based focus, too much this, too little that....If you're a TD, you can't win. With 187 teams coming and many of them sporting students who will undoubtedly be among the best in the nation for next year's college class, how can ANY organization create something that would please everyone's taste?

From where I was sitting, I thought there were enough high-end physics questions to justify sponsorship from MIT, but my team was weak there, so I'm expecting those stood out a lot more to me than the others we were comfortable with. If I had a weak lit team, I'd probably be remembering the four or more lit questions per round.

I disagree rather thoroughly. I don't think any of the best players or best teams have any problems whatsoever with the standard ACF distribution or even the modified ACF distribution used for some high school tournaments. NAQT simply has less solid physics, chemistry, biology, literature, philosophy, mythology, fine arts, and even history than ACF does and that's a negative if you're concerned with academic content.

[First Chairman]

So I know I'm probably saying the obvious here, but from my limited time on this forum it seems to me that there is no one consistent format that everyone approves of, or even that everyone agrees with. Every tournament has something imperfect--too much trash, too many computation questions, too much list-based focus, too much this, too little that....If you're a TD, you can't win. With 187 teams coming and many of them sporting students who will undoubtedly be among the best in the nation for next year's college class, how can ANY organization create something that would please everyone's taste?

I think most of us who have been involved with PACE thinks that despite the nuances, I think we have done as best as we could to address all the questions. We have really locked down on the abundance of trash to be perhaps the most academic-oriented of all the nationals, we have no calculation tossups, we have reboundable/bounceback bonuses, and we have a pretty good reputation to address as many of the complaints as we can. I don't know if Hoover has ever been interested in attending PACE (or wishes to qualify for it), but our questions are freely available except for the most recent year. You can ask a lot of people here about their opinion about our questions over NAQT's. We won't attract everyone, but we do tend to attract the very best teams, those who consider themselves among the best, or those who want to play against them.

I did want to address a previous poster that mentions that PACE does not produce a lot of sets of questions. I will make this clear: we are not a question-writing company. We are a non-profit service-oriented group. Many of us within our group will write questions to acclimate teams to NSC format, but we are not trying to get a 200-team field. We do want the best teams to have the most challenging national championship tournament they could ever have to prove their mettle against the very best. We also want to attract those teams that want to make it to the next level.

The immediate previous poster to my post (Shantanu) also addresses the issue I was going to mention: not everyone is disgruntled about certain formats.

[Saiem]

Not to out them or anything, but Hoover was definitely at the PACE style invitational event in Pensacola. Good guys, good academic knowledge.

That was probably one of the best high school tournaments I've played. The distro may have been skewed towards more SS type of material, but it was really fulfilling to get a theory of forms question within 10 words.

The math calculation bonus is perfect. I heard few to no complaints about it. I don't understand why it isn't adopted more by NAQT.

[Frater Taciturnus]

I disagree rather thoroughly. I don't think any of the best players or best teams have any problems whatsoever with the standard ACF distribution or even the modified ACF distribution used for some high school tournaments. NAQT simply has less solid physics, chemistry, biology, literature, philosophy, mythology, fine arts, and even history than ACF does and that's a negative if you're concerned with academic content.

This will lean mostly towards my experiences. Please bear with me.

I remember being decent at NAQT's poorly written science, and then getting to college hoping to pick off 1-2 per round. I think I've gotten about 1-2 total, because I discovered that as much as NAQT made me think that I knew science, I knew next to nothing about real science.

With Religion and/or Mythology, anytime you got a question that wasn't on bible stuff or greco-roman myth, you could basically say, "Well, that's it in that category for the rest of the day." This always bothered me, as it was a solid chance at points if you took the time to learn about it, but the wacky NAQT distribution prevented it from coming up enough to really glean but so much useful information.

[Nav]

I don't know how long the tournament has been running in a hotel, but it seems like it can be a major fire hazard with the amount of students that are in a single room let alone a floor. The room I was in, in particular, could barely fit three tables of students/staff and then there were parents and coaches that were watching. In some instances parents had to stand in the restroom just to hear what's going on.

Just a concern that I would like to raise but I have no clue where else a tournament of this size could be run? A college campus might work but we'd have to split it across different (hopefully close) buildings.

[Ben Dillon]

Amen. The close quarters were quite draining, such that it contributed to my players' decision not to stay for the consolation rounds.

[BuzzerZen]

Believe me when I say that things were far less cramped on the hotel-room floors than they were at the Crown Plaza. Also there was >1 elevator.

[evilmonkey]

Believe me when I say that things were far less cramped on the hotel-room floors than they were at the Crown Plaza. Also there was >1 elevator.

QFT.

At the Crowne, the hotel rooms were about half the size of those at the Wyndham. Of course, the Crowne didn't have the confusing layout, but if NAQT uses the Wyndham next year, a simple map would rectify that.

Fewer rooms on a single floor would have been nice. The 200 hallway was ridiculous.

[AndyShootsAndyScores]

It wouldn't be the first time this happened, but was it Dorman's A or B team that finished 4th? The results page says A, but I was under the impression it was their A team.

[manary]

Their B team was 4th, losing to TJ then to Whitman for 4th. Their A team lost to Charter in the mad massacre at the end, so were 5th.

[yangsta]

That MLK Magnet A / Charter A (335-325) match had to be awesome.

Being the one brilliantly competitive game in my room, it was indeed quite awesome.

MLK was down by 220 (or maybe it was 230?) after question 15 (and probably 5 minutes left?). IIRC, Dallas got at least 6 of the next 7 tossups (possibly all 7) and MLK converted close to all the bonuses, including a 30 on the last bonus to win the game.

Congrats to many of the teams that have improved greatly over the past few years, and to TJ for turning it on after the Saturday losses.

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

That MLK Magnet A / Charter A (335-325) match had to be awesome.

Being the one brilliantly competitive game in my room, it was indeed quite awesome.

MLK was down by 220 (or maybe it was 230?) after question 15 (and probably 5 minutes left?). IIRC, Dallas got at least 6 of the next 7 tossups (possibly all 7) and MLK converted close to all the bonuses, including a 30 on the last bonus to win the game.

Congrats to many of the teams that have improved greatly over the past few years, and to TJ for turning it on after the Saturday losses.

Yeah, you showed me that scoresheet - of the last 7 tossups, Dallas had 6; 5 of the 7 were powers; and 5 of the 7 bonuses were 30'd. Talk about a comeback.

[MahoningQuizBowler]

Apologies if this was discussed before, but were there small school playoff games this year? I remember that, before, teams that went 4-6 but were in the small school class had a chance to make a run through those playoffs and were joined by those that dropped down from the open playoffs.

[Byko]

Apologies if this was discussed before, but were there small school playoff games this year? I remember that, before, teams that went 4-6 but were in the small school class had a chance to make a run through those playoffs and were joined by those that dropped down from the open playoffs.

Apparently there were, and while there were results for them, I have yet to see the scores of any small school playoff games. It looks like, from their rankings of small schools, that they did do the same thing this year in taking any small school that went 4-6 or better.

[Nav]

Warning: I am a stats nerd.

On that note, here is something interesting that I found: Only one team faced qualified opponents in all ten of their matches (Rancho Bernardo A). They themselves did not qualify (5-5).

[ihavenoidea]

And they had 239 some PP20H

They went 5 - 2 then dropped 3 straight games to Torrey Pines, Garfield Heights, and Dunbar, all decided on the last tossup.

Talk about a great schedule no?