The Quizbowl Resource Center

Stats at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings are now updated through round 7.

Stats at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings are now updated through round 8. After round 9 the top 3 from each bracket will play a three-game crossover followed by ACF-style finals, and the other teams will do other things.

So...something's off here with the percent/bounceback, and I can't figure out what. Why are teams getting positive percent/bounceback in rounds in which they convert zero out of (greater than zero) possible bounceback bonus points?

cvdwightw wrote:So...something's off here with the percent/bounceback, and I can't figure out what. Why are teams getting positive percent/bounceback in rounds in which they convert zero out of (greater than zero) possible bounceback bonus points?

This is a known error in SQBS; while the bounceback pcts for individual rounds may be wacky, the total will always be right.

So, the prelims have concluded and teams are off to the 3-round playoffs, except for those in the tiebreaker. Here's the situation:

Maggie Walker, Hunter, and State College made the top bracket out of Wigner.
Walter Johnson and Charter made it out of Seitz.

Ike and Dorman tied for the last championship spot and are playing 10/10 now to determine who makes it.

The loser of that game will join Brookwood, Whitman, GDS A, Blake, TJ A, Chattahochee, and Centennial in the middle bracket playoff.

TJ B, Robinson, TJ C, GDS B, and the fill-in team (York Chen) are playing the consolation playoffs. Churchill left after the prelims.

Full prelim stats are up at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings. Playoff stats will begin to be posted shortly (due to the crossover format, all teams in the top and bottom brackets have already played 2 games that count towards their playoff standing).

The three teams with the lowest P/B were in the same bracket... why?

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:The three teams with the highest P/B were in the same bracket... why?

Fixed.

Because I don't know stats or rosters in advance when making the brackets...some people who normally play for certain teams didn't show up, much to my surprise, which changed the competitive balance a bit. Also, I generally take not putting the same school's A and B teams in the same prelim bracket as an overriding principle regardless of other factors.

Dorman wins the tiebreaker game 140-130.

Matt Weiner wrote:I generally take not putting the same school's A and B teams in the same prelim bracket as an overriding principle regardless of other factors.

Yeah, as i tried to think "what would i have done?" i realized that i agree with this "rule" as well. So, it would have been hard to facilitate. Not really a criticism, just curious.

ihavenoidea wrote:

Caesar Rodney HS wrote:The three teams with the highest P/B were in the same bracket... why?

Fixed.

I mean, the other bracket has three teams at 0.78 while the other one has 0.79. It's not exactly 100% certain that Hunter is the third best team in this tournament.

Playoff standings after round 10:

http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

Again, top and bottom brackets had 2 carryover games per team. Middle bracket started with a clean slate.

Two more games before finals.

Playoff standings after round 11 have been posted at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings. The last round of the playoffs is underway.

How come some of the teams in the prelim stats only played eight games? Did some teams leave early?

QuantumFootball, this is my guess:

Matt Weiner wrote:Stats at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings are now updated through round 6. Four teams did not play in Round 4 due to a packet read out of order in round 3.

I don't know if there was an extra packet for them to make those two games up while everyone else waited. That's probably why 7-2 Ike and 6-2 Dorman played a tiebreaker.

Hunter and Maggie Walker each ended the playoffs at 4-1. Hunter won the one-game final 505-185. Stats for playoffs, including the final game are at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings.

Singles will commence at 8:15 or 8:30 or so, traffic on the way back from local restaurants willing...

Nice job Guy and everyone else.

Singles finally got started after we drew up a new schedule on the fly to cover 6 players dropping. Updates shortly.

Singles prelims have ended. Here are seeds and total points for everyone. Everyone played five thirty-tossup games with tossups worth 15 points.

1 Daichi 1355
2 Guy 1150
3 Ike 1135
4 Tommy 1080
5 Matt 980
6 Ian 830
7 Greg 715
8 Sarah 545
9 Max 395
10 Isaac 370
11 Lily 360
12 York 340
13 Harry 265
14 Maggie 245
15 Seoup 190

Top 8 go to two brackets of four for one-on-one playoffs; the two bracket winners will play a final.

Remaining 7 are playing a ladder system in two rooms for final placement.

Guy defeates Daichi 215-185 in the final of the singles. That's it for tonight.

Sunday tournament is into Round 1. "Happy Birthday" was sung to Todd Faulkenberry at the opening meeting. Merriment abounds.

Oh, we have final standings for singles from last night as well:

1 Guy 815
2 Daichi 795
3 Tommy 635
4 Ike 625
5 Ian 585
6 Matt 580
7 Sarah 490
8 Greg 435
9 Isaac 400
10 Max 455
11 Harry 400
12 Lily 375
13 York 330
14 Seoup 150
15 Maggie 150

The numbers on the right are the total points scored in the playoffs by each player.

1 and 2 were determined by a head to head final; 3-8 were the remaining playoff entrants, ranked by total points in the playoffs. 9-11 were ranked by points in their last round after qualifying for the 9-11 room, and 12-15 were ranked by points in their last round in the 12-15 room.

Sunday stats are up at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings. Complete through Round 2.

Every team has one bye (in which they play a cross-bracket exhibition game that does not appear in stats) so that's why some only played 1 game so far.

Stats at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings updated through round 6.

Prelim stats are done at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings. As you can see, there are three-way ties for championship bracket entrance in both brackets.

In the Fordney bracket, where the tie is for one spot, the 2 and 3 seeds by PPG (Daniel Tompkins and Ike) are playing a half-game, and the winner will play 1 seed Maggie Walker in another half-game for the spot.

In the McCumber bracket, where the tie is for two spots, the 1 and 2 seeds by PPG (GDS and TJ A) are playing a half-game. The winner will make the championship bracket. The loser will play the 3 seed, Chattahoochee, for the other spot.

Both tiebreaker playoffs are currently underway.

In Fordney, Daniel Tompkins beats Ike and moves on to face Maggie Walker for the sole remaining championship bracket spot.

In McCumber, GDS beats TJ and takes the first championship bracket spot. TJ is now playing Chattahoochee for the other spot.

I know it's second-nature to someone like you, Matt, but thanks for having actual tiebreakers for tournaments like these instead of just granting brackets based on statistical tiebreakers. Can't tell you how many tournaments we've been to where nothing like what you're doing today was done. I hope the teams there really appreciate your hard work and professionalism.

MW wins championship bracket spot out of Fordney.

TJ A joins GDS in championship bracket out of McCumber.

Chattahoochee, Brookwood, and Centennial have left. We have constructed a new consolation playoff schedule to avoid any byes.

Round 8 (of 10) is starting now. These are the seeds going into the playoffs:

Fordney championship crossover teams: Dorman (2-0 carryover into playoffs), Hunter, (1-1), Maggie Walker (0-2)
McCumber championship crossover teams: Walter Johnson (2-0), GDS (0-2), TJ A (1-1)

Consolation teams:
A Daniel Tompkins
B Ike
C Whitman
D TJ B
E TJ C
F York Chen (filling in)

Consolation teams will each play three random games.

Championship teams will play the three-game crossover and be ranked on their five games against other championship bracket teams.

Ties or two-team one-game-behind scenarios will be played off. Ties for second in a weighted-finals situation will be broken on PPG in the five playoff games.

Round 8 has concluded; here are current standings including the two carry-over games in the championship bracket: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

Round 9 complete: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

Are there bouncebacks in the Sunday tournament?

grashid wrote:Are there bouncebacks in the Sunday tournament?

No, it's using the regular format.

Dorman having lost to WJ, forced a one game final between Hunter and Dorman, Hunter winning.

The Weekend of Quizbowl or The Weekend of Guy Tabachnick? Good job Hunter, this is certainly an amazing feat to win both tournaments.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:The Weekend of Quizbowl or The Weekend of Guy Tabachnick? Good job Hunter, this is certainly an amazing feat to win both tournaments.

To say it was the Weekend of Guy Tabachnick would be slightly inaccurate. Congratulations to all of Hunter.

ihavenoidea wrote:

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:The Weekend of Quizbowl or The Weekend of Guy Tabachnick? Good job Hunter, this is certainly an amazing feat to win both tournaments.

To say it was the Weekend of Guy Tabachnick would be slightly inaccurate. Congratulations to all of Hunter.

This is true, but one can also note that Guy won singles to boot.

Thanks for putting on a great tournament, PACE people. Everything went really smoothly; the format seemed abundantly fair; and the questions were from good to excellent on both days. All of us had a great time, and we would have regardless of the result.

Something that immediately struck out at me: we put up 490 against TJ, not 590. Our bonus conversion that game was not completely ridiculous. I'll comb through the rest later, but it seems fine.

What Guy said. Okay, the consolation rounds on Sunday could have worked out better, but I'm pretty sure that 64% of the consolation teams leaving is going to cause problems no matter how well-organized a tournament is.

A few quick comments before I take a nap:
Congrats to Hunter on some great performances this weekend.
Thank you PACE for running the Weekend of Quizbowl and Ike for writing lit singles. I really liked all four tournaments, and I enjoyed the weekend a lot, even if it meant 4 hours of sleep for two nights in a row. The moderators were good, the questions were good, the format was excellent, and the competition was awesome.
The WoQ set seemed inadequately edited considering that it was the main event. I really liked MUT, so I feel like it would have been better if MUT mirror was on Saturday and WoQ on Sunday.
The brackets seemed not that great, at least in retrospect. I understand about Saturday - I was surprised by the performance of some teams, too - but, I was really surprised to see Hunter, Gov, and Dorman, three out of four playoff teams from Saturday (all better than WJ, IMO), in the same bracket on Sunday.
Finally, playing the reduced-NSC format for the first time in a while (possibly the first time ever) really made me think about how unfortunate the NSC format is. Sure, it's interesting and it has history, but it really isn't the fairest format to determine the better team. I'm not sure to how to mathematically compare the variability, but I am sure that it is less fair (the result is more variable and less reliable) when certain tossups are potentially worth twice as much as others.

aestheteboy wrote:Finally, playing the reduced-NSC format for the first time in a while (possibly the first time ever) really made me think about how unfortunate the NSC format is. Sure, it's interesting and it has history, but it really isn't the fairest format to determine the better team. I'm not sure to how to mathematically compare the variability, but I am sure that it is less fair (the result is more variable and less reliable) when certain tossups are potentially worth twice as much as others.

As someone who wrote a couple questions Saturday's set, moderated that day, and will be playing NSC, I would agree with this. I would add that when writing third phase questions, I guess your supposed to find where you would put the NAQT-like power mark and put the For ten points there to make all powers equivalent but this is so difficult to accomplish and so rarely adequately attempted that it just makes for unfair and unbalanced results. Also, keeping statisitics in this format is the most trying experience I have ever had in quizbowl, as the reader needs to total not just individuals' results, but also total the bonus points received and the bonus points stolen over three phases then someone (scorekeeper or stat-room inhabitant) must total the tossups answered in each phase and use that to figure out bonus points available. Overall, I think the only way this format could go on fairly would be to have all or none of the tossups have powers (and make sure writers adjust the position of FTP accordingly) and to simplify the statistics-gathering (almost impossible if you want to continue scoring on paper).

I would like to see the PACE format go. I've been frustrated by it as a player and a staffer.

As a writer, it's more difficult to write than it should be.

I agree with all that's been said; NSC format is too gimmicky for me.

Adamantium Claws wrote:I would like to see the PACE format go.

This.

Final Sunday playoff stats are now at http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings. I corrected the Hunter BC issue in these stats.

To quickly recapitiulate the top finishers and stats links for each event:

Finals room at lit singles:
1. Ben Geselowitz, State College
2. Graham Moyer, State College
3. Daichi Ueda, Walter Johnson

Prelim stats for lit singles: viewtopic.php?p=123747#p123747

Top 4 at Saturday tournament:
1. Hunter
2. Maggie Walker
3. State College
4. Charter

Saturday prelim stats: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings
Saturday playoff stats: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

We gave out the trophies on Sunday but State College and Charter were only there for the Saturday tournament; they will receive their trophies at the NSC.

Top 4 at Saturday night singles:

1. Guy Tabachnick, Hunter
2. Daichi Ueda, Walter Johnson
3. Tommy Casalaspi, Maggie Walker
4. Ike Jose, Ike

Singles prelim scores: viewtopic.php?p=123861#p123861
Singles playoff scores: viewtopic.php?p=123889#p123889

Top 4 at Sunday tournament:

1. Hunter
2. Dorman
3. Walter Johnson
4. Maggie Walker

Sunday prelim stats: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings
Sunday playoff stats: http://results.scobo.net/SQBS.aspx?org= ... =standings

I have some thoughts on the future of WOQ that I will share in a little while. Please do not discuss any of the questions used on the board since they will all be used at future events. Logistics/format issues can and should be raised in this thread.

Sorry, one more issue that popped out at me: our BC against WJ seemed a bit high, so I checked it out and I actually had 2/6/1 that round. I think scorekeepers randomly gave us about 50-60 points throughout the weekend, but I don't really see the point in going through and resolving disparities in like six different games. (I could if the demand is high for the sake of correctness, or whatever, but I see a net gain for us of 10 points in the first game on Sunday, 10 each way three times).

Okay, since I feel like wasting time, here are some thoughts on PACE format.
I agree with Diachi that it can screw with results(note the fact that we came within ten points of Hunter, something that we have not been able to approach at any other tournament I can recall).
With respect to powers, I personally like them. However, if they are really that much extra work I would like to see them go and see the time freed up thusly use to fix whatever the swords/Harold Godwinsons of future NSCs.
On the subject of bouncebacks: I do think they can have the valuable function of keeping inexperienced teams who are getting creamed engaged (since they at least have a shot at some bounceback points), a point driven home after my experience Sunday. However, we do not need to be making life hell for moderators to do this. Also, how many weak teams do we need to keep engaged at what is presumably a national championship?
My other issue is that aspects of the format can overvalue tossups, since in the first two periods one can choose one's bonus to maximize your potential pointage. Here is an example (I will ignore the effects of powers), if I get a tossup at (say) ACF fall, I get 10 tossup points plus n bonus points. At a PACE-format tournament, on the other hand, I can get a tossup on a subject I know and therefore know I am likely to get a bonus on a subject I know. Effectively, the tossup that was worth 10+n points at ACF fall is worth (depending on the period) either 10+10n or 10+15n points. This reduces the distinguishing value of the bonuses, which is a big problem when teams are close in ability and every shade of distinction matters. This could be tested by measuring bonus conversions (using percentage of bonus points available converted) at PACE and an ACF format tournament of comparable difficulty. Obviously, we would need to restrict our analysis to teams that were at both tournaments
EDIT: Grammar and spelling.

Tower Monarch wrote:As someone who wrote a couple questions Saturday's set, moderated that day, and will be playing NSC, I would agree with this. I would add that when writing third phase questions, I guess your supposed to find where you would put the NAQT-like power mark and put the For ten points there to make all powers equivalent but this is so difficult to accomplish and so rarely adequately attempted that it just makes for unfair and unbalanced results.

I was a little confused as a writer, who ended up being drafted to edit some science, when I saw the difference between where I put FTP in a stretch round tossup and where others did. I understood it as being a power mark and placed it accordingly, no matter the (generally not so awful) contortions necessary to give another seven or ten clues after FTP (usually 3-4 lines to go, I guess?), but I know a lot of other writers did not, so my tossups may have been harder to power (and I don't know if that means "too hard to power" or "just right").

The format was, I'd imagine, key in winning teams over from 4Q formats, since it had wacky gimmicks to keep "excitement" up. It also allows for the presence of math calculation to appease teams that like that sort of thing. I think it's getting old.

everyday847 wrote: It also allows for the presence of math calculation to appease teams that like that sort of thing. I think it's getting old.

In all the games we played on Saturday, nobody on either team ever actually chose a math calculation bonus. All other categories were regularly chosen, however. Did anyone in the tournament choose a math calculation bonus? How many times were they actually chosen? Just curious. Perhaps they could dispense with the math calculation bonus and throw in a math theory bonus every couple of rounds. I believe that would be more satisfactory to the mathematically oriented players out there.

I have no real problem with the format of PACE. Bouncebacks add an interesting dimension to the game, as does choosing bonus categories. However, I don't see the real need for "related" bonuses in the first period. Also, it is a bit strange when more than half the available points are in the third period. But all in all our players have enjoyed playing this format over the years, though probably much of that enjoyment has come from the quality of the questions as much as anything else.

jbarnes112358 wrote:In all the games we played on Saturday, nobody on either team ever actually chose a math calculation bonus. All other categories were regularly chosen, however. Did anyone in the tournament choose a math calculation bonus? How many times were they actually chosen? Just curious.

In the room that I moderated, the math calc bonus was chosen several times. What struck me was that the bonuses ranged from one that a 4th or 5th grader could have done(and the answer given on the page was wrong) to one that required 2nd semester of calculus knowledge. Personally I would like to see this category replaced with theory(or better yet change the PACE format)

After reading this thread and noting some of the issues with NAQT, I am wondering if we are seeing more of the effects of the explosion in good quizbowl reach both National tournaments. For instance, at one time it was a notable improvement for a tournament to move to garuanteeing more than 2-5 games and using what we would consider acceptable questions. Now, both are standard and the standards for good tournaments have gone up dramatically. With that in mind, I would like to ask the following questions:
1. How do you think PACE and NAQT will continue to adapt to the change? Who do you think is positioned better to adapt?
2.In the unlikely circumstance that either organization were to cease to adapt(and presumably rendered extinct or marginalized as "bad quizbowl"), what would replace it? Would we see the surviving organization consolidate its status, would we see ACF start running a high school national(admittedly very unlikely at best), or would we see a new organization formed? What would this new organization look like?
With respect to math calc, our team chose math calc a few times.