The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hunter College High School is pleased to announce the sixth annual Prison Bowl on Saturday, April 6, 2013. Hunter is located in a brick castle at 71 E 94th St between Park Ave and Madison Ave in Manhattan. Marianna Zhang and Zihan Zheng will serve as the tournament directors and can be contacted at hchsqb at gmail dot com.

Registration
To register, email Marianna and Zihan at hchsqb at gmail dot com with "Prison Bowl registration" in the subject line. Please include the name of your school, a phone number we can contact, and how many teams, buzzers and moderators you are bringing. If you email us with a range, we'll put you down under interested and move you into the field proper when your numbers are definite.

This tournament is platinum-certified by PACE, so the top 25% of teams (top 9 teams if we have a full field of 36) will qualify for PACE NSC.

Registration closes on Wednesday, April 3. The field is capped at 36 teams. If we hit 36, a waiting list will be formed.

Question Set
Prison Bowl VI is a regular difficulty set. For an idea of the difficulty, see Prison Bowl V. Computational math is not part of the distribution, which is as follows:
- 4/4 Literature
- 4/4 History
- 4/4 Science
- 2.5/2.5 Arts
- 2.5/2.5 Religion, Mythology, Philosophy
- 1/1 Social Science
- 1/1 Geography
- 1/1 Trash and Current Events

We're hoping to see Prison Bowl mirrors all over the the country! Email us at hchsqb at gmail dot com if you are interested in hosting one.

Tournament Format
The tournament will be around 12 untimed rounds of 20 tossups and 20 bonuses. There are negs and no powers or rebounding bonuses. Teams will be bracketed for round-robin prelims, then re-bracketed for round-robin playoffs. If necessary, an advantaged final will be played.

Registration and breakfast start at 8:00 and run until 8:45. Please arrive before 8:45 so we can get round 1 started around 9:00!

Fee Structure
$80 for the first team from a school
$70 for each subsequent team
-$5 for each working buzzer set
-$10 for each experienced staffer
$40 minimum fee per team

Checks can be made out to "HCHS Quiz Bowl". We would prefer checks to be brought on the day of the tournament, but you can also mail them before the tourney date to our school address c/o Mr. Stephen Young. Discounts for travel can be negotiated on a case-by-case basis with the tournament directors.

Transportation
Hunter is easily accessible by the 6 train stop at 96th and Lexington as well as the m1-4 buses along Madison and m96 crosstown bus along 96th. There is a drop-off area for buses in front of our school along Park, while cars can park at Majestic Car Park on 94th between Park and Lex.

Field (30 teams, 17 buzzers, 3 moderators)
Bergen County Academies (NJ) (2, 1, 1)
Bronx High School of Science (NY) (2, 0, 0)
Charter School of Wilmington (DE) (1, 0, 0)
High Technology HS (NJ) (3, 2, 0)
Irvington HS (NY) (1, 2, 0)
JFK HS (NJ) (1, 0, 0)
Kellenberg HS (NY) (2, 2, 1)
Livingston HS (NY) (2, 2, 0)
Lotus-Renault (NY) (1, 2, 0)
Pierson HS (NY) (1, 1, 0)
Regis HS (NY) (1, 1, 0)
Ridgewood HS (NJ) (2, 2, 1)
Sachem East HS (NY) (1, 0, 0)
Scarsdale Senior HS (NY) (2, 1, 0)
St. Joseph's HS (NJ) (2, 1, 0)
Trinity School (NY) (2, 0, 0)
West Egg (NY) (2, 0, 0)
Woodlands HS (NY) (2, 0, 0)

Interested
Cardinal Spellman
Mountain Lakes
Richard Montgomery

Any update on the prospective field for this year's Prison Bowl?

Edward Powers wrote:Any update on the prospective field for this year's Prison Bowl?

The current field still stands at 7 teams, with 3 schools interested.

make that 4

GNS is interested. It's probably going to be an independent one.

North Babylon seems to be interested in bringing a team or two.

GDS is very interested

Pushkin's Beard wrote:GDS is very interested

As is RM.

AMSA is interested. I'll see if I can get a team or two to commit to the date and travel.

Jess Bowen
AMSA Charter School
Marlborough, MA

Mountain Lakes is interested and will almost certainly be there; I'll register formally closer to the date when I have a better idea how many players can make it.

Lexington High School is interested in sending a team as well.

We're proud to announce that Prison Bowl VI has been awarded platinum certification from PACE! This means that the top 25% of teams (top 9 teams with a full field of 36) will qualify for PACE NSC.

Prison Bowl is coming up in less than two months. A lot of schools have expressed interest and the field is 1/3 full at the moment, so don't forget to email your registrations in!

Hey Hunter,
Scarsdale would be interested in 2 ish teams for Prison bowl, but I'd like to wait a week to sign up sign up to make sure people can go.
Sincerely,
Cindy Du

Any update on all of those quite interesting teams who have shown interest but have not yet fully committed to coming?

Edward Powers wrote:Any update on all of those quite interesting teams who have shown interest but have not yet fully committed to coming?

Not yet. The registration deadline is coming up in 2 or so weeks, so get those in!

serasuna wrote:

Edward Powers wrote:Any update on all of those quite interesting teams who have shown interest but have not yet fully committed to coming?

Not yet. The registration deadline is coming up in 2 or so weeks, so get those in!

DCC will not be attending due to our NAQT states being on that day.

Edward Powers wrote:Any update on all of those quite interesting teams who have shown interest but have not yet fully committed to coming?

Unfortunately our It's Ac taping is that day, so we can't go.

Weighted Companion Cube wrote: DCC will not be attending due to our NAQT states being on that day.

Pushkin's Beard wrote: Unfortunately our It's Ac taping is that day, so we can't go.

Good luck to both of you!

Other interested teams/staffers: don't forget to shoot us an email before Wednesday, April 3rd.

Lexington can't attend because our NAQT regional competition is the same day as well :/.

Wilmington Charter is interested in sending their B team

I have sent an email for registration.

Playoffs are currently in progress. The top 12 flight consists of St Joseph's A, High Tech C, Irvington, Livingston A, West Egg A, Charter (B), High Tech A, Kellenberg A, High Tech B, Trinity A, Scarsdale A and Ridgewood A.

I'd like to thank everyone for coming out to our tournament today! It was a long day for all of us, but I was glad to see smiles and hear laughter in the rooms as I walked around today.

That said, Zihan and I want to express our apologizes for the delay caused by resolving a circle of death in two prelim brackets. We started out only 15 min behind after waiting for a couple lagging teams to check-in, but the circle of death resolution ate up a significant amount of time for the rest of the teams. Here's a quick run-down of what happened.

The top two teams from each prelim bracket and two wildcards were chosen to advance to top playoff tier of 12.

In The Bluest Eye White Dragon bracket, High Tech A cleared the field, while West Egg A, Charter B and Bergen A each went 3-2. PPGs were very closely matched, so Charter B and Bergen A, both lower in PPG than West Egg A, played a half-packet tiebreaker. Charter B won and played West Egg A on another half-packet, which they lost. As a result, High Tech A and West Egg A advanced to the top playoff tier. Charter B subsequently advanced as a wild card along with Ridgewood A based on overall ppb.

In the Time Wizard of Oz bracket, an identical situation occurred with St. Joe's A clearing the field, while Ridgewood B, Scarsdale A, and NB Toro Rosso went 3-2. In particular, Ridgewood B and Scarsdale A had identical gets and negs, and their PPGs differed by only 3 points. Scarsdale A defeated NB Toro Rosso and then Ridgewood B in half-packets. St. Joe's A and Scarsdale A advanced as top 2 in their bracket.

EDIT: Whoops, Ridgewood B, not Ridgewood A.

After playoffs, teams played a crossover with the team with the same record in the opposite bracket of their tier to determine final placement. By this time, it was around 6, so many schools withdrew their teams from crossovers and thus forfeited the round. In the top tier, only the 1st place game between St Joe's A and High Tech A, the 3rd place game between High Techs B and C, and the 7th place game between Irvington and Ridgewood A occurred. The final order of finish for the top tier is below.
1. St. Joseph's A
2. High Tech A
3. High Tech B
4. High Tech C
5. Livingston A
6. Kellenberg A
7. Ridgewood A
8. Irvington
9. Trinity A
10. Charter
11. Scarsdale A
12. West Egg A

Prelim stats are currently posted here, and we'll endeavor to get playoff stats up asap. If you notice an error in the stats, email Willie Ha at [email protected].

I want to emphasize that the set is not clear until the weekend of HSNCT. This includes both Prison Bowl and the side of trash. Although the set most certainly will be reworked in the next couple days, spoiling answer lines are not fun for us or the players at our mirrors. We're aware of a few repeats, but for any other comments or suggestions on how to improve the set, please email me at [email protected]!

We'd like to thank our staffers: Hunter students, Mehnaj Ahmed, Robert Pond, Mirza Ahmed, Brother Nigel, and Jon Pinyan. This tournament could not have possibly run without your help! My thanks also go out to the scorekeepers whom we awkwardly pulled for house teams to fill bye gaps as teams left. I would also like to express special thanks to Jon Pinyan, who extended his valuable help and experience to us in the control room, as well as our adviser Mr. Young, who as always served as a voice of reason amidst the chaos.

Thank you all for coming today and choosing to spend your Saturday with us! We hope to see you back in the fall for our novice tournament.

serasuna wrote:In the Time Wizard of Oz bracket, an identical situation occurred with St. Joe's A clearing the field, while Ridgewood A, Scarsdale A, and NB Toro Rosso went 3-2. In particular, Ridgewood A and Scarsdale A had identical gets and negs, and their PPGs differed by only 3 points. Scarsdale A defeated NB Toro Rosso and then Ridgewood A in half-packets. St. Joe's A and Scarsdale A advanced as top 2 in their bracket, while Ridgewood A advanced as a wild card.

Just to clarify, there was a slight mix-up in stat entry that wound up having no consequence in how the top 12 were decided but: Ridgewood B (Kara et al.) was involved in the tiebreaker, and Ridgewood A (Esther) was the second wild card.

We've set up a Prison Bowl forum to discuss the set! At the top of the page, click on "User Control Panel" and click the "Usergroups" tab. "Prison Bowl 2013 discussion" should be on there. Select and submit; I'll approve anyone who played the set this Saturday.

The rest of stats are up now! Apologies for the delay. If you spot any errors, email Willie Ha at [email protected].

The prelim stats contain rounds 1-5, all of which were played. Playoff stats don't contain forfeits from teams that left or round 11 crossover games. Forfeits and crossovers are noted in "all games". I've attached the prelim, playoff, and crossover schedules for convenience.

Congrats to the top 8 teams - St Joseph's A, High Tech A, B, and C, Livingston A, Kellenberg A, Ridgewood A, and Irvington - for qualifying for PACE NSC. You'll be receiving emails shortly.