The Quizbowl Resource Center

This tournament will now be held on Sunday, August 4, at VCU. Due to odd summer policies on room reservation, it will run from 12 noon to 8 pm instead of the traditional quizbowl timeframe. We cannot guarantee access to the building before noon, but we will award a Sunday morning side event slot to anyone who wishes to run one outdoors if getting into the rooms early is not possible. The tournament will be held in the Harris building, which faces Main St, Harrison St, Floyd Ave, and the University Student Commons on its four sides.

Register by contacting me at [email protected]. Planned open teams may register now, and I will keep you informed via this thread on how the possibility of an open division is evolving. Due to recent confusion caused by spreadsheet-based registration, please note that ONLY REGISTRATIONS E-MAILED TO ME will be "counted," though you may use the spreadsheet to form and track your teams.

Things that will happen: a tournament in which only college teams composed of people eligible to play for those colleges in the 2012-2013 quizbowl year, which will award the title of College History Bowl champion.

Things that may happen: an open division (this is dependent on being able to adequately staff the college division) which will play separately; mirrors elsewhere (dependent mainly on interest; teams seeking to compete for the college championship must come to VCU, any mirrors that exist will be simple open tournaments).

The original announcement said that:

The cost is $310 for a team of 3 or 4, $225 for a team of 2, and $130 if you would like to play it solo. There's a $10 buzzer system discount, limit 2 per team. $35 discount for moderators on a first come, first served basis.

This is being changed as follows:
*The base cost for a college team is $240 regardless of how many people are on that team. You may then take $40 off or your entry fee for every person on your team for this tournament who was 1) present and/or resident in the Chicago metro area during ICT weekend and 2) is playing this tournament now. In other words, your discount for a full team that was planning to play the tournament in April and now is playing it in August is $160 because you play it for an $80 fee, and prorated discounts for teams partially composed of such people are also available.
*The base cost for an open team is $240 and no further discounts are available besides the standard buzzer discount, which is now $10 per system with no per-team limits (fully functional systems only).
*People who YOU ARE TRANSPORTING TO THE TOURNAMENT AT YOUR OWN COST, you being any portion of a college or open team playing the tournament, and are judged to be competent staffers by me, will earn a $20 discount if used as scorekeepers and a $50 discount if used as readers. I have no interest in compromising the quality of my tournament by using anything but the best readers available, so I will not intentionally move someone to a different role to save money. By the same token, do NOT try to claim someone who was showing up on their own dime to play the Saturday tournament as "your" staffer for a discount. This is a dishonest practice that needs to end.

If you wish to mirror this event elsewhere, get in touch with me at [email protected]. Due to the sensitive nature of a "championship" event, no early mirrors will be awarded; you can do it on 8/4 or later but not on 8/3.

This tournament will be paired with VCU Open on Saturday 8/3: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... =8&t=14499

Team formation spreadsheet (once your team is finalized you must e-mail me to be counted as registered!): here

Matt Weiner wrote:This tournament will now be held on Sunday, August 4, at VCU. Due to odd summer policies on room reservation, it will run from 12 noon to 8 pm instead of the traditional quizbowl timeframe. We cannot guarantee access to the building before noon, but we will award a Sunday morning side event slot to anyone who wishes to run one outdoors if getting into the rooms early is not possible.

When I concurred with the decision to run this replacement in the Sunday-after-VCU-Open format, that was predicated on the understanding that VCU would be able to host this tournament in a way consonant with the standard operating procedure for quizbowl tournaments: start in the morning, finish by the early evening. Running this from noon to 8 will mean that Chicago has to fly back the next day, which in turn makes the tournament a non-starter for people WHO WERE SIGNED UP TO PLAY THE CHICAGO SITE IN APRIL and who have Monday morning commitments (ie, classes) which they cannot miss. In my opinion, VCU should not have brought forward that proposal without the ability to follow through on it.

Here are possible remedies as I see it, in increasing order of disruption to existing plans:

1. Exchange History Bowl and VCU Open on the schedule. As a regular season event (and national championship), I think the priority has to be on making this happen in the way it would have in April in Chicago. That means allowing for the entire registered field to attend. As a summer open (with a field that, I would guess, is more flexible wrt work schedule), VCU Open should be put in the more awkward time slot.

2. See if quizbowl's friends in the Richmond area are able to provide rooms on Sunday, to run the tournament at a more convenient time. Is Maggie Walker a possibility?

3. Re-locate the entire weekend somewhere else. Since we're already flying, Chicago would probably be fine with anywhere, but considering the convenience of the people running this and VCU Open, obvious candidates include UVA and Maryland... and anyone else who wants to come forward.

I feel somewhat foolish for having promoted this plan to my own team after April's debacle, only to see it configured in a way that makes it impossible for people who had been looking forward to playing.

(Edited for subject-verb agreement)

Penn is out.

After more e-mails with possible participants, we only had 1 team definitely coming and Chicago teams who could only come if the event was rescheduled. Therefore, the attempted summer version of the tournament will not take place, and we will run the 2014 College History Bowl at the day-after-ICT time. There are three other people writing and we're getting started this summer. More info later.

VCU Open is still on and is now accepting applications to run side events or whatever in the Sunday space.

How will eligibility work for the 2014 History Bowl?

And what is happening to the question written for the 2013 CHB? Will they be put towards the 2014 one?

Assuming I can verify that no one who playtested them is now eligible to play the tournament and planning to make use of that status, they will be folded into the 2014 set, yes.

Cheynem wrote:How will eligibility work for the 2014 History Bowl?

If we're going to have a 2014 championship, it seems odd to open it up to people who are no longer in college, especially as that raises other questions (e.g. for 2013 undergrad graduating students going off to grad school next year, would they be eligible for both? just their undergrad school? just their grad school?). I am inclined to thus say eligibility is solely based off of where people are going to be in the 2013-14 academic year, but if there's demand among alumni, I would be open to having an alumni division, perhaps on a doubles model, so people can play the set. We'd probably need at least 6 teams of 2 for that to be worthwhile; what do people think about that? Obviously, there's already a doubles open history tournament in the Chicago area, so if people don't want to bother playing again, I can understand that, though maybe an "alumni" division where eligibility is based off of where you either went as an undergrad or grad student (meaning, your teammate would also have had to attended a school you did) could work. Thoughts? I'd be inclined to let people play as singles too, if preferred. Overall, though, I think the chances of this getting a critical mass of teams in an open/alumni division are increased if team size is limited to 1 or 2 players.

Matt Weiner wrote:Therefore, the attempted summer version of the tournament will not take place, and we will run the 2014 College History Bowl at the day-after-ICT time.

Does the offer for teams that signed up in 2013 to play for free still stand?

Masked Canadian History Bandit wrote:And what is happening to the question [SINGULAR] written for the 2013 CHB?

bahhahahaha