The Quizbowl Resource Center

As part of my schedule generator (see sig), I'm hoping to make a bunch of high school schedule templates for people to use. However, there are certain numbers of teams where things don't exactly lend for an obvious schedule. As such, I would appreciate advice on how to construct acceptable high school formats for varying numbers of teams.

A few constraints that immediately come to mind, and my initial reactions to them:

• Minimum number of games given to each team? I figure if at all possible all teams should be able to play 8 games in a day.
• Maximum number of non-finals rounds? I'd think it would have to be 10, given that many high school sets only have 12 packets.
• Minimum number of prelim rounds? I'm not as sure about this one, but I would think for high school events you wouldn't want to eliminate teams after 3 rounds.
• Minimum number of teams per bracket to remain in finals contention? I figure that would ideally be two (or if necessary one with wildcards), but I'm not sure how feasible that would be for certain formats

The tournaments I directed for high schools aimed for schedules with a minimum of 9 games, a maximum of 12 non-finals rounds, around 5-7 prelim games (but as many as 9 for certain field sizes such as 19 and 20), and -- if I recall correctly -- around 25% - 40%+ remaining in contention beyond the prelims.

I think most of the formats I've used or thought about are collected in this spreadsheet. There's also one by Dwight Wynne here.

My concern for some of those schedules is that NAQT (and several other housewritten sets) only have 12 packets. If you assume you need 2 for finals, that leaves only 10 rounds to do everything else in.

Haaaaaaaarry Whiiiiiiiiiite wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 12:11 pm My concern for some of those schedules is that NAQT (and several other housewritten sets) only have 12 packets. If you assume you need 2 for finals, that leaves only 10 rounds to do everything else in.

Sure, there are no universal parameters that work with all field sizes and number of packets. A 12 packet set is simply insufficient to run a good tournament in the general case, even though it may work for some field sizes. 12 packet sets do an extreme disservice to hosts.

Note that NAQT (IS-###X) sets have 13 packets, but they (historically, at least) do a poor job of ensuring hosts are aware of this option.

Cody wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 12:17 pm

Haaaaaaaarry Whiiiiiiiiiite wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 12:11 pm My concern for some of those schedules is that NAQT (and several other housewritten sets) only have 12 packets. If you assume you need 2 for finals, that leaves only 10 rounds to do everything else in.

Sure, there are no universal parameters that work with all field sizes and number of packets. A 12 packet set is simply insufficient to run a good tournament in the general case, even though it may work for some field sizes. 12 packet sets do an extreme disservice to hosts.

Note that NAQT (IS-###X) sets have 13 packets, but they (historically, at least) do a poor job of ensuring hosts are aware of this option.

For the record, our current policy is that we ask every host if they would prefer the 13-packet version of the set.

(and more generally, we switched from 14-packet IS sets to a 12-packet standard because very few tournament hosts were actually using the 14th packet in the set)

Important Bird Area wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2019 2:34 pm

Cody wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 12:17 pm Note that NAQT (IS-###X) sets have 13 packets, but they (historically, at least) do a poor job of ensuring hosts are aware of this option.

For the record, our current policy is that we ask every host if they would prefer the 13-packet version of the set.

(and more generally, we switched from 14-packet IS sets to a 12-packet standard because very few tournament hosts were actually using the 14th packet in the set)

I've talked to multiple TDs who weren't aware of this option, so it might be worth advertising this more or making it the default.