2024 ACF Nationals: April 20–21, 2024 at Duke

[kearnm7]

I am pleased to announce 2024 ACF Nationals, to be held the weekend of April 20–21, 2024 at Duke University.

The head editor of 2024 ACF Nationals is Nick Jensen. Other editors are Jordan Brownstein, Jason Golfinos, Aseem Keyal, Eddie Kim, Joseph Krol, Stephen Liu, Grant Peet, Jonathen Settle, and Kevin Wang.

The tournament director will be Michael Kearney. Zac Bennett and Jacob Egol will be assistant tournament directors.

Eligibility
Information on who is eligible to play ACF tournaments can be found here.

Qualification
Information on qualification for ACF Nationals can be found here.

Fees and Discounts

• Base fee: $350

• Buzzer discount: -$20 per functioning buzzer system (with eight functioning buzzers). Please note that the buzzer discount will be revoked, and a further penalty of $10 assessed, for buzzers that are non-functional upon arriving to ACF Nationals.

• Staffer discount: -$100 for each staffer capable of reading a round in ca. 40 minutes.

• Packet discounts are listed below.

Teams will owe half the registration fee if they drop from the field with less than four weeks to go before the tournament and the full registration fee if they drop from the field with less than two weeks to go before the tournament.

Packet Submission
This year, the editors of ACF Nationals are planning to write 12 editors’ packets and produce 12 packets from team submissions.

Packet submission for 2024 ACF Nationals will be mandatory. However, teams will only be required to submit half-packets. Teams should request a half-packet distribution by emailing [email protected].

Finalized tossups for 2024 ACF Nationals will be capped at 850 characters. Bonuses will be capped at 750 characters. However, this cap does not apply to submissions; submitting teams are allowed and encouraged to submit longer questions.

The packet deadlines are:

• -$75 packet submission discount (-$150 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, December 3.

• -$50 packet submission discount (-$100 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, December 24.

• -$25 packet submission discount (-$50 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, January 14.

• -$0 packet submission deadline (-$25 for a full packet): packet submitted by Sunday, February 4.

• +$25 packet submission deadline: packet submitted by Sunday, February 25.

• +$50 packet submission deadline: packet submitted by Sunday, March 17.

• Later packet submissions will be charged $10/day late.

Additionally, if you submit a packet before registering for the tournament and subsequently do not attend ACF Nationals, whether because you do not qualify or because you choose not to attend, that packet can still be used for ACF Nationals. The discount the packet would have earned will roll over to the next ACF tournament that the school sends a team to. If the discount is greater than $70 (ACF's share of tournament fees), it can be spread among multiple teams from the same school, or the difference between $70 and the amount of the discount can be rolled over to a further tournament. Rolling over a discount does not preclude submitting a packet for the next ACF tournament, should that be required.

All packet submission deadlines are at 11:59 P.M. Eastern on the given day to [email protected]. Quality discounts may be awarded for packets that have a substantial number of questions that are usable with less editing. Quality discounts may be larger or smaller depending on the number of such questions.

It is expected that 2024 ACF Nationals will have a field cap of 48 teams, but more details about field size and staffing will be available in the coming months.

[kearnm7]

ACF is currently seeking a host site for ACF Nationals, which will be held on the weekend of April 20-21, 2024. Please submit your bid to host ACF Nationals using this form. ACF looks to receive as many bids as possible from different institutions. Please provide as much of the requested information as possible.

Bids should be submitted by Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 11:59 Eastern. If you have any questions about the bidding process, please reach out jointly to myself ([email protected]) and Tomás Aguilar-Fraga ([email protected]).

ACF hopes to announce the location of the tournament by November 1, 2023.

The hosting guidelines and benefits are outlined here, on the ACF website.

ACF looks forward to receiving your bids!

[kearnm7]

ACF is also currently seeking assistant tournament directors (aTDs) for 2024 ACF Nationals. Please apply using this form. ACF looks to receive as many applications as possible and plans to select multiple aTDs for the tournament.

Applications should be submitted by Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 11:59 Eastern. If you have any questions about the application, please reach out to me ([email protected]).

ACF hopes to announce the aTDs by November 1, 2023.

[kearnm7]

ACF is pleased to announce that ACF Nationals will be held the weekend of April 20–21, 2024 at Duke University, with assistance from the University of North Carolina. Room reservations will not be officially confirmed until early December; until rooms are confirmed, ACF strongly encourages teams to hold off booking non-refundable lodging or travel to the Triangle.

Zac Bennett and Jacob Egol have been selected as assistant Tournament Directors.

[Shahar S.]

Would it be possible to pin this announcement in place of last year's nats thread?

[Chimango Caracara]

Packets received:

December 3
Claremont A (full)
Columbia A (full)
Cornell B (full)
"Geodesic University" (full)
JHU A (full)
Texas A&M B
UNC A
Yale A (full)
Yale B

December 24
Berkeley A
Cornell A (full)
Harvard A
Minnesota A
WUSTL B

January 14
ASU A
Ottawa A
Rutgers A
Vanderbilt A
Waterloo
WUSTL A

February 4
Chicago A (minus science; science added February 17)
Duke A
Purdue A (full)
Stanford A
Texas A
Toronto (full)

February 25
Brown A
Georgia Tech A
Indiana A
McGill A
Minnesota B
Northwestern A
Truman State
UNC B
Washington A

March 17 and beyond
Berkeley B
Chicago B
Chicago C
Chicago D
Columbia B
Florida
Illinois A
Maryland
Michigan A
MIT A
NYU A
Penn
Virginia A

I'd like to clarify that teams who submit full packets should still email [email protected] to request a distribution, which has some instructions about categories and formatting.

[kearnm7]

ACF is pleased to announce that room reservations at Duke have been confirmed! We look forward to seeing you all there in April.

Regionals hosts and teams with a Regionals editor should be on the lookout for an email from me with details on how applying for hosting/editing bids will work this year, though the deadline to submit will not be until early January.

[kearnm7]

The A-Values from 2024 ACF Regionals, and which teams have currently qualified for ACF Nationals, are available here. Games involving Berkeley A, Cornell B, Vanderbilt A, and UNC A were not counted in the calculation of A-Values, since players on those teams had already received a bid to ACF Nationals through the hosting or editing bid process.

For an explanation of how A-values and qualifications are determined, see here. At the New England site, Yale B and Brown A had the same playoff record and the same playoff PPG. As a result, playoff PPB was used as a second tiebreaker for placement, meaning that Yale B was awarded third place at the site and the two's A-values remained unadjusted.

The field cap for 2024 ACF Nationals is 48 teams and will not be expanding. Qualifying teams will be issued invitations to attend ACF Nationals tomorrow, February 2, via email. Teams will have until Sunday, February 11 at 11:59 P.M. Eastern to accept their bid, after which bids will be given to teams on the waitlist in order of A-Value. The 16 teams with the highest A-value that did not qualify for the tournament will receive waitlist invitations tomorrow. If teams are invited to the tournament off the waitlist, they will have 48 hours to accept their invitation.

ACF is also looking for teams willing to serve as standby teams in case of last-minute drops. Standby teams must commit to showing up to the tournament day-of; if there are any open spots, they will be able to play ACF Nationals for no entry fee. Otherwise, they are free to staff or explore Durham. To sign up as a standby team, please email me at [email protected].

[kearnm7]

The three-way tie at the Rutgers site between Columbia C, Vassar, and Haverford has been broken according to PPG during only the round robin phase of the tournament, resulting in a placement order of 7. Columbia C, 8. Vassar, 9. Haverford. The Undergraduate finals between Haverford and Vassar is not counted toward the final placement of either team, though stats from that game are included in A-Value calculations. The placement-adjusted A-Values have been updated accordingly.

[kearnm7]

All 48 spots in the 2024 ACF Nationals field have now been filled. If teams drop out for any reason, spots will be offered to waitlisted teams in order of A-value. Teams who receive offers to fill a spot will again have 48 hours to accept. Please note that teams will owe half the registration fee if they drop from the field with less than four weeks to go before the tournament and the full registration fee if they drop from the field with less than two weeks to go before the tournament.

[kearnm7]

Team contacts should have just received an initial logistics email: if your team did not receive one, please reach out to me.

[kearnm7]

Congratulations to the 2024 ACF Nationals overall champion, Chicago A! WUSTL A finished as runner-up, with North Carolina A taking third.

Cornell A (230) defeated Waterloo (200) in an undergraduate final that came down to the final tossup.

The livestream of the undergraduate final, Carper Award presentation, and awards is archived here.

Thanks to everyone who played, staffed, and helped produce the set. We’ll see you at Fall next year!