A new quiz bowl trainer

[quizzical1]

Protobowl has issues.
QBReader isn't very good.
And I need a reliable source where I can study efficiently. Do you guys have any ideas?

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

Would you like to provide actual specific issues you have that would allow people to provide constructive advice? There appear to be many people who have successfully "studied efficiently" using some of these resources, so I don't want to be the guy to say "skill issue" but it would kind of help to actually say what the problems you have are :)

[arjunvivekraj21]

Yeah I agree with Andrew says lol. You have to be more specific with what you problem you are dealing with. Other qbreader and the archive, I don't think there are any other good sites.

[RexSueciae]

Protobowl has issues.
QBReader isn't very good.
And I need a reliable source where I can study efficiently. Do you guys have any ideas?

If you are looking to study efficiently in the sense of playing questions, and for whatever reason you're not fond of QB Reader, I suggest doing something like the following:

1) Go to the Quizbowl Packet Archive or to the aseemsDB backend (I included the latter only because I use aseemsDB to search for clues and answerlines on a regular basis, and because it automatically converts its packets to PDF, which is convenient for me -- granted, the selection at the Quizbowl Packet Archive is going to by nature be more comprehensive and most recent sets are in PDF and not DOCX anyways).
2) Decide what difficulty of questions you would like to read (MS, HS, or Collegiate) (please consider the first two for now).
3) Choose a question set (preferably one written within the last decade, the more recent the better).
4) Download the files.
5) Read through the questions. Make a note where you would have buzzed in competitive play. Make a note of any clues that you don't know, or look interesting, or think you should study in further detail. Read through all the tossups and then through all the bonuses. Keep doing this until you run out of questions.

That's how players have been packet studying since time immemorial -- since before QB Reader, since before Protobowl, since before my time in quizbowl.

All that aside -- my advice? You don't need packet study to get good. Find things that sound interesting and read about them. Keep an eye open in class, in bookstores and libraries. Apply the same techniques to packet study as you do in games -- keep a blank notebook at hand and after you hear something cool, write it down. Quizbowl is a game -- honestly the most important thing is to have fun.

[quizbowlchamp1]

You might use study guides. Here are some good ones.

https://www.naqt.com/you-gotta-know/

https://www.qwizbowl.com/qwiz5

https://scop-qb.org/study-sheets/

https://ai.stanford.edu/~csewell/culture/index.html (this one is extremely advanced; use at your own risk)