New Trier Varsity (12/19/2009) at New Trier (Winnetka, IL)

[at your pleasure]

What about 8 brackets of 6, and the top teams plus four wild-card teams play in two parallel championship brackets of 6 (and consolation brackets of 6 for teams outside the top 12? It would take the same amount of rounds though it could possibly make tiebreakers a bit of a mess), and all 48 teams would be in contention for the entire time.

Ahem.

I would like this idea too. But the idea of parallel brackets also carries with it an inherent unfairness. It's like I said, there really isn't a "right" answer here. Every format has its up-and-downs--including today's. I'm just sorry that Matt Weiner is being so negative about the way NTV was run.

What exactly is inherently unfair about parallel brackets?

[Boeing X-20, Please!]

Given the choice between what this tournament did (extremely unreliable format for deciding who made the playoffs, followed by carrying over records such that the issues with the prelims affected standings within the championship bracket) I don't believe it received any of the advantages of properly constructed playoff round-robin brackets, and would have been lost very little fairness-wise by doing a single-elim playoff, in exchange for the huge benefit of making the prelim-playoff cutoff more fair.

I'd say that getting as many teams as many games as possible is just as important as how fair getting into the playoffs is. If we did your proposed format I'm fairly confident we would have made the playoffs (even if WWS A was in our bracket and the game went down as it did, etc.) but may not have gotten very far. Between the option of making the consolation bracket and playing an awesome 11 games or making the finals and playing 8 or 9, I would definitely choose the former. Playing quizbowl is all the passion for learning things, not winning trophies. Thus playing more is as important than being in contention more.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Well, why couldn't there still be consolation games? It seems like teams stayed even after they had been eliminated, so its possible to keep playing some form of playoff bracket after being eliminated that would actually determine a top-bottom ranking.

[Matt Weiner]

I'd say that getting as many teams as many games as possible is just as important as how fair getting into the playoffs is. If we did your proposed format I'm fairly confident we would have made the playoffs (even if WWS A was in our bracket and the game went down as it did, etc.) but may not have gotten very far. Between the option of making the consolation bracket and playing an awesome 11 games or making the finals and playing 8 or 9, I would definitely choose the former. Playing quizbowl is all the passion for learning things, not winning trophies. Thus playing more is more important than being in contention more.

It's trivially easy to construct a single-elim format where every team plays to the last or at least penultimate game for placement purposes after being knocked out of championship contention. I don't want to get bogged down with the details of a hypothetical format for a tournament that already happened, but keep that in mind. My point here is that power-matching offers no real advantages over bracketed prelims and introduces several new problems.

[Dan-Don]

48 teams. 12 packets. Make a better format, Weiner. One that is pure round robin and doesn't involve any scary things like power-matching, half-packets, double elimination, separate divisions for B/C/D teams, cross-bracket matches, etc.

Ideally, I would have a tournament set of more than 12 rounds...

...but we only had 12....

single-elim playoff

In the good quizbowl community of Illinois, we're trying to get away from that...

This was really an enjoyable day of quizbowl. I'm sure that the TDs want to hear a gentle critique of their format--it was admittedly imperfect. I am not, however, in possession of a DeLorean to fix that imperfection. But ITT, you've taken a minuscule complaint about power-matching and turned it into a basis for comparing one of the year's best tournaments to what is perennially one of Illinois' worst tournaments.

[Matt Weiner]

But ITT, you've taken a minuscule complaint about power-matching and turned it into a basis for comparing one of the year's best tournaments to what is perennially one of Illinois' worst tournaments.

Yes, because, as I am pointing out to you for the third time, both tournaments did exactly the same incorrect thing, though the NT tournament took a more circuitous and self-righteous way of getting there. I have no idea why we're deciding the NT tournament was so awesome, given that the format was stupid and no one with any credibility has made any evaluation of the questions. If, as I know many coaches and players believe, the alpha and omega of tournament quality is finishing a fairly large event on time, then I'm sure NT hit that goal, but I'm equally sure that any number of events with no other redeeming qualities have done the same, so I don't see what the source of all the excitement is.

You need to explain to me why making a team play three of its five prelim games against three of the best teams in the tournament makes NT one of "best tournaments" while doing the same thing makes Fremd one of the "worst tournaments." I am asking you, directly, to explain what exactly the difference between those two formats is in terms of fairness.

[Dan-Don]

You need to explain to me why making a team play three of its five prelim games against three of the best teams in the tournament makes NT one of "best tournaments" while doing the same thing makes Fremd one of the "worst tournaments." I am asking you, directly, to explain what exactly the difference between those two formats is in terms of fairness.

Then I shall. The 2009 iteration of the Fremd tournament constructed several unfair preliminary brackets, as in the norm in these IHSA-format Question Gal-orgies. Groups of death meant that several deserving teams were sent home after 5 matches, and seeding based on total points (as opposed to PPTUH or PPB) meant that several teams were also screwed when it came to their seeds in the single-elimination bracket.

The TDs of the 2009 NTV, on the other hand, did not make any conscious decisions that forced teams to "play three of [their] five prelim games against three of the best teams in the tournament." The TDs simply chose the one, fair, feasible format that they could find that didn't involve single elimination and, as result of that, Stevenson got screwed. So it came down to a decision of "format that screws one team" or "no tournament at all because, in our opinions, there is no fairer 48-team format." What would you pick? This is the problem with being so idealistic about quizbowl. Quizbowl is not perfect. Compromises need to be made all the time.

And, I do not think that efficiency is the alpha and omega of a "good tournament." I think that pyramidal questions with ACF rules/distro and a format in which all teams get to hear 10 rounds makes for a "good tournament"; IHSA format + one-liners + 5 rounds (Fremd tourney) does not.

[Matt Weiner]

The TDs of the 2009 NTV, on the other hand, did not make any conscious decisions that forced teams to "play three of [their] five prelim games against three of the best teams in the tournament."

Unless they came up with this format in a dream, yes they did.

The TDs simply chose the one, fair, feasible format that they could find that didn't involve single elimination

Your argument for the format being fair is to state that it is fair. This is the most basic case of begging the question.

and, as result of that, Stevenson got screwed

Stevenson was only the first example I found; there are others, as is inevitably the case when you assume that you can overcome the punishing-wins problem in a power-matching that only lasts five games (you cannot) or that power matching smooths over errors in initial seeding (it amplifies them).

So it came down to a decision of "format that screws one team" or "no tournament at all because, in our opinions, there is no fairer 48-team format." What would you pick?

I would pick either:
1) Securing enough packets to properly run the tournament before deciding to let in 48 teams, or, failing that,
2) the 12-packet, 48-team format that I presented when you asked this question the last time.

This is the problem with being so idealistic about quizbowl. Quizbowl is not perfect. Compromises need to be made all the time.

And in the case of running a 48-team format with 12 packets, the proper compromise to make is compromising on the playoff format, by running it in single-elim instead of a bracket, so that you don't have to run a terrible prelim format. Compromising to the extent that you deal out a third of the field from championship contention before the tournament begins and then select the wrong teams to the playoffs was the subideal compromise to make, since it created more net negatives than changing the playoff format would have.

And, I do not think that efficiency is the alpha and omega of a "good tournament." I think that pyramidal questions with ACF rules/distro and a format in which all teams get to hear 10 rounds makes for a "good tournament"; IHSA format + one-liners + 5 rounds (Fremd tourney) does not.

I'm sure the Fremd questions were awful. I have no idea what the NT questions were like, since I haven't seen them and nobody whom I trust has seen them and told me they were good. If the NT question set was far superior to Fremd's, that's great. The format was still just as bad, since it was effectively identical.

[Dan-Don]

I think NTV did the best job it could have done with 12 packets and the desire to avoid single elim. It was not their intention to screw anybody. I'm sorry you don't feel this way.

[Stained Diviner]

Matt, you are entirely wrong.

First of all, it is difficult enough to get a large field here to play ten rounds. We lost eight teams at lunch, many because I told them that they should either play five more rounds or go home. We lost another team after Round 9 because I had told them we would finish at 4:00 and their 10th match would have ended at 4:15. I believe the reason Palmer made the comment about not coming back is because he didn't think his team should be playing so many matches, and there were a large number of coaches who felt the same way. If we had tried for 12 rounds, we would have had mass defections. This tournament had 48 teams from 32 schools, which is a different beast than the approximately 16 teams from 10 schools that good tournaments around here typically draw because many teams that were here are used to leaving after five morning rounds and/or single elimination mornings.

Second of all, your scheme of single elimination would have led to an early end to Auburn, who played a bad match early in the afternoon. I am befuddled why anybody who understands good quizbowl, as you do, would suggest a single elimination afternoon for half a second. Are you serious? You really think our tournament was bad because we didn't use single-elimination in the afternoon? Is that the argument here? If so, I win prima facie.

Third of all, one of the reasons power matching is better than pools is that it allows you to get down to fewer teams with more losses. In other words, we were able to get down to six teams with 0 or 1 loss, and if we had used eight morning pools, then we would have had roughly 16 teams with 0 or 1 loss--probably not exactly 16 teams because of a circle of death or two. It achieves that by having the stronger teams play stronger schedules. What Fremd did last year is irrelevant to this discussion--to get a chance to be in the top six after after five matches you have to play some good teams.

Fourth of all, the reason Stevenson and Loyola did not make the top bracket is that in their fifth matches they lost to teams that were statistically worse than they were. In other words, they had their chance and blew it. The system was as fair as any system possibly could be.

Fifth of all, the reason I don't like morning pools for large tournaments is that they really suck. I have coached at many of them. Because my team is one of the elite around here, we typically spent our entire morning playing teams that bored us, perhaps with one or two exceptions out of the five matches. We rarely play at such tournaments any more, though that is due a lot more to the way the Illinois circuit has gone in recent years than the system. When we do play at such tournaments now, which is generally only at PACE NSC (excluding tournaments that only have two pools), I can tell my team ahead of time which three or four matches will be competitive and which three or four matches won't. Isn't it better to play almost all competitive matches than to play several that are not? PACE NSC can afford to do this more than I can because it's a two-day tournament with more rounds, but they are still wrong to do it.

To answer Jeff's query about the afternoon pools--because Loyola had the highest PPG of the two-game losers, they were placed in one pool and the next two teams were placed in the other.

[Susan]

Hey, guys, let's try to keep it civil and board-rule-compliant during this discussion. Thanks.

[BRizzle]

Fourth of all, the reason Stevenson and Loyola did not make the top bracket is that in their fifth matches they lost to teams that were statistically worse than they were. In other words, they had their chance and blew it. The system was as fair as any system possibly could be.

Stevenson was a step above us, but when you neg 5 times and fail to listen to questions (negging people for groups, ect.) you are going to lose to statistically worse teams in a field this strong. The field had to be narrowed down to six teams from 12 or so deep teams, and they blew their chance with numerous mistakes. Stevenson didn't have a harder path than any other of the teams that made the championship bracket, so I really don't see how the card system was unfair to them.

[Captain Sinico]

...Power-matching was ok because this tournament needed a format to fit 48 teams and 12 packets. After much discussion, this was clearly the best such format.

I don't recall ever having seen any such discussion. I join Matt in saying that I don't see that anyone can conclude that this was "clearly the best such format."* This is even more evident when it is noted that we've systematically misstated the case here. If the format followed was the one posted previously, we effectively had two parallel tournaments in the prelims, second and third teams never having been in championship contention and playing in a second tournament that was merged into the first at playoff time. So you're really dealing with a 36-team tournament on 12 packets, and an 12-team tournament on the same. There are any number of ways to handle that.

MaS

*In fact, your repeated statements that there is no "best format" in general even in the abstract seem to indicate that you should agree, albeit for a different reason.

[Stained Diviner]

I want to thank Jonah for all of the effort he put into this tournament. This truly was a team effort, and outside of communications with coaches and food, he did more work than I did. He would be more than capable of running the tournament himself if it came down to it.

I also want to thank all the people he thanked--a lot of people provided a lot of help in a lot of ways.

I also want to thank Matt for moving the power matching discussion to the other thread. I will reply when I have more time, which will be somewhat soon.

[Matt Weiner]

Second of all, your scheme of single elimination would have led to an early end to Auburn, who played a bad match early in the afternoon.

Fourth of all, the reason Stevenson and Loyola did not make the top bracket is that in their fifth matches they lost to teams that were statistically worse than they were. In other words, they had their chance and blew it. The system was as fair as any system possibly could be.

Wait, are teams entitled to have "a bad match" without suffering a consequence, or not? Or is that a privilege that only Auburn, but not certain other teams, have? You seem to be arguing contradictory things in fairly rapid succession here; please clarify.

I am befuddled why anybody who understands good quizbowl, as you do, would suggest a single elimination afternoon for half a second. Are you serious? You really think our tournament was bad because we didn't use single-elimination in the afternoon? Is that the argument here? If so, I win prima facie.

Your tournament format was bad because you used a perverse system for the prelims that didn't even come close to identifying the top 6 teams for your 6-team playoff. Ideally, you should have used a 7 (not 10) round prelim, followed by bracketed playoffs. Since you did not acquire enough packets to run your tournament properly, the negatives contained in a bracketed prelim to single elim playoff system would have been preferable under the constraints you had to the negatives contained in a power matching to bracketed playoffs system. You should have chosen the least bad of the realistic options, of course.

Single elimination is poor when bracketed playoffs are possible, all else being equal, because it does not properly rank teams below #1 and it moves teams to the point of "I cannot possibly get into the championship but I still have to motivate myself to play" at an earlier point than other playoff formats do. I do not accept the argument that the reason single elimination is a poor format is because it eliminates teams based on one game; all formats must, and do, eliminate teams based on one game, depending on when that one game is. I think single elimination is a perfectly fair playoff format for determining a winner, because a team that is really the best in the tournament should be able to win all of its games, and thus SE produces a fair winner. It is not an ideally good format, for the other reasons.

When you do power-matching over five games, you do introduce a fairness issue, because you require teams to play wildly different strengths-of-schedule, but you rank them solely by their won-loss record. Fairness is the ultimate concern in any format. Only once fairness is assured can you worry about giving people more games against teams of their own level, setting up a bracketed playoff, making an ideological statement about other tournaments in Illinois, or any other concerns. If you would like to "win" a discussion about a good tournament, you must first run a fair tournament, as fairness is a necessary, but not sufficient, precondition for goodness in quizbowl formatting. Your tournament was not fair.

[Dresden_The_BIG_JERK]

Not to detract from the current discussion, but congrats to Auburn (and everyone else involved!) and A+ for the quickly growing Auburn/St Ig. rivalry.

[Charley Pride]

Wait, are teams entitled to have "a bad match" without suffering a consequence, or not? Or is that a privilege that only Auburn, but not certain other teams, have? You seem to be arguing contradictory things in fairly rapid succession here; please clarify.

Losing to WWS was punished by us having to play a (dis)advantaged final against St. Ignatius. Surely you realize that.

[Matt Weiner]

Losing to WWS was punished by us having to play a (dis)advantaged final against St. Ignatius. Surely you realize that.

That's not what we're talking about.

[Boeing X-20, Please!]

Second of all, your scheme of single elimination would have led to an early end to Auburn, who played a bad match early in the afternoon.

Fourth of all, the reason Stevenson and Loyola did not make the top bracket is that in their fifth matches they lost to teams that were statistically worse than they were. In other words, they had their chance and blew it. The system was as fair as any system possibly could be.

Wait, are teams entitled to have "a bad match" without suffering a consequence, or not? Or is that a privilege that only Auburn, but not certain other teams, have? You seem to be arguing contradictory things in fairly rapid succession here; please clarify.

This is also a bad comparison because those "bad matches" gave Auburn its 1st loss, while it gave Stevenson its 2nd loss.

[Matt Weiner]

This is also a bad comparison because those "bad matches" gave Auburn its 1st loss, while it gave Stevenson its 2nd loss.

You're missing the point. It wasn't a "bad match" for Stevenson to lose to Auburn, the tournament champion. As a Top 6, but not the #1, team, Stevenson is to be expected to lose to Auburn (as is every other team in the tournament). Both teams had a single "bad match." Stevenson missed the playoffs because they lost to two teams who made the playoffs while winning all of their other games, while Oak Park-River Forest didn't even have to play ANY playoff teams, still lost a game, and made the playoffs.

Stevenson had a "bad match" (if we define that as losing in a matchup with a statistically inferior opponent) against Northmont only; their result against Auburn was exactly what it was supposed to be. The point is that Stevenson had to play teams #1 and #5, lost to them, and didn't make the playoffs. Oak Park-River Forest played no one ranked higher than #10, lost to team #11, and made the playoffs. Stevenson's strength of schedule was way, way harder than OPRF's, which is why it makes no sense to compare them based on straight record.

[Mechanical Beasts]

This is also a bad comparison because those "bad matches" gave Auburn its 1st loss, while it gave Stevenson its 2nd loss.

If nothing else productive comes of this discussion, we've at least identified the prejudice that causes people to dislike formats that eliminate teams from championship contention after only one loss (i.e. prelim brackets assuming the top seed goes undefeated*). Apparently one team's second loss is inherently more "real" than another's first, even if the two losses both come against really good competition and the one loss comes against a weaker team.

* in essentially every format, at some point, you have to have the belief that playing a game is the best possible measure of whether one team is better than another, so it's just from the start sort of frustrating to hear "all we did was lose to a top-bracket team, and now we don't get to play with only top-bracket teams!" Well, you should have beaten one; that's proof that maybe you can beat more of them.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

Apparently one team's second loss is inherently more "real" than another's first, even if the two losses both come against really good competition and the one loss comes against a weaker team.

Here, you seem to be saying that this belief is wrong - and that the two-loss, high-SOS team should be favored.

It's just from the start sort of frustrating to hear "all we did was lose to a top-bracket team, and now we don't get to play with only top-bracket teams!" Well, you should have beaten one; that's proof that maybe you can beat more of them.

And here, you seem to be saying that a high SOS isn't excuse for taking losses.


Don't these contradict each other?

[Mechanical Beasts]

Apparently one team's second loss is inherently more "real" than another's first, even if the two losses both come against really good competition and the one loss comes against a weaker team.

Here, you seem to be saying that this belief is wrong - and that the two-loss, high-SOS team should be favored.

It's just from the start sort of frustrating to hear "all we did was lose to a top-bracket team, and now we don't get to play with only top-bracket teams!" Well, you should have beaten one; that's proof that maybe you can beat more of them.

And here, you seem to be saying that a high SOS isn't excuse for taking losses.


Don't these contradict each other?

Not really. The 4-1 team that thinks it should make the playoffs because hey, it's only one loss had the same SOS as every other 4-1 team. (And, excluding of course each other, the 4-1 team and the 5-0 team had the same SOS.)

The 3-2 team that plays very hard competition says that it should make the playoffs because it was superior to a team that went 4-1 against wildly easier competition. This is a different thing.

[Geringer]

Power-matching works great when you have a relatively homogeneous field, which is something we didn't have at NTV. I mean, the gap between the best schools and some of the other A teams is staggering. When a team like OPRF loses a third round game, for instance, they could end up playing a team that is far worse in comparison than the best team is better, as there were far fewer "good" teams than "bad" ones. As a matter of fact, I'm convinced the "bottom-up" approach is the only reason I qualified for Sunday at HSNCT last year. The format has its flaws, but it certainly is a better experience than throwing two good teams into a morning bracket with four not-so-good ones and having them get slaughtered. While the format certainly screwed Loyola and others, it made for competitive matches almost all the way through the tournament, which, from a learning/improving point of view, is far superior than pool play.

Also, can't we all just get along? I mean, Dan and Matt, you guys are basically saying the same things over and over again and just writing long posts that I'm sure most people aren't reading. I wont tell a joke about arguing on the internet, but your argument is going nowhere fast and I think everyone but you two knows it.

User was banned for 24 hours for backseat moderation/metaposting while not a member of board staff. --the mgmt

[Stained Diviner]

If anybody gets a DeLorean and uses it to go back in time to make our tournament worse and ruin this opportunity to teach Weiner a lesson, then I will be sad. Please, nobody do this.

[Dresden_The_BIG_JERK]

If anybody gets a DeLorean and uses it to go back in time to make our tournament worse and ruin this opportunity to teach Weiner a lesson, then I will be sad. Please, nobody do this.

There go my Christmas plans.

For the record, what were the teams that opted to leave at lunch?

[David Riley]

I would imagine that the teams that elected to leave after lunch were either 1) not into good quiz bowl per se or 2) look at quiz bowl as "just another thing to do", rather than commit to the day the way a competitive team would. I think the assumption was that everyone would stay but I'm not sure this was as clearly spelled out as it could have been. Or, if it was, coaches did not really take time to read the directions (a not infrequent occurrence).

IIRC, 48 teams is the largest field we have had at a good quiz bowl tournament in Illinois (I'm not counting the Kickoffs, which made too many concesstions to IHSA format and practices). However, not all of those teams totally buy in to good quiz bowl. Theoretically, power matching and the further subdivision with B teams should have ensured that Greenhorn C did not have to meet Perennial Powerhouse A in any of the matches. I'm not sure that happened.

Then, as someone upthread (Charlie?) pointed out, a team that went 0-5 or 1-4 probably felt that they had little incentive to stay for the afternoon. They don't see ten games as getting the most bang for the buck, they see it as "I don't want to play for 48th place".

I also heard the usual complaints about the questions (where's the comp math, too much art history, too long, etc.) which was no doubt another factor.

Given all of this, I would have made the afternoon rounds optional for all but the top twelve teams.

[Huang]

it made for competitive matches almost all the way through the tournament, which, from a learning/improving point of view, is far superior than pool play.

You know what's an excellent way to learn and improve? Practice. The thing you do where losing by 500 or winning by 50 doesn't matter because you're not trying to determine which team is the 5th best team or the 55th best team.

However, the purpose of a tournament is to determine the final standings of the teams attending such that they correlate well with the statistical rankings of the teams attending. Taking a quick look at the stats, this tournament's format didn't achieve this purpose as well as pool play, such as the one Harry suggested, would have.

[dtaylor4]

If anybody gets a DeLorean and uses it to go back in time to make our tournament worse and ruin this opportunity to teach Weiner a lesson, then I will be sad. Please, nobody do this.

There go my Christmas plans.

For the record, what were the teams that opted to leave at lunch?

Fenwick x2, Winnebago, Maine South, Naperville North (I think), two others I can't pull right now.

Geneva left after round 9.

[Stained Diviner]

Naperville North stayed.

[jonah]

For the record, what were the teams that opted to leave at lunch?

Fenwick x2, Winnebago, Maine South, Naperville North (I think), two others I can't pull right now.
Geneva left after round 9.

I believe the full list is Maine East, Maine South, Winnebago, McHenry, Fenwick x2, Libertyville, and Crete-Monee x2.

We dropped one bracket of six and split Boylan Catholic and Marian Central into two teams each for the afternoon to compensate.

[dtaylor4]

For the record, what were the teams that opted to leave at lunch?

Fenwick x2, Winnebago, Maine South, Naperville North (I think), two others I can't pull right now.
Geneva left after round 9.

I believe the full list is Maine East, Maine South, Winnebago, McHenry, Fenwick x2, Libertyville, and Crete-Monee x2.

We dropped one bracket of six and split Boylan Catholic and Marian Central into two teams each for the afternoon to compensate.

Wheaton North was also double-counted, so I created "Invisible WN" and gave every team in that bracket a forfeit win.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

I was sad to see Maine South decide to leave. However, it should be noticed that Niles West did, in fact, stay - they might be developing into a more-than-just-conference program.

[Frater Taciturnus]

I mean, winning trophies is great and it makes you feel good about yourself, but its not like hordes of women or paparazzi start following quizbowlers around after they win a national championship.

You have no idea how wrong you are.