Best National Tournament

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If your team could only go to one national tournament, which would it be?

ASCN
1
3%
Beta
0
No votes
NAC
1
3%
NAQT
18
58%
PACE
11
35%
Panasonic
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 31

quizbowlmike
Lulu
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Location: Gainesville, FL
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Best National Tournament

Post by quizbowlmike »

see question above. feel free to elaborate as to why you made the choice you did.
jewtemplar
Wakka
Posts: 131
Joined: Tue Apr 22, 2003 10:18 am
Location: Burke, VA
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Post by jewtemplar »

Picking one is tough.
I voted NAQT, basically for reasons of consistency.
NAQT readers are rather consistently great, and NAQT also has more consistent and unambiguous questions. These factors boost NAQT a hair over PACE despite the trash and a few inconceivable leadins ("It begins in the forest primeval..."). PACE's questions are all on solid academic subjects, and generally very well written, but the style is sometimes confusing. The appearance of the same off-the-wall negs in different rooms, and the prevalence of such negs over all, while amusing, may have something to do with question phrasing.
It's kind of pointless to compare, since we will do all we can for the foreseeable future to attend both.
jrbarry
Tidus
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Location: Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Post by jrbarry »

Perhaps it is just my own "problem," but I see no BEST National. All have their pluses and minuses and my opinions are limited to what I have actually experienced myself at these nationals.

ASCN---14 times
NAC---6 times
PACE---2 times
NAQT---5 times
Beta---5 times
Panasonic---5 times

A few superlatives based on my limited experience...

Best questions I ever heard at a Nationals...NAQT any year

Worst questions I ever heard at Nationals...NAC in 1995

Best tournament organization and flow...any NAC or any ASCN

Worst organization and flow...PACE at Furman in SC

Best match format...PACE

Worst match format...Panasonic

Best rules...ASCN

Worst rules...tie between NAQT and Panasonic

Tournament staff my players complained the most about...PACE in year 1 and at Furman

Tournament staff my players complained the least about...ASCN

Most annoying thing to me personally...TIMED matches, speedreading, and no bounce-backs bonuses

Most important factors in choosing a national...dates and locations
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Dan Greenstein
Yuna
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Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2003 8:26 pm
Location: Takoma Park, MD

Post by Dan Greenstein »

PACE and NAQT are both at least a step above the others if your primary concern is the quantity and quality of competition. PACE has the best questions--albeit with some negative aspects mentioned by JewTemplar that can be corrected--while NAQT has the better tournament organization among the two. If your thing is sight-seeing, NAC and ASCN may be your cup of tea, but that argument loses some of its strength when the two "widely recognized" national championships are held in vacation destinations, as NAQT has been the past two years and PACE next year. Finally, both NAQT and PACE are the least costly tournaments when you factor out location-variable costs such as transportation.
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