The Quizbowl Resource Center

William & Mary is pleased to announce Oxford Open (North America), a regular difficulty tournament which will be run on January 17th, 2015, and is available to be mirrored on or after that date. The tournament will be written by Oxford University with contributions by William & Mary. There are two important things to note:

1.) The North American set will be tailored to a North American audience. This set will not feature the same concentration of British history, literature, or UK-centric trash that the UK set will feature. I can personally guarantee that this set will feature exactly zero questions on professional cricket.
2.) To guarantee quality, members of the VCU club will be play-testing this tournament.

The distribution will be as follows:

4/4 Literature
4/4 History
4/4 Science
3/3 RMP/Social Science (no more than 1/1 of each, at least 1/0 or 0/1 of each)
2.5/2.5 Fine arts (1/1 visual, 1/1 auditory, 0.5/0.5 other)
0.5/0.5 geography

With the remaining 2/2 drawing from these categories plus trash, current events, and other categories which do not neatly fall into any others.

Registration and Fees:
Base fee: $100
Buzzer discount: -$5
Staffer discount: -$20
Travel discount: -$15 per 200 miles one way
Minimum fee will be $30.

MIRRORS
We are interested in finding hosts to mirror this set in the following regions:
New England
Canada
The South
Great Lakes (Ohio/Michigan area)
Midwest
Upper Midwest
Lower Midwest
West Coast
Online

If interested in hosting at any of these sites please contact me at scsmiley AT email DOT wm DOT edu.

Information regarding how to pay will be posted this week.

After receiving some helpful feedback, William & Mary will be running this as a regular, closed tournament.

With the exception of Canada (where as I understand details are still being worked out), we are still looking for mirrors of all sites.

Field:

VCU
Maryland

Is there a possibility for an online mirror of this tournament? I'd like to get a crack at the set even if a conveniently located mirror doesn't spring up.

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Is there a possibility for an online mirror of this tournament? I'd like to get a crack at the set even if a conveniently located mirror doesn't spring up.

There absolutely is if there are people who want to host one. I'm not sure if I'll have the time to host a regular site and then an online mirror myself though.

Is there anyone who has expressed interest in hosting a mirror of this in the Northeast?

We are still looking for mirrors across the country, with only the Mid-Atlantic and Canada sites currently claimed. If you are interested in hosting a mirror, please PM or email me.

There are three claimed mirror sites, it seems: CMU, Waterloo, and William and Mary. Are those the only three?

Right now that is the case. Anybody who wishes to hold a mirror in an area where there isn't a nearby site is more than welcome to contact me.

Additionally: if there aren't enough teams for the W&M site, the tournament will be postponed and will either be run at a later date, or run as a Skype tournament.

The William & Mary site for this tournament is going to be postponed. In the event that we cannot find a suitable date for a physical mirror, this will be run as a Skype tournament. I will post more information about this relatively soon.

Should a suitable physical mirror date be found, Wake Forest would likely be interested in bringing a team!

Due to the number of tournaments this spring, running a physical version of this tournament at the main site seems unlikely. As an alternative we would like to run this as a Skype tournament at a discounted rate. At the moment I am looking at all dates from late January to May to see what could feasibly work.

I've been admitted to the usergroup for discussing this set but still can't see any discussion threads. Has anyone set up a sub-forum yet? I don't think this is something I can do.

Ndg wrote:I've been admitted to the usergroup for discussing this set but still can't see any discussion threads. Has anyone set up a sub-forum yet? I don't think this is something I can do.

At the top of the Collegiate Discussion forum, there should be an Oxford Open 2015 subforum. Let me know if you can't see this.

Any word on that online mirror?

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Any word on that online mirror?

I will have a date for it by this weekend.

The online mirror of this tournament will be held on Sunday March 1st, 2015. I am aware that there high school tournaments taking place the previous day, but all the possible dates that I see have this issue.

This tournament will cost $50 per team to play. Teams that provide a moderator will receive a $15 discount.

Is the Online edition of this tournament going to be open? Either way I might be interested.

the charm wrote:Is the Online edition of this tournament going to be open? Either way I might be interested.

It will be run as an open tournament.

I'll play this, PM me if you want to team up.

Edit: now playing with Kenji Golimlim, Doug Yetman and Mike Bentley.

I'm also looking to play this. PM me if you want to play together!

Depending on my schedule, I'd also be interested in playing this.

EDIT: I'm joining a team of Jake Sundberg, Nick Conder and Rama Rangaraju to play this.

Frauny Von Smiley wrote:This tournament will cost $50 to play. Teams that provide a moderator will receive a $15 discount.

Is this $50 per team or per person? This doesn't affect my willingness to play, I'm just curious.

I'll play this, then. Seeking teammates, especially people I haven't gotten a chance to team up with yet.

I'm interested in playing this. I'm willing to be a free agent.

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:

Frauny Von Smiley wrote:This tournament will cost $50 to play. Teams that provide a moderator will receive a $15 discount.

Is this $50 per team or per person? This doesn't affect my willingness to play, I'm just curious.

$50 per team. I will edit the post to make this clear.

I'll play.

I'm in.

Is there a field list that you can post on the forums, Sean?

In.

Current Field

Team 1: Tejas, Raje Kenji Golimlim, Doug Yetman and Mike Bentley

Team 2: Jacob O'Rourke, Jake Sundberg, Nick Conder and Rama Rangaraju

Team 3: Jason Chang, Corry Wang, Kevin Wang, Hideohiro Anto

Team 4: Jasper Lee, Sid Dogra, Rohith Nagari, Dylan Minarik

Free Agents

Eric Mukherjee
Ben Zhang
Alejandro (from Washington)

Please let me know if there are any errors in this post.

Teams should also send me an email with the email addresses of all members and their Skype ID no later than February 22nd.

Frauny Von Smiley wrote:Current Field

Team 1: Tejas, Raje Kenji Golimlim, Doug Yetman and Mike Bentley

Team 2: Jacob O'Rourke, Jake Sundberg, Nick Conder and Rama Rangaraju

Free Agents

Eric Mukherjee
Dylan Minarik
Rohith Nagari
Douglas Yetman
Alejandro (from Washington)

Please let me know if there are any errors in this post.

Teams should also send me an email with the email addresses of all members and their Skype ID no later than February 22nd.

Unless Douglas Yetman is Doug's evil twin, he's already in the field.

The Predictable Consequences wrote:

Frauny Von Smiley wrote:

Teams should also send me an email with the email addresses of all members and their Skype ID no later than February 22nd.

Unless Douglas Yetman is Doug's evil twin, he's already in the field.

Thank you. Sometimes I am bad at doing things.

I'll play I guess.

I'll play.

I'll play this too.

Rohith, Jasper, Sid, and I have formed a team for this.

Field and Free Agent list updated to reflect changes.

This is a last call for interest in the online mirror. If no more teams or persons express interest, I would recommend that the remaining free agents consolidate into a team, leaving us with a field of 5.

isn't 4 + 1 supposed to be 5 though?

The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad wrote:isn't 4 + 1 supposed to be 5 though?

Yes, mistake fixed.

Shoot, I didn't see this before now. If this is still being run as an open tournament, is it too late to sign up to play this?

Vissi d'arte wrote:Shoot, I didn't see this before now. If this is still being run as an open tournament, is it too late to sign up to play this?

Same here.

I believe that Evan Adams, Eric Mukherjee and I have formed some sort of team, but I am not sure.

historical pun wrote:

Vissi d'arte wrote:Shoot, I didn't see this before now. If this is still being run as an open tournament, is it too late to sign up to play this?

Same here.

Since it would help even out the schedule I will allow a sixth team.

This is just a reminder for all players to send me an email with their Skype IDs. I need both an email address and the Skype IDs from everybody, as well as at least one phone number per team. Please get this information to me as soon as possible. As stated above, my email address is scsmiley AT email DOT wm DOT edu. It's a bit strange, so make sure you've entered it correctly.

Jason Thompson and Jonathan from Rutgers: I am under the impression that you both wish to play this tournament. Please confirm if this is the case. You are, of course, welcome to find additional teammates in order to field a full team if you wish.

Due to computer problems that probably won't get fixed by the end of the week, I'm going to withdraw from the tournament. Apologies to Rohith, Dylan, and Sid.

Alejandro has joined us, but Rohith can no longer play. Let me know if you would like to be on our team!

EDIT: Jonathan has joined, making us a full unit once again.

I realize this is pretty late in the week, but I don't check these forums very often, and I just saw this post. If there are any teams left that aren't full, send me a message, I'm interested in playing this. Thanks.