Bringing Buzzer to Tournaments

[Strongside]

Zeke touched on this in his recent thread, and I remember it was talked about on the IRC, and I wanted to start a thread on teams bringing buzzers to tournaments.

Most tournaments give a five or ten dollar discount for each working buzzer, with some tournaments having a maximum number of buzzers that can be brought for a discount.

I have never bought or looked into buying a buzzer, but I know they can cost of hundreds of dollars, and buzzers range widely in terms of how reliable they are, and how much they cost.

The issues is that there are a lot of risks in bringing buzzers tournaments.

The main issue is having them stolen. Tournaments usually have lunch breaks, and the tournament rooms are usually left unlocked during this time. Most of the people, and sometimes all of the people at the tournament leave at this time.

This could give potential thieves a window to steal buzzers. It wouldn't be that hard for a clever or not so clever thief to steal buzzer sets. Why would a thief want to steal quiz bowl buzzers? Why not? They are worth money, and could be relatively easy to steal.

One way around this is locking rooms/watching them during lunch breaks, but this would be a hassle, and I know that a lot of teams don't have access top locking/unlocking individual rooms.

Another problem is that buzzers can get misplaced, or teams could accidentally take the wrong buzzer. I know at major tournaments, the buzzers are gathered up, and teams can go and take their buzzer. It is possible for a team to take the wrong buzzer, especially since some buzzers are similar. A team could also purposely steal another team's buzzer, although I don't know any instances of that happening.

Other issues with buzzers is carrying them around, especially if they are heavy. I know at Minnesota we bring our judge to meets, but at times it seems like kind of a lot of work for only a 5 or 10 dollar discount at times. I know at times we have forgotten it in the car, and had to go back and get it. I also had these same issues when I was at Drake. Also, if teams are going to a tournament via an airplane, taking buzzers is even more of a hassle.

There is also the issue of teams mistreating buzzers, throwing them, and breaking them during a tournament. I will admit that I have thrown buzzers before (Immature, I know).

Bringing laptops to tournaments is another issue. I didn't want to start a separate thread for this, but it doesn't make sense to me to let someone else use your laptop for a 5 or 10 dollar discount.

I was thinking that maybe quiz bowl could change the buzzer discount, laptop discount, and maybe in turn the base fee of the tournament to reflect that. What do other people think?

[Cheynem]

Just to clarify, are you suggesting that the discounts should be higher?

[dtaylor4]

I disagree that thieves are much of an issue. Do people really buy buzzers on the black market? If not, how else is a thief going to make a decent return?

Also, it would be hard to prove that a team purposefully stole another team's buzzer.

As for incentives: I hold that the potential for slap bowl should be enough incentive for teams to bring buzzers. Unless teams are playing a lot of slap bowl at practice, I hold that most clubs probably own a buzzer system. If you want to go to tournaments that have enough buzzers, bring them, unless you either expect other clubs to bring lots of them and/or for the host club to come up with a lot on their own.

[Important Bird Area]

This is particularly noteworthy for national tournaments, because so many teams have to bring buzzers on planes. The buzzer discounts for ICT and HSNCT have been increasing accordingly.

[Strongside]

Yeah, I think it would be a good idea for buzzer incentives to be increased somehow. Maybe tournaments could raise the base fee and the buzzer discount fee by similar amounts, especially since as far as I know, most teams have buzzers.

[Important Bird Area]

It's a balance between "making sure there are enough buzzers to avoid slap bowl" and "not driving away new teams with an effective tax on people who don't have buzzers yet (or lack the money to repair broken ones)"

[jonah]

not driving away new teams with an effective tax on people who don't have buzzers yet

This is certainly an important consideration. Have tournaments ever given discounts for something like "teams formed in the last two years", or considered doing so?

[at your pleasure]

I think an "economic hardship" discount would fit that purpose well. Any team that cannot afford to buy or repair a buzzer system would almost certainly qualify. I think that some tournaments have discounts that seem to work like this(ACF nationals providing discounts for high schoolers and shorthanded teams, for instance). If this is roughly equal to the buzzer discount, it would seem to neutralize the effective tax.

[aestheteboy]

I think raising the buzzer discounts (and if necessary the base fee) makes a lot of sense. I've always felt that the cost of bringing buzzer systems exceed $5.

As for incentives: I hold that the potential for slap bowl should be enough incentive for teams to bring buzzers. Unless teams are playing a lot of slap bowl at practice, I hold that most clubs probably own a buzzer system. If you want to go to tournaments that have enough buzzers, bring them, unless you either expect other clubs to bring lots of them and/or for the host club to come up with a lot on their own.

It seems to me that the potential for slap bowl may not be a strong enough incentive: first of all, buzzer systems are non-excludable goods, and second of all, responsibility tends to diffuse over people in a situation like this.

[Ben Dillon]

IMHO, I don't think it's helpful to set a dollar amount. For (ridiculous) example, a buzzer discount of $1 against an entry fee of $1000 wouldn't be an incentive to bring a system. Plus, I not only want enough buzzer systems to run the tourney but enough systems to function as backups too. It's not like I'm expecting systems to fail, but I very much like the idea of most to every room having a backup they can set up by themselves quickly without having to summon a TD.

To preserve the incentive, I think what should be set is a percentage, say 25%. (To me, knocking a quarter off the entry fee strikes me as adequate.)

And to lob another dead cat down the church aisle, I'd say the same should be true of teams providing moderators. Give them an adequate incentive to do so. (Phil Blessman extends this sort of concept to giving discounts (tax breaks?) to teams who come from long distances; conceivably discounts could be given for teams new to a tourney as well, which would favor startup teams.)

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

not driving away new teams with an effective tax on people who don't have buzzers yet

This is certainly an important consideration. Have tournaments ever given discounts for something like "teams formed in the last two years", or considered doing so?

Considering Mizzou has played multiple ACF events for as little as $0 this year thanks to new team and new to ACF discounts, I'd say yes.

[Mike Bentley]

I don't think that the buzzer discounts should be raised, at least not for non-national tournaments. Maryland, for instance, has something like 6 buzzer systems it can potentially bring to a tournament. If the buzzer discount was raised to like $10 or $15 per buzzer with no cap on buzzers, it starts getting to the point where this team could pretty much negate writing a packet (or at least a timely one) by the number of buzzers they bring. Writing and editing tournaments takes a tremendous amount of work, and adding ways for people to pay the editors a lot less money by just bringing a lot of buzzers seems like a bad idea to me.

Additionally, if the incentive to bring more buzzers is greater, even more teams are going to start bringing broken buzzers. I don't think I've ever seen a team's buzzer discount reduced after the fact because the buzzer system hasn't worked. Only a small minority of TDs personally check whether the systems are working at registration, and even if they have staffers report this information back to them, they still would need to write up new invoices, etc. Furthermore, many buzzer systems break mid-way through the day. I don't think I've ever seen a team lose a buzzer discount because their buzzer crapped out in Round 3, even if that buzzer has crapped out in every previous tournament they've brought it to.

Also, I don't think slap bowl is the worst thing that could ever happen to a tournament. Having people say "buzz" is good enough to distinguish who buzzed first in almost all cases.

[DumbJaques]

Why would a thief want to steal quiz bowl buzzers? Why not? They are worth money, and could be relatively easy to steal.

Nobody who steals things with the primary motivation of receiving money for them* would waste time stealing quizbowl buzzers. It's not the kind of thing you can get real money for at any normal avenue to unload stolen merchandise (even pawn shops and such that take almost anything), and it's actually kind of a job to pack up an entire buzzer set and abscond with it. You'd make infinitely more money stealing somebody's ipod or even a calculator, and it would be thousands of times easier. I doubt any teams seriously decide not to bring buzzers because of concerns about theft, but if they do, those teams are just retarded and that won't really be fixed by throwing money at them.

*I guess it's theoretically possible that some equal-opportunity kleptomaniac could wander buy and swipe them, and then stagger cross-campus with zeecraft cords trailing behind him or bits of the judge strapped songbird-style to his calves. As far as I know, this kind of event has had far less of a tangible impact on quizbowl than ill-mannered steak 'n shake employees, whom we similarly do not target with financial incentives.

[Cheynem]

Regarding Mike's points:

-One thing about the discount would be to say that if you have to write a packet, the discounts only apply if the packet is turned in on time or something, so you can't just rely on the buzzer discounts to bail you out of a very late packet turn-in.

-Slap bowl, I guess, does determine who buzzed in first in almost all cases. The problem is that a lot of quiz bowl matches feature buzzer races at some point, and sometimes in close matches, that buzzer race might determine the winner of that match. Having any tournament match, let alone a nationals match, decided on a game in which it is impossible to objectively determine who buzzed in first at times is intolerable for me.

[Broad-tailed Grassbird]

There is also the issue of teams mistreating buzzers, throwing them, and breaking them during a tournament. I will admit that I have thrown buzzers before (Immature, I know).

You break it you buy it, collegiate quiz bowl should be no different.

[Ben Dillon]

You break it you buy it, collegiate quiz bowl should be no different.

Such a system would depend on the owner being notified as soon as the breakage occurred. I once found out at the end of a morning that my buzzer system was broken, but, because it was swapped out for a working one at some point and ten-plus teams had played on it, the guilty party could not be apprehended.

[Captain Sinico]

Discounts ought to be increased, considering that buzzers are seemingly harder to come by for various reasons and, probably relatedly, they're more expensive to get places. I also observe that people bringing broken buzzers* to tournaments is a major problem, considering how high a fraction of the circuit's systems don't work properly+, and ought to result in cancellation of discounts or even imposition of additional penalties.

You break it you buy it, collegiate quiz bowl should be no different.

That's a very poor standard, considering that buzzers frequently break through ordinary use. I'd agree with the sentiment that people ought to be less abusive to systems, though.

MaS

* I suppose I mean passing off a broken system as a working one. If someone says "We're bringing a system on which only six buzzers work; give me whatever discount you think is fair" or whatever, I don't see how anyone can have a problem with that.

+I'd like to say: please fix your systems, people! It's not hard or expensive to do, generally (except for Judges; I'm still working on that one.)

[Matt Weiner]

+I'd like to say: please fix your systems, people! It's not hard or expensive to do, generally (except for Judges; I'm still working on that one.)

Quik Pro wants $90 each to fix our systems that don't lock out when someone buzzes. Does anyone have a home fix for this?

[Matthew D]

Mike.. what is your judge doing?
I have had some success with repairing mine... I replaced two of the buttons with better ones earlier in the year... didn't do one of them right, so I need to redo it but the other is working great

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I agree that you break it, you but it is an unworkable strategy. At NKC we had a player my sophomore year who would come into practice and slam, drop, hit, and throw the buzzers around probably at least once every other question. None of them broke while he was doing it, but then later they all broke, and I'm pretty firmly convinced they broke from being helped along by him doing that. I think it's very rare to find a buzzer that you can point to one person being responsible for breaking, because I'd bet all of the slamming, traveling, dropping, and just general wear and tear from practice and tournaments over many months is why most buzzers break.

[Broad-tailed Grassbird]

I agree that you break it, you but it is an unworkable strategy. At NKC we had a player my sophomore year who would come into practice and slam, drop, hit, and throw the buzzers around probably at least once every other question. None of them broke while he was doing it, but then later they all broke, and I'm pretty firmly convinced they broke from being helped along by him doing that. I think it's very rare to find a buzzer that you can point to one person being responsible for breaking, because I'd bet all of the slamming, traveling, dropping, and just general wear and tear from practice and tournaments over many months is why most buzzers break.

In that case, it is I guess the moderator's responsibility to tell the player to stop doing it. I've never really thought about it that way, but in the future I will tell moderators to warn abusive players to stop. I just think its ludicrous that anyone should treat other people's equipment like such crap.

[Captain Sinico]

+I'd like to say: please fix your systems, people! It's not hard or expensive to do, generally (except for Judges; I'm still working on that one.)

Quik Pro wants $90 each to fix our systems that don't lock out when someone buzzes. Does anyone have a home fix for this?

I don't know about that system. I'd suggest just letting someone who knows some circuit stuff take it apart.

Mike.. what is your judge doing?
I have had some success with repairing mine... I replaced two of the buttons with better ones earlier in the year... didn't do one of them right, so I need to redo it but the other is working great

Three of the paddles don't work at the moment (that entails some re-writing) and one of the lights doesn't light (which I think entails just replacing the LED.) So, it's basically stuff I should be able to fix if I ever make the time.

MaS