ACF Nationals 2017 (4/22 - 4/23)
Posted: Fri May 13, 2016 8:41 pm
Hey, folks. Logistical details still need to be filled in, but this will serve as the main announcement thread for ACF Nationals 2017, to take place on the weekend of April 22 at Columbia University.
I'll be head editor for this tournament, assisted by select Virginians Tommy Casalaspi and Evan Adams, along with honorary Virginians Austin Brownlow, Ike Jose, and Rohith Nagari. Sic semper TyrRyanis.
PACKET SUBMISSION, ELIGIBILITY, AND FEE SCHEDULE
Information on who is eligible to play ACF tournaments and details regarding packet submission can be found at the ACF Packet Submission Guidelines.
This tournament will use the A-value qualification system, an explanation of which can be found here.
TENTATIVE** fee schedule:
Base fee: $300
-$100 discount: Sunday, January 22
-$50 discount: Sunday, February 5
-$25 discount: Sunday, February 19
No penalty: Sunday, March 5
+$25 penalty: Sunday, March 19
+$50 penalty: Sunday, March 26
After the $50 deadline, you will owe the editors an additional $50/day up until the point when they choose to drop you from the tournament. If you are required to submit a packet and you do not do so by March 26, you risk either being dropped from the field or charged a lot of money, at the discretion of the editors; the only way to be sure to avoid this is to get your packet in by March 26. Please notice that the deadlines have been moved forward from last year. This isn't me playing bad cop; it's me following the advice of last year's editors, who were pretty tired of getting packets within a week of the tournament.
If your team brings (fully pays for/does not claim any reimbursement from the tournament for) a qualified moderator, you will receive a $100 discount. Qualified moderators are people who can properly complete an ACF Nationals round in thirty minutes. The tournament director will be the sole judge of who is qualified, both prior to and during the tournament, and will not award the discount if your staffer fails to meet this requirement. You may, theoretically, claim this discount as many times as possible until your fee reaches $0.
This year, ACF will continue the $50 dollar discount for teams who write at least 20/20 that doesn’t need any major editing and submit their packet by the no penalty deadline. By major editing, we mean things like having to change many of the clues and/or answerlines and having to fix many grammatical errors. We would much rather give out lots of hefty discounts for excellent early packets than rake in money for late ones, so please take advantage of them.
There is a (tentative) field cap of 42 teams for this tournament, and the qualification system is in place. After auto-qualifiers are determined, teams will be offered spots in the tournament in the order of their A-value. If every team who played ACF Regionals, and thus has an A-value, is offered a spot in the Nationals field and there are still fewer than 44 teams registered, then any team eligible to play ACF will be allowed to fill the remaining spots on a first-come, first-served basis. Any team who is required to write a packet under the packet submission deadlines must do so to in order to play and will be subject to the above fee schedule, regardless of how or when the team enters the field.
Please stay in touch with me or other ACF members if we are trying to verify your attendance at this event.
Dropping of teams who do not communicate about their registration or packet will be done without remorse -- this is a separate issue from late packets and comes down to the possibility that some other team may wish to take your spot and we need to recruit adequate staff and plan a schedule for the event. If we send you an e-mail asking if the team you said was "interested" two months ago is actually coming, and you ignore the e-mail and tell us nothing for several days on end, we may have to assume you are not coming and forfeit your spot in the field. Make sure you give valid contact information when you register and check it on at least a weekly basis.
Distribution:
5/5 Literature: This includes 1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, and 1/1 Other (which can include any of the preceding categories). Please vary your questions by time, place, and genre (for instance, please don’t submit 5/5 on French literature or 5/5 poetry).
5/5 History: This includes 1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World, and 1/1 Other (which can include any of the preceding categories). Please make sure that your questions aren’t all from the same time period or place and aren’t all one type of history (for instance, try not to submit 5/5 political history or 5/5 military history).
5/5 Science: This includes 1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1 math or computer science, 1 astronomy, Earth science, or other science, and 1/1 other science.
3/3 Arts: This category has been changed for the purposes of this tournament. Instead of 1/1 Painting, 1/1 Classical Music, and 1/1 Other, we are now asking for 1.5/1.5 "Visual Arts," at least 1 question of which must be painting. To make this experiment successful, please submit questions on less-explored topics in visual arts, including photography, performance art, architecture, and film. Please do not submit one question on Renaissance painting and two questions on Renaissance sculpture.
The rest of this category is the same: 1/1 music and .5/.5 auditory other arts, including opera, jazz, and ballet. Please vary your questions by time, place, and genre.
2.5/2.5 RMP: This includes 1/1 Religion, .5/.5 Mythology, and 1/1 Philosophy. Please do not write both religion questions on the same religion.
1.5/1.5 Social Science: This includes Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, and Social Criticism. Please write your tossup and bonus on different areas of social science.
1/1 Geography/Current Events: These questions should be about different parts of the world. Geography questions that incorporate cultural and environmental clues instead of purely discussing physical features are particularly welcome.
1/1 Other Academic: This includes questions from every preceding category, as well as answers that don’t quite fit into any of the preceding categories.
Keep in mind that ACF Nationals does not have trash; if you submit any trash questions, they will simply be sent back.
To reiterate, please vary the distribution of your questions. In past years, we had teams submit packets with both chemistry questions about the same narrow area, to present one example, and it would prevent many headaches if you make sure your questions are reasonably distributed. Also, please remember that while the goal of ACF Nationals is to determine the best team in the nation, writing primarily about extremely difficult topics is not the best way to achieve this, so please try to keep your fellow players in mind while choosing your answer lines.
All packets should be sent to [email protected]. If you have any questions about packet writing, you can send them to that email address also.
Because there is sometimes confusion on this matter, the only logistical discounts that apply for Nationals are the discounts for buzzers (-$5) and staff (-$100 for moderators capable of finishing an ACF Nationals round in half an hour). The travel discount does not apply to Nationals, nor do laptop discounts, as Nationals will have printed packets, as it does every year.
This announcement will be edited as the remaining logistical elements are finalized.
I'll be head editor for this tournament, assisted by select Virginians Tommy Casalaspi and Evan Adams, along with honorary Virginians Austin Brownlow, Ike Jose, and Rohith Nagari. Sic semper TyrRyanis.
PACKET SUBMISSION, ELIGIBILITY, AND FEE SCHEDULE
Information on who is eligible to play ACF tournaments and details regarding packet submission can be found at the ACF Packet Submission Guidelines.
This tournament will use the A-value qualification system, an explanation of which can be found here.
TENTATIVE** fee schedule:
Base fee: $300
-$100 discount: Sunday, January 22
-$50 discount: Sunday, February 5
-$25 discount: Sunday, February 19
No penalty: Sunday, March 5
+$25 penalty: Sunday, March 19
+$50 penalty: Sunday, March 26
After the $50 deadline, you will owe the editors an additional $50/day up until the point when they choose to drop you from the tournament. If you are required to submit a packet and you do not do so by March 26, you risk either being dropped from the field or charged a lot of money, at the discretion of the editors; the only way to be sure to avoid this is to get your packet in by March 26. Please notice that the deadlines have been moved forward from last year. This isn't me playing bad cop; it's me following the advice of last year's editors, who were pretty tired of getting packets within a week of the tournament.
If your team brings (fully pays for/does not claim any reimbursement from the tournament for) a qualified moderator, you will receive a $100 discount. Qualified moderators are people who can properly complete an ACF Nationals round in thirty minutes. The tournament director will be the sole judge of who is qualified, both prior to and during the tournament, and will not award the discount if your staffer fails to meet this requirement. You may, theoretically, claim this discount as many times as possible until your fee reaches $0.
This year, ACF will continue the $50 dollar discount for teams who write at least 20/20 that doesn’t need any major editing and submit their packet by the no penalty deadline. By major editing, we mean things like having to change many of the clues and/or answerlines and having to fix many grammatical errors. We would much rather give out lots of hefty discounts for excellent early packets than rake in money for late ones, so please take advantage of them.
There is a (tentative) field cap of 42 teams for this tournament, and the qualification system is in place. After auto-qualifiers are determined, teams will be offered spots in the tournament in the order of their A-value. If every team who played ACF Regionals, and thus has an A-value, is offered a spot in the Nationals field and there are still fewer than 44 teams registered, then any team eligible to play ACF will be allowed to fill the remaining spots on a first-come, first-served basis. Any team who is required to write a packet under the packet submission deadlines must do so to in order to play and will be subject to the above fee schedule, regardless of how or when the team enters the field.
Please stay in touch with me or other ACF members if we are trying to verify your attendance at this event.
Dropping of teams who do not communicate about their registration or packet will be done without remorse -- this is a separate issue from late packets and comes down to the possibility that some other team may wish to take your spot and we need to recruit adequate staff and plan a schedule for the event. If we send you an e-mail asking if the team you said was "interested" two months ago is actually coming, and you ignore the e-mail and tell us nothing for several days on end, we may have to assume you are not coming and forfeit your spot in the field. Make sure you give valid contact information when you register and check it on at least a weekly basis.
Distribution:
5/5 Literature: This includes 1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, and 1/1 Other (which can include any of the preceding categories). Please vary your questions by time, place, and genre (for instance, please don’t submit 5/5 on French literature or 5/5 poetry).
5/5 History: This includes 1/1 American, 2/2 European, 1/1 World, and 1/1 Other (which can include any of the preceding categories). Please make sure that your questions aren’t all from the same time period or place and aren’t all one type of history (for instance, try not to submit 5/5 political history or 5/5 military history).
5/5 Science: This includes 1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1 math or computer science, 1 astronomy, Earth science, or other science, and 1/1 other science.
3/3 Arts: This category has been changed for the purposes of this tournament. Instead of 1/1 Painting, 1/1 Classical Music, and 1/1 Other, we are now asking for 1.5/1.5 "Visual Arts," at least 1 question of which must be painting. To make this experiment successful, please submit questions on less-explored topics in visual arts, including photography, performance art, architecture, and film. Please do not submit one question on Renaissance painting and two questions on Renaissance sculpture.
The rest of this category is the same: 1/1 music and .5/.5 auditory other arts, including opera, jazz, and ballet. Please vary your questions by time, place, and genre.
2.5/2.5 RMP: This includes 1/1 Religion, .5/.5 Mythology, and 1/1 Philosophy. Please do not write both religion questions on the same religion.
1.5/1.5 Social Science: This includes Psychology, Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, and Social Criticism. Please write your tossup and bonus on different areas of social science.
1/1 Geography/Current Events: These questions should be about different parts of the world. Geography questions that incorporate cultural and environmental clues instead of purely discussing physical features are particularly welcome.
1/1 Other Academic: This includes questions from every preceding category, as well as answers that don’t quite fit into any of the preceding categories.
Keep in mind that ACF Nationals does not have trash; if you submit any trash questions, they will simply be sent back.
To reiterate, please vary the distribution of your questions. In past years, we had teams submit packets with both chemistry questions about the same narrow area, to present one example, and it would prevent many headaches if you make sure your questions are reasonably distributed. Also, please remember that while the goal of ACF Nationals is to determine the best team in the nation, writing primarily about extremely difficult topics is not the best way to achieve this, so please try to keep your fellow players in mind while choosing your answer lines.
All packets should be sent to [email protected]. If you have any questions about packet writing, you can send them to that email address also.
Because there is sometimes confusion on this matter, the only logistical discounts that apply for Nationals are the discounts for buzzers (-$5) and staff (-$100 for moderators capable of finishing an ACF Nationals round in half an hour). The travel discount does not apply to Nationals, nor do laptop discounts, as Nationals will have printed packets, as it does every year.
This announcement will be edited as the remaining logistical elements are finalized.