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Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Wed May 16, 2018 10:04 pm
by mtebbe
I am pleased to announce Penn Bowl 2018 (Penn Bowl XXVII) for the Fall semester of 2018. We plan to run this tournament at the main site on October 20th.

QUESTIONS

This tournament will be written by writers from Penn. The tournament will be edited by a team of editors consisting of Eric Mukherjee, Jordan Brownstein, JinAh Kim, Jaimie Carlson, and Samir Khan. Jaimie Carlson will be head-editing. There will be 15 packets of power-marked questions not longer than 8 lines (including bolding for power). The target difficulty is roughly the same as past Penn Bowls.

The distribution we are using is as follows:
4/4 Literature (1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1 European, 1/1 World & Other)
4/4 History (1/1 American, 1/1 Continental European, 1/1 British+Classics, 1/1 World)
4/4 Science (1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/1 Math and Other)
3/3 Arts
3/3 RMP
1/1 SS
1/1 Geography, CE, and Trash

Each packet will also have a tiebreaker tossup from literature, history, or science.

HOSTING

We are looking for mirrors in all regions. The mirror fee will be $40 per team. All mirrors of this tournament should aim to run on either October 20th or 27th.

At the main site, we will use the following fee structure:
Base fee: $120 per team
Working buzzer discount: $5 each
Approved moderator discount: $15 each
Travel discount: $10 (more than 200 miles one way according to Google maps)

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].

METHOD OF PAYMENT (borrowed from Cody Voight)

All teams must pay by the day of the tournament. We prefer to accept payment in person right before the tournament starts, but we will accept checks by mail ahead of time if your procedures require it. Teams who do not pay by the day of the tournament will be charged a $25 penalty and will have two weeks to pay their total amount before we start mailing letters to your school administration about it.

We can accept cash, personal checks, or checks from school, school district, or quizbowl club funds. We have no ability to process purchase orders or credit cards, but we will accept Paypal and Venmo. Bringing forms of payment outside of the three listed will be considered nonpayment and subject you to the $25 late payment penalty.

All checks must be made out to either "Nitin Rao" or "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania" (must be exact wording). If you bring a check not made out to either "Nitin Rao" or "Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania" and have no other method of paying for the tournament, you will be subject to the $25 late payment penalty. If you require a pre-tournament invoice or W9 in order to have a check cut, let us know early enough for your school to process the payment. We can generally send you an invoice the same day.

MIRRORS

Please contact [email protected] if you're interested in hosting a mirror or have any other inquiries.

Current mirrors:
Upper Midwest: UChicago, 10/20 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21831
Lower Midwest: Truman State, 10/27 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21484)
South Atlantic: Auburn, 10/27 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21759)
SoCal:
NorCal: Stanford, 10/20 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21822)
Northeast: Harvard, 10/27 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21799)
Canada: Queen's, 10/27 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21854)
Florida:
UK: Cambridge, 10/27
Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 10/20 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21836) - CANCELLED
South: LASA, 10/20
Lower Mid-Atlantic: UNC, 10/27 (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21762)
Pacific Northwest: University of Washington, 12/1

Current field (TEAMS/BUZZERS/STAFFERS): 39/42 teams
Robert Bork (2/0/0)
Wilmington Charter (1/3/0)
Beavercreek (1/2/0)
Miami Valley School (1/0/0)
West Egg (1/0/0)
Delaware (1/2/0)
NYU (3/1/0)
Rutgers (1/0/0)
JHU (2/3/0)
Ilium (1/2/0)
Gettysburg (1/1/0)
Penn State (3/1/0)
Princeton (2/1/0)
Yale (1/0/0)
Penn Manor (1/4/0)
UMD (3/1/1)
Virginia Tech (1/1/0)
UVA (2/4/0)
Cornell (3/2/0)
Pitt (1/2/1)
Columbia (2/0/0)
High Tech (2/3/0)
Carnegie Mellon (2/2/0)
SHU (1/0/0)

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 2:41 pm
by Smuttynose Island
Will there be an online mirror of Penn Bowl?

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:33 pm
by 1.82
mtebbe wrote: Wed May 16, 2018 10:04 pm Current field (TEAMS/BUZZERS/STAFFERS):
Sally Hemings (2/0/0)
This pseudonym is grossly inappropriate; I can elaborate on the reasons if required, but its inappropriateness should be self-explanatory. I believe that this has been indicated in the past to the high school using this pseudonym. It is incumbent on Penn and all other tournament hosts to disallow the use of this unacceptable pseudonym at this tournament and all future tournaments.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:54 pm
by mtebbe
1.82 wrote: Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:33 pm This pseudonym is grossly inappropriate; I can elaborate on the reasons if required, but its inappropriateness should be self-explanatory. I believe that this has been indicated in the past to the high school using this pseudonym. It is incumbent on Penn and all other tournament hosts to disallow the use of this unacceptable pseudonym at this tournament and all future tournaments.
This has been privately addressed.
Smuttynose Island wrote: Fri Sep 14, 2018 2:41 pm Will there be an online mirror of Penn Bowl?
At least one other person has shown interest in this. The Penn team isn't planning to hold an online mirror, but I'm open to others organizing and running one.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 12:09 pm
by mtebbe
We are almost at our field cap, so please register soon if you are planning to attend. We may be able to expand beyond 38 teams depending on how many staffers we are able to confirm - if any of the registered teams can send staffers (or anyone living in the Philly area would like to staff), we would greatly appreciate it.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2018 10:56 pm
by Monstruos de Bolsillo
I am available to staff if necessary.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2018 9:39 pm
by vinteuil
Thanks to Penn for hosting such a large tournament with basically no hitches! I was very impressed at the quality of the reader corps, for instance.

I'm sure others will also have things to say about this, but I don't think that running 9 prelim rounds before lunch was a good idea. Everybody, especially the moderators, were just completely exhausted by the 3:30-4PM lunch break.

With some advance planning (working out exactly how prelim teams will be slotted into the playoff brackets ahead of time), it just doesn't take that long to rebracket, especially given that real-time stats were being used. I think the vast majority of (if not all) teams, who have often had to get up very early to commute, would prefer having a reasonable lunch time and waiting an extra 20 minutes.

(That said, I'm glad that Margaret and Penn stuck to their guns once they'd decided on this plan, since switching courses midstream without advance planning for re-bracketing probably would have resulted in some confusion and delays.)

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:22 am
by wcheng
I also would like to thank Margaret and the other members of Penn quizbowl for running another successful iteration of Penn Bowl! I know from experience that running a large tournament with 38 teams is no easy task, and many of the difficulties my team experienced at the tournament are understandable given this field size. I agree that in the future, having an earlier lunch with some additional time to rebracket would be preferable for most teams, considering that the lunch break took place when many people are already thinking about dinner. The difference between a 1:30 lunch, for example, and 4:30 lunch are quite substantial. I thought the set was quite good overall, and look forward to seeing the advanced stats!

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:25 pm
by mtebbe
Congratulations to Yale, who defeated UMD A in a one-game final yesterday!

I would like to thank all the teams who came to the tournament yesterday and competed, especially for remaining good-natured through what I know was not an ideal scheduling situation. A massive thank you also to all the Penn staffers and external staffers (Ophir, Auroni, Alex, Andrew, Eric, JinAh, Jordan) without whom the tournament could not have happened.

Prelims w/ crossover: http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/50 ... crossover/
Prelims w/o crossover: http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/50 ... s/prelims/
All games: http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/50 ... all_games/
Feel free to PM or email me if there are any mistakes in the stats.

Also, the private discussion forum is now live; please request to join from usergroup tab if you want to provide feedback on the questions or see advanced stats.

Weijia and Jacob: Thanks for your feedback! I 100% agree that it would have been better to not have lunch after nine rounds. However, Penn Bowl is already a long tournament almost every year and I decided to prioritize what I thought would get us through the fastest, even though I knew it would make us have lunch very late. To address Jacob's point about advance planning, I agree that that would have been ideal, but I don't think rebracketing that quickly was a possibility yesterday. If I had known earlier than Friday afternoon that we would only have 38 teams competing, we could have automated calculating the adjusted PPB and records of teams and it wouldn't have been a problem, but unfortunately we didn't have enough time to do so. As it was, it took the entire lunch period to rebracket - if we had not done that during lunch, the tournament would have been running an hour or an hour and half later, which I don't think anyone wants.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:26 pm
by nycaqb1999
Is an online mirror being planned for this set?

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:45 pm
by Wartortullian
nycaqb1999 wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:26 pm Is an online mirror being planned for this set?
Echoing this. If there is one, I will play the :capybara: out of it.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:22 pm
by mtebbe
All stats are now up, per several people's request I've uploaded two versions of the prelim stats - one with the crossover games and one without.
nycaqb1999 wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 3:26 pm Is an online mirror being planned for this set?
There seems to be a significant amount of interest for this and a few Penn people have said they would run it, I'll post in this thread if/when we confirm a date.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:12 am
by a bird
I agree with what Jacob and Weijia posted above and want to thank Margaret and Penn for their logistical efforts.

I have a few comments about the format:
  • The prelim felt too long. Jacob and Weijia pointed out issues with having long prelim (and a late lunch). Here is another point. I think it would be preferable to have more playoff games so teams have more games against closely match opponents. I understand your hands were probably tied by having 38 teams, but I think the prelim/playoff balance should be more of a consideration.
  • The crossover playoff was a little disappointing. I was really looking forward to playing Columbia, UVA, and Hopkins, only to end up the the other playoff bracket (with two teams we'd already faced in the prelims). Again, a format with more playoff games would have been nice.
  • It looks like the crossover seeding was 2,3,5,6 in bracket A and 1,4,7,8 in bracket B. I think the 5 and 6 seeds (UVA and Hopkins) might be justifiably frustrated by this, since it gave them a tough road to 3rd/4th place. Furthermore it seems unnecessary to place teams in the same playoff pool with teams they've already played in the prelims.
To summarize, I know the number of teams limits your logistical options, but I think last year's format (with 36 teams) was significantly better. This is why I think directors should take format into account more when determining field caps. I know you want to let as many people as possible play the tournament, but it might be better to set a strict 36 team field cap to give those 36 teams the best possible experience.

Finally, it looks like I left my notebook in the finals room. If anyone finds and returns it, I will compensate them for their effort ($10 or a free lunch at ACF Fall at UMD and postage if need to you send it). It's slightly smaller than 8.5x11 and has a tan/light brown cover the says "Roaring Springs."

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:25 am
by vinteuil
a bird wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:12 am
  • I think it would be preferable to have more playoff games so teams have more games against closely match opponents. I understand your hands were probably tied by having 38 teams, but I think the prelim/playoff balance should be more of a consideration.
  • The crossover playoff was a little disappointing. I was really looking forward to playing Columbia, UVA, and Hopkins, only to end up the the other playoff bracket (with two teams we'd already faced in the prelims). Again, a format with more playoff games would have been nice.
I strongly agree with this; we had 8 fairly mismatched games and then weren't able to play UMD B, an experience we were looking forward to. In UMD's case, this meant that 5 of their 12 games were against high schools! (I am aware that at least one of the high school teams here was very good.)

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:05 am
by mtebbe
a bird wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:12 am To summarize, I know the number of teams limits your logistical options, but I think last year's format (with 36 teams) was significantly better. This is why I think directors should take format into account more when determining field caps. I know you want to let as many people as possible play the tournament, but it might be better to set a strict 36 team field cap to give those 36 teams the best possible experience.
Again, I think your criticisms of the format are fair. To be clear, the field cap in the initial post (38 teams) was arbitrary and based on the number of rooms we reserved, I expanded that fairly quickly to 42. Until the day before the tournament, I thought we would have 40 or 42 teams attend, which would have resulted in ~6 rounds of prelims and ~6 rounds of playoffs. I did everything I could to get the field back up to 40 after teams dropped, but it's not fair of me to expect a team to split and field a two person team or to ask more teams to drop so we could get to a field size of 36.

(Also, I will look for your notebook! I didn't see it when we checked the rooms before leaving, but I'll ask the building administrator and see if I can find it.)
vinteuil wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:25 am I strongly agree with this; we had 8 fairly mismatched games and then weren't able to play UMD B, an experience we were looking forward to. In UMD's case, this meant that 5 of their 12 games were against high schools! (I am aware that at least one of the high school teams here was very good.)
Again, I'm not sure what I could have done here (outside of seeding the playoffs differently, which was decided on before the tournament). I'm sure people would have been (justifiably) upset if I had put Yale and UMD B in the same prelim bracket, but I'm sorry you guys were looking forward to playing them and weren't able to. Re: the number of high schools, there were a large number of high school teams at this tournament in general, and one of the teams in Maryland's prelim bracket ended up in the top bracket and another in the second bracket.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:07 am
by 1.82
mtebbe wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:05 am
vinteuil wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:25 am I strongly agree with this; we had 8 fairly mismatched games and then weren't able to play UMD B, an experience we were looking forward to. In UMD's case, this meant that 5 of their 12 games were against high schools! (I am aware that at least one of the high school teams here was very good.)
Again, I'm not sure what I could have done here (outside of seeding the playoffs differently, which was decided on before the tournament). I'm sure people would have been (justifiably) upset if I had put Yale and UMD B in the same prelim bracket, but I'm sorry you guys were looking forward to playing them and weren't able to. Re: the number of high schools, there were a large number of high school teams at this tournament in general, and one of the teams in Maryland's prelim bracket ended up in the top bracket and another in the second bracket.
It seems to me that it would be fairly straightforward to set up a system in which there would be no rematches in the playoffs. Suppose that we have prelim brackets A, B, C, and D, and let us refer to the first-place team in bracket A as A1, the second-place team in bracket A as A2, et cetera. Without fundamentally changing the format, we can set up playoff brackets in the following way:

Bracket α: A1, B2, C1, D2
Bracket β: A2, B1, C2, D1
Bracket γ: A3, B3, C3, D3
Bracket δ: A4, B4, C4, D4
Bracket ε: A5, B5, C5, D5
Bracket ζ: A6, B6, C6, D6
Bracket η: A7, B7, C7, D7
Bracket θ: A8, B8, C8, D8
Bracket ι: A9, B9, C9, D9
Bracket κ: A10, B10

No team plays against a team that they had faced in preliminary rounds, and rebracketing is simplified since there is no need for statistical tiebreakers (this seems like it was an issue, since rebracketing should not normally take all of lunch for a nineteen-room tournament). The winners of Bracket α and Bracket β meet in the final. This setup would additionally establish definite rankings for the whole field, since we can clearly say that the winner of Bracket γ finished in ninth place and the winner of Bracket δ finished in thirteenth place and so on.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:48 am
by t-bar
mtebbe wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:05 am Again, I'm not sure what I could have done here (outside of seeding the playoffs differently, which was decided on before the tournament).
Can someone from Penn elaborate on what this method for seeding was? I can think of several defensible ways to seed the playoffs, none of which are consistent with this set of brackets:
1. The pre-set format that Naveed suggests.
2. Put overall seeds {1,4} in A and {2,3} in B, then put the 2-seeds out of each prelim pool into the playoff bracket that doesn't contain their prelim partner. This is a slightly more labor-intensive version of Naveed's format that attempts to more robustly respond to prelim results.
3. Put overall seeds {1, 4, 5, 8} in A and {2, 3, 6, 7} in B. This allows for prelim repeats but is at least more balanced in overall strength.
I could be misreading the stats, but it doesn't appear that any of these is consistent with the seeds that were assigned. Perhaps someone made a typo, either in ahead-of-time planning or in transcribing date on the day of the tournament--that would be understandable, but I think the teams deserve that it be acknowledged forthrightly.

In addition, did members of the Penn team consider formats based on 5 prelim pools of 7/8 teams each, followed by a crossover format? Playoff assignments would have been trickier, and I understand that being able to do the playoffs easily was a big concern for a tournament of this size, but I think the quality of life improvement of getting teams to lunch two rounds earlier would have made the tournament much more pleasant.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:54 am
by UlyssesInvictus
mtebbe wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:22 pm There seems to be a significant amount of interest for this and a few Penn people have said they would run it, I'll post in this thread if/when we confirm a date.
Would love an online mirror. Personal request is, if at all possible, for a date to be determined before this Saturday, so I can decide whether I should just give up on playing and staff the NE mirror instead, but obviously please figure it out on whatever schedule you can.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:15 pm
by Hobbie Klivian
1.82 wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:07 am
Bracket α: A1, B2, C1, D2
Bracket β: A2, B1, C2, D1
Bracket γ: A3, B3, C3, D3
Bracket δ: A4, B4, C4, D4
Bracket ε: A5, B5, C5, D5
Bracket ζ: A6, B6, C6, D6
Bracket η: A7, B7, C7, D7
Bracket θ: A8, B8, C8, D8
Bracket ι: A9, B9, C9, D9
Bracket κ: A10, B10

No team plays against a team that they had faced in preliminary rounds, and rebracketing is simplified since there is no need for statistical tiebreakers (this seems like it was an issue, since rebracketing should not normally take all of lunch for a nineteen-room tournament). The winners of Bracket α and Bracket β meet in the final. This setup would additionally establish definite rankings for the whole field, since we can clearly say that the winner of Bracket γ finished in ninth place and the winner of Bracket δ finished in thirteenth place and so on.
t-bar wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:48 am Can someone from Penn elaborate on what this method for seeding was? I can think of several defensible ways to seed the playoffs, none of which are consistent with this set of brackets:
1. The pre-set format that Naveed suggests.
2. Put overall seeds {1,4} in A and {2,3} in B, then put the 2-seeds out of each prelim pool into the playoff bracket that doesn't contain their prelim partner. This is a slightly more labor-intensive version of Naveed's format that attempts to more robustly respond to prelim results.
2. Put overall seeds {1, 4, 5, 8} in A and {2, 3, 6, 7} in B. This allows for prelim repeats but is at least more balanced in overall strength.
I could be misreading the stats, but it doesn't appear that any of these is consistent with the seeds that were assigned. Perhaps someone made a typo, either in ahead-of-time planning or in transcribing date on the day of the tournament--that would be understandable, but I think the teams deserve that it be acknowledged forthrightly.
What you outlined here for bracket γ onwards is exactly what we did with the exception of bracket ι, which was combined with bracket κ. For bracket α and bracket β, we chose to seed the way we did because we believed that it would lead to more balanced top brackets, giving the first seed an easier path to the final than what Naveed is suggesting; however, since we were trying to prioritize balance, the correct seeding probably should have been {1,4,5,8} in A and {2,3,6,7} in B as Stephen points out. I sincerely apologize to 5 seed (UVA) and 7 seed (Delaware) as well as all the top teams who felt that this was unfair.

The time delay in reseeding was mostly due to the fact that we had to manually recalculate the stats for two of the prelim brackets, since there is currently no way to "disregard" games in advanced stats. We were not aware of this until the day before, and in hindsight we should have instructed the moderator reading in the crossover game room to keep a separate set of stats. We will keep this in mind for the future, and I hope this is useful for other hosts who are considering using advanced stats in lieu of SQBS during the tournament. (As a side note, I have nothing but praise for Ophir's advanced stats system, which helped our tournament run much more smoothly)
t-bar wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:48 am In addition, did members of the Penn team consider formats based on 5 prelim pools of 7/8 teams each, followed by a crossover format? Playoff assignments would have been trickier, and I understand that being able to do the playoffs easily was a big concern for a tournament of this size, but I think the quality of life improvement of getting teams to lunch two rounds earlier would have made the tournament much more pleasant.
This was pretty much the main format we were considering when we had 40 teams registered. However, we decided that crossover/bye in the prelims would be much better than crossover/bye in the playoffs. As described above, manually adjusting the stats to disregard the crossover may have been too time consuming to do during the playoffs. We were simply too optimistic in assuming that we could get through 9 rounds of prelims before reasonable time for lunch.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:18 pm
by a bird
mtebbe wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:05 am
a bird wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:12 am To summarize, I know the number of teams limits your logistical options, but I think last year's format (with 36 teams) was significantly better. This is why I think directors should take format into account more when determining field caps. I know you want to let as many people as possible play the tournament, but it might be better to set a strict 36 team field cap to give those 36 teams the best possible experience.
Again, I think your criticisms of the format are fair. To be clear, the field cap in the initial post (38 teams) was arbitrary and based on the number of rooms we reserved, I expanded that fairly quickly to 42. Until the day before the tournament, I thought we would have 40 or 42 teams attend, which would have resulted in ~6 rounds of prelims and ~6 rounds of playoffs. I did everything I could to get the field back up to 40 after teams dropped, but it's not fair of me to expect a team to split and field a two person team or to ask more teams to drop so we could get to a field size of 36.
vinteuil wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:25 am I strongly agree with this; we had 8 fairly mismatched games and then weren't able to play UMD B, an experience we were looking forward to. In UMD's case, this meant that 5 of their 12 games were against high schools! (I am aware that at least one of the high school teams here was very good.)
Again, I'm not sure what I could have done here (outside of seeding the playoffs differently, which was decided on before the tournament). I'm sure people would have been (justifiably) upset if I had put Yale and UMD B in the same prelim bracket, but I'm sorry you guys were looking forward to playing them and weren't able to. Re: the number of high schools, there were a large number of high school teams at this tournament in general, and one of the teams in Maryland's prelim bracket ended up in the top bracket and another in the second bracket.
I wasn't trying to argue that the format was a bad choice for 38 teams, but rather that a 36 (or maybe 40*) team format would have been better. Of course it's very hard for a TD to account for last minute drops, so maybe the 38 team field was unavoidable. On the other hand, I think the initial field cap should always be a number that allows for a good schedule (like 36 in this case).

Others in this thread are making good points about (small) changes that could have made the schedule better. While I agree with many of those points, I'm discussing something different.

*EDIT: See below for problems with 40 team formats.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:56 pm
by Cody
A small note about the formats: the possible formats for 37, 38, 39, and 40 teams are all the same. There are no "good" formats for those field sizes. (All the formats only differ in that some prelim brackets have 1 fewer team (odd #) than others (even #) (i.e. the same number of rounds), and the bottom bracket playoff may need to be different as a result.)

The basic problem with all the formats for these field sizes is that it is extremely hard to avoid eliminating a team from championship contention due to just one loss. (I believe it may not be possible at all with normal scheduling principles of round robins and crossovers, even with wildcards, unless you have at least 16 packets.)

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2018 7:29 pm
by gyre and gimble
UlyssesInvictus wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:54 am
mtebbe wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:22 pm There seems to be a significant amount of interest for this and a few Penn people have said they would run it, I'll post in this thread if/when we confirm a date.
Would love an online mirror. Personal request is, if at all possible, for a date to be determined before this Saturday, so I can decide whether I should just give up on playing and staff the NE mirror instead, but obviously please figure it out on whatever schedule you can.
I'd also like to express interest in an online mirror, but only if it's after Nov. 10.

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 9:14 am
by CaseyB
Is there a private discussion forum for this set?

Re: Announcement: Penn Bowl 2018

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 3:43 pm
by UlyssesInvictus
Hello! Could whoever has access to the set upload a Word files version to the archives as well, or just PM me with a link to the Google Docs/Word files? (Currently the archives only have PDFs.)

Having access to the Word files helps a lot for parsing the packets, which helps get them uploaded to question databases like QuizDB. Thanks!